Before going into the book, this time, let's look at the Preface. Therein, it quotes,
"One of the most remarkable aspects of these enterprises was the intimate cooperation between American Jews and Palestinian and Israeli figures in meeting the challenge to "bring forth the children of Israel" (Exodus 3:10) from the "countries of distress.""
If that statement be wholly true, what is seen today in 2024 on news media, especially in English, especially here in the USA, is a far cry from the mindsets and attitudes, perhaps not only when Szulc wrote the book in about 1991, but when the referent era started, estimated window 1940 to 1960.
What is often seen on TV and media today, what the abovesaid refers to, is an attitude highlighted by two extremely distanced opposing ends, depicted by Israel on one far end as a bitter enemy of Palestinians, and Palestinians on one other end depicted as a bitter enemy of Israel. -How could that be, if both parties, or what comprised different parties, that contributed to the building of what exists in or on the present, and or near to, were from both camps?
In terms of use and application of the book to helping find solutions to the crisis in the Palestine/Israel region today, the book basically provides information on the different ingredients that went into the composition of the region. Increased understanding of the history has a good likelihood that it can increase the preparation to find good solutions to challenges that arise in the present.
This may or may not have analogs or some aspects but not others:
Long ago in North America, as this brief version of an already brief and simplif8ed version of the story is told, 'before the Europeans immigrated' here, or there, -well that's a tough call, because people from present day Europe may have been visiting present day North America since the two regions became distinct, so let's say before the big hoopla years of European royal decrees to investigate and cultivate, or 'discovery' and immigration years, give it around the middle 1400s or so-, long before then, was a tribe of Natives, perhaps what is commonly or popularly called today American Indians. The tribe broke up into subgroups, which fought each other until they nearly completely destroyed each other.
Story has it, a several elders, say about 100 years old, were sitting around a small fire inside a teepee and one of the elders began to cry toward the end of the fighting or after the fighting was over, saying that their descendants, youths, later generations, organized themselves into tribes sometimes not even knowing who their larger parent tribe that they all belonged to was, or that it even existed. For illustration, it may have been possible that at one point a group of young men were directed [by an elder tribal leader] to head northeast and go hunt buffalo, while another group was told to head west and cultivate crops. Later, the two groups got into a confrontation, calling themselves two separate tribes.
After all the fighting, there was barely enough, in survivors, for any of the tribes to exist anymore. The survivors were as said, maybe 3 old 100 year old men that knew the history.
A history vanished, not due to fighting between tribes, but in actuality, infighting, the infighting unbeknownst by many of the fighters to be infighting.
One side said the other tribe is a threat to our security and stability.
Does any of this sound remotely familiar in the framework of challenges upon us in 2024?
When we see the news covering events in the Middle East, what are they usually saying?
When we observe college and university students protesting over what is going on in the Middle East in 2023 and 2024, what are they usually saying?
Most of it is ether pro-one side or pro-the other side. Superficial catchphrases or concepts in popular use today may include 'Pro-Muslim', 'Pro-Jew', 'Pro-Palestinian', 'Pro-Israel', 'Pro-Zionist' a term a little lesser heard, 'anti-Hamas', or 'anti-Israel/government'.
What happened to straightforward pro-peace, and leave it as just that?
'Pro-PLO', among others, is a statement or verbiage that used to be in the news almost everyday for years running, back in the late 1980s; virtually unheard of now, on media reports in 2024.
It is as though history, nevermind heritage, went out the window, and what mostly remains as the main theme of just about everything, are violent clashes.
The author of The Secret Alliance, Tad Szulc, has a story written about him in the New York Times, a newspaper that he was a foreign correspondent of for nearly 20 years. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/22/world/tad-szulc-74-dies-times-correspondent-who-uncovered-bay-of-pigs-imbroglio.html
"Right out of the university Mr. Szulc found work as a reporter for The Associated Press in Rio. He came to New York in 1949, covering the United Nations for United Press International until 1953. Then he was hired by The New York Times and assigned to the night rewrite desk."