ABSTRACT
In October 1975, Harold Saunders, a senior American diplomat and one of the US government's better-known Middle East experts, testified before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Committee on International Affairs. This caveat resonated first and foremost in the context of the efforts conducted by Saunders's boss, Henry Kissinger, who led the post-1973 Israeli-Arab peace process under a strategy of step-by-step diplomacy. Accordingly, the American Secretary of State proceeded to construct a series of partial or interim bilateral Arab-Israeli agreements precisely because he felt the parties were unready as yet for a comprehensive settlement. The evolution of this thinking and its adoption by successive Israeli governments as a semi-official doctrine is in itself a most curious turn of events. Negotiations between Israel and the Syrians were suspended in June 1995, leaving the Middle East peace process to proceed along a dual track: formal, ongoing Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation together with the larger process of broader regional Israeli-Arab normalization.
