Carey, Roane

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CAREY, Roane

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—The Nation, 33 Irving Pl., 8th Fl., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—rcarey@thenation. com.

CAREER: The Nation, New York, NY, copy chief and senior editor.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid, foreword by Noam Chomsky, Verso (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor with Jonathan Shainin) The Other Israel:Voices of Refusal and Dissent, foreword by Tom Segev, introduction by Anthony Lewis, New Press (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: As The Nation's senior editor, Roane Carey has contributed many in-depth foreign affairs articles to that New York City-based publication, and has also edited books that address the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid is a collection of essays by Palestinians, both Arab and Jewish Israelis, Americans, an Egyptian, and an Englishman that address the unrest that began to foment with the Palestinian population of Israel and the occupied territory in September 2001. This unrest was a result of the failed peace process, continued occupation, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's appearance at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. Noting Carey's editorship of the volume, Library Journal contributor Nader Entessar called The New Intifada "a balanced and up-to-date picture for today's world."

Some of the volume's contributors, among them Noam Chomsky, who wrote the foreword, were known to be decidedly pro-Palestinian and their writings are critical of Israeli and U.S. policy. In fact, Chomsky contends in his foreword that "the United States and Israel have labored for thirty years to construct a system of permanent neo-colonial dependency." American bias in favor of the Israelis is the focus of essays by Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish. In some of the contributions, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (1929-2004) is viewed as having done all he could for peace, but in others he is seen as corrupt and authoritarian. Other contributors to the twenty-one-chapter volume include scholar Edward Said, who analyzes the failed peace process; British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who discusses the occupation of Lebanon and Sharon's genocidal policies; and novelist Ahdaf Soueif, who provides a first-person account of the violence at the height of the Intifada. Chomsky writes that the actions of the United States have actually prevented an equitable resolution.

In his appraisal of the book, Village Voice contributor Benjamin Kunkel felt that "there is no way to do justice in a short space to the variety of legal, historical, economic, and existential accounts of Palestinian dispossession and resistance that make up The New Intifada. Kunkel noted the essays of Chomsky and Said, but added that "most of the writers are unknown in America, and their contributions are the dose of fact and humane passion that our public debate requires." Kunkel praised Glenn Robinson's "The Peace of the Powerful," noting that Robinson "argues that a peace satisfactory to only one contracting party is 'quite unstable for both parties.'"

The Oslo Accords are similar to Israel's peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt; they were were based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that in pursuing and preserving a lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors, two principles must be followed. The first calls for the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict," and the second states that every state in the area must be able "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of war." Some of the essays in The New Intifada reflect the fact that after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the Palestinian Territories experienced neither peace nor prosperity. Within three years the combined West Bank and Gaza Strip gross national product fell nearly forty percent as unemployment in these regions rose nearly thirty percent. Harvard professor Sara Roy uses these facts in her contribution, an analysis of the economic decline, noting that although Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) corruption was, in part, responsible, the major impact came as a result of Israel's manipulation. Roy points out that while the cost of living in Jerusalem is on par with that of the United States, a nearby Palestinian family of six lives on just over two dollars a day.

Progressive reviewer Neve Gordon wrote that, "considering that the basis of the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is land for peace, one would have expected Israel to stop building houses and settling Jews in the occupied territories—territories that were to become, according to the agreement, the nascent Palestinian state." After former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, Israel built more than 20,000 housing units on expropriated Palestinian land, and this figure does not include new Jewish housing built in occupied East Jerusalem. Mouin Rabbani, director of the Palestinian American Research Center, notes in his essay contribution that Jewish population in the territories rose by 85,000 in the years from 1993 to 2000. Reviewing Carey's book, Gordon wrote that "what these numbers plainly indicate is that while Israel is employing the rhetoric of peace, it is doing everything in its power to create an irreversible situation on the ground." The reviewer concluded that the essays included in The New Intifada "cogently uncover the social, political, and economic processes that led to the eruption of the second intifada, corroborating Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's famous claim that 'never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.'"

Along with essays, Carey includes personal stories in The New Intifada. "The Agony of Beit Jala" presents a series of vignettes written by students and their English teacher. Gordon felt these stories "provide a face and soul to the occupation's harsh reality." The Progressive critic continued, saying that in a few instances, "an author ignores or even distorts important facts in order to advance a particular argument," but added that these occasions "are few and far between. While highly critical, the overall analysis is solid, and the writing is eloquent and smooth (probably due to the editor, who is copy chief at the Nation magazine). The book provides a platform for voices that are usually marginalized in the West. The New Intifada is not only timely, but also extremely important."

Carey has also joined Jonathan Shainin in coediting The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent, a collection of essays and articles by former government officials, soldiers, journalists, educators, and others who speak out against policies that favor force over diplomacy and decry the undermining of Israeli values and ideals. Typical is the essay by Israeli journalist Tom Segev. As an Economist contributor noted, Segev suggests that perhaps "he and his fellow dissenters are writing for their own relief, to detach themselves from Israel's 'tribal, isolated, emotional, and nationalistic mood,' and to show future historians that there were white hats around, even if they couldn't do much of anything." In appraising the work, Middle East reviewer Fred Rhodes noted the importance of independent voices as fighting escalates and added that, "needed now more than ever, The Other Israel is a clear-eyed look at the failures of the past and the path to peace for all citizens of the Middle East."