Lost Years

Campus Report ^ | January 30, 2008 | Louisa Tavlas

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Lost Years

by: Louisa Tavlas, January 30, 2008

Charles Enderlin’s The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada, and Wars in the Middle East 2001-2006 comes as a fresh of breath air in these oft-polluted journalistic times.

Enderlin is a journalist of French and Israeli origins, having lived in Jerusalem since 1968. He has been the Middle East Bureau Chief for the French television chain France 2 since 1990. As of 2005, he has served as vice-president of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents in Jerusalem. He has written several books covering the Middle East peace process. Among them are Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002 and Peace or War, the Secret of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, 1917-1997.

The Lost Years, translated from the original French text by Suzanne Verderber, gives a play-by-play account of the events that unfolded in one of the world’s most tumultuous regions between 2001 and 2006. Enderlin’s gives a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact description of the events, backing them with speeches and statements made by major political players, including Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and President George W. Bush. Enderlin frequently refers to the 2003 Road Map presented to the Israeli government and to the Palestinian authorities by the quartet and to The Geneva Accord. He provides copies of both in the book’s appendix. Enderlin also includes a chronology of the events discussed and thorough notes on the text to further ensure the accuracy of the data he presents.

Readers of Enderlin’s previous texts have praised him for his consistency in accounting for all sides in question. William B. Quant of the University of Virginia notes: “He has no axe to grind, his story is not filled with heroes and villains, and his account is both informed and credible.”...

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If it doesn’t have Arafat as a terrorist villian just what
kind of fairy tale is it?