The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

By David E. Goldberg, David Taras, David Goldberg

The Middle East has always been a source of great power confrontations, vast religious movements, and historic "about- faces." It has also had a magnetic pull, enticing commitments and allegiances from other countries. The conflict between Israel and the Arab states has been characterized by failure to compromise, deep animosities, and drastic misperceptions that have remained, despite the passage of generations, bitter and intractable. Although this conflict is essentially a struggle between two national movements - Arab and Jewish - its impact reaches far beyond the Middle East.

Few international issues have aroused as much passionate interest and political activity among Canadians. The contest on "the domestic battleground" has been decisive in determining Canada's policies in the Middle East. The Domestic Battleground provides the history and background needed to understand Canadian attitudes toward both the explosive unrest occurring in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the participants in the conflict - Israel, the Palestinians, and the rest of the Arab world. Taras and Goldberg analyse the struggles over the levers of decision making in Ottawa and the battle between moral stances and convictions that has taken place among concerned Canadians.

The Domestic Battleground is the first book devoted to analysing the study of Canada's Middle Eastern policy. David Taras and David H. Goldberg take readers inside the Canadian decision-making process on key issues regarding the Middle East over the last forty years. Bringing together articles by scholars with differing perspectives, this volume brings to light the positions and actions of Canadian political leaders - Mackenzie King, Lester B. Pearson, Joe Clark, Pierre Trudeau, and Brian Mulroney - and assess the impact of media coverage, corporate and governmental interests, and Arab and Jewish lobby groups. The Domestic Battleground addresses the narrowing of the emotional distance separating Canada from the conflicts and disputes indigenous to the Middle East and responds to the presence of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mainstream of daily life and politics in Canada.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773507051
• ISBN13: 9780773507050
• Release Date: July 1989
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 264 Pages