The Search for Détente

The Search for Détente offers a unique perspective on the latest effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. By setting the peace talks within the context of political events in the Middle East and beyond, Neville Teller offers an authoritative overview on why the Israel-Palestine situation remains so intractable.

Beginning in the spring of 2012, against the background of the still-raging Arab Spring, The Search for Détente provides the context within which US Secretary of State John Kerry began his efforts to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. It records the optimism at the start of the process, when all agreed that nine months would be sufficient to resolve the issues, and how cold reality led to Kerry shifting the goalposts to achieve just a "framework agreement", which might, or might not, allow the parties to go on talking.

From the end of 2012 until the formal end to the discussions in April 2014, events crowded thick and fast in the Middle East and beyond – from Israel’s incursion into Gaza to end Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilians, the start of the Syrian civil war and Assad’s use of chemical weapons, to the overthrow of Egypt’s President Morsi. Teller also looks at Russia’s growing influence in averting a US military strike on Syria, in brokering discussions on Iran’s nuclear programme and in invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. These events, and others, provide an insightful perspective on this latest effort to bring a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

A past chairman of the Society of Authors’ Broadcasting Committee, and of the Contributors’ Committee of the Audiobook Publishing Association, Neville Teller was made an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2006 for services to broadcasting and to drama. He has been commenting on the Israel-Palestine scene for over thirty years. He published One Man’s Israel (2008) and One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine (2011), a blow-by-blow account of the events of 2010 as they impacted on the effort to resolve the Israel-Palestine situation. His articles appear regularly in the Jerusalem Post, the Eurasia Review and the Albany Tribune, and he writes the blog A Mid-East Journal.