The perspective in each case is very different. The U.S. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People convened four international seminars, from which the book edited by Abu-Lughod publishes a selection of papers. It is an exercise in special pleading and directs a barrage of criticism against Israel and the United States. The Gruen volume is published by the American Jewish Committee and written by Israelis and Americans. One of its main purposes is to show that the Palestinian problem is not the only, or even the central, problem for U.S. policy in the Middle East; yet Rita Hauser, in the concluding piece, says that the United States has no choice but to persist in the effort to resolve it.
