Dennis Ross and the Peace Process: Subordinating Palestinian Rights to Israeli "Needs" by Norman G. Finkelstein

In this monograph, Finkelstein sets about the meticulous task of deconstructing Dennis Ross' The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for the Middle East, which was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2004. His aim: to challenge the book's reception as the “definitive account” of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He does so by cleverly drawing a distinction between the 1993 – 2000 Oslo peace process years and the 2000 Camp David summit that brought together former United States president Bill Clinton, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The years between the time the first Oslo Accord was signed in September 1993 and 2000 generated voluminous documentation by contrast to the Camp David summit, which left the way open to several personal accounts. Finkelstein then draws on historical facts and respected sources to spotlight inaccuracies in Ross's account of, for example, the Israeli massacre at the United Nations compound of Qana in South Lebanon, thereby casting doubt on Ross's account of the Camp David negotiations. The monograph's three parts cover the historical background, the 1993-2000 peace process years, and the Camp David summit itself.