Dying to Forget: Oil, Power, Palestine, and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East

Gendzier (Notes from the Minefield) sets out to discover why, by late 1948, U.S. policymakers had reversed course to endorse the new Israeli state, while growing increasingly silent about Palestinian refugee repatriation in Jewish-controlled territory. The U.S. initially considered establishing a temporary U.N. trusteeship over Palestine, but oil changed the equation. Reconstructing a bureaucratic record of American foreign policy in Israel and Palestine from 1945 to 1949, and relying on Israel's so-called New Historians to provide fresh insights, Gendzier demonstrates that American leaders had been aware of problems in the region as early as 1945. Conventional wisdom at the time dictated that an independent Israeli state would destabilize the region, threatening the U.S.'s access to oil and possibly opening up the Middle East to the Soviets. But meetings between the Jewish Agency and members of the oil bureaucracy created an "oil connection" that successfully aligned Zionism and America's Cold War interests. Though high-ranking policymakers may have wished to be more critical of Israel, the fledgling nation's military superiority prompted the Joint Chiefs to push forward policy that has come to define U.S.-Israeli relations. Gendzier's thorough but dense account, best suited to the serious student of Middle East policy, is essential to any sophisticated understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Nov.)