Behind the Uprising

Book excerpt: In January 1986, two working journalists were flying aboard the official jet of Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres, as he toured Europe and reactivated his secret diplomacy with Jordan's King Hussein. Within two years Palestinians living under Israeli occupation rose in revolt. The two journalists, Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv, decided the time was ripe to collaborate on Behind the Uprising: Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians, the first complete account of the clandestine relationship between Israel and Jordan, two Middle East enemies that have reached a de facto peace without signing a peace treaty. In this extraordinary, exclusive account, Melman and Raviv examine the hostile partnership by focusing on an unacknowledged, but powerful partnership among three key parties in the Middle East dispute: the Israelis, the Jordanians, and the Palestinians. Based on interviews with participants in the secret diplomacy and on documents previously hidden from the public, this work describes Hussein's meetings with Israel's leaders and reveals how Israel and Jordan forged a relationship covering everything from counter-terrorism to counter-mosquito tactics. The book begins and ends with an explanation of how a quarter of a century of secret contacts led to an explosion of frustration in the occupied territories, resulting in the Palestinian uprising.