Events in Lebanon always threaten to outrun the interpretive literature, but Itamar Rabinovich has narrowed the gap. His book is balanced and insightful, providing much historical background to the 1982 war. Rabinovich attributes Lebanon's passage from the periphery to the center of Middle Eastern politics to the confluence of Palestinian, Israeli, and Syrian interests there. Though he does not minimize the internal sources of increasing Christian-Muslem tensions, he notes the diffuculties caused by the influx of Palestinians into Lebanon after 1970. Rabinovich does not reduce Lebanon's domestic conflict to one of Muslems versus Christians. Rather, he painstakingly sorts out the alliances and rivalries among Christians and the various Muslim sects.(New York Times Book Review) This is partly a history of Lebanon's breakdown and civil war, partly a study of why and how Israel went to war in 1982. The author is at home in all of the topics he covers... and his account is remarkably objective.(Foreign Affairs) What distinguishes this book, written by an eminent Israeli scholar, is the high degree of factual accuracy and the remarkably objective analysis.... It deserves to be widely read for its clear perspective, cogent analysis, and for the new light it sheds on a crucial and eventful period in Lebanese history.(Middle East Journal)
