This book then focuses on Ireland’s increasing involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict since its accession to the EEC in the early 1970s.

Specifically it deals with four distinct phases:

• 1973-1980 when the issue of Palestine and the role of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), came to the fore in UN and EU discussions on the Middle East;
• 1980-1988, when the EEC’s support for Palestinian aspirations placed the Community increasingly at odds with Israel;
• 1988-1996, when the PLO’s acceptance of a negotiated settlement to its conflict with Israel was followed by the Madrid and Oslo peace processes;
• and 1996-2004, a time during which the optimism of the early Oslo years has disappeared.

'With fair and patient analysis, Rory Miller gives us a penetrating view of the ongoing Middle East situation, and of the attitude of Ireland and Europe to it… Eminently readable and absorbing.' Eamon Delaney, author of An Accidental Diplomat and Editor of Magill political magazine.

'Rory Miller’s book is a scholarly, original, well-researched, objective and factual account of the approach taken by successive Irish governments to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.'  Alan Shatter