Last year saw the publication of two memoirs by former Israeli prime ministers: My Country, My Life (in English), by Ehud Barak, and In the First Person (in Hebrew), by Ehud Olmert. To the Israeli public, both Ehuds are remembered as failures. Besides Barak’s withdrawal from Lebanon, there was his failed peace bid—rejected by Yasir Arafat—followed by the second intifada, which drove him from office and from which the Labor party never recovered. Olmert’s record includes an even more generous failed peace bid—rejected by Mahmoud Abbas—and his poor conduct of the Lebanon war, which drove him from office and from which his now-defunct Kadimah party never recovered. To top it off, he was later convicted of corruption charges and spent time in jail.

Benjamin Kerstein reviews both books:

While sometimes critical of [the author’s] opponents, Barak’s My Country, My Life is remarkably generous and high-spirited, with little trace of remonstration or anger.

[Nonetheless], on the question of Israel-Palestinian peace, one must admit that Barak’s failure was total. And it is to his credit that he makes no attempt to evade this fact. [Moreover], he reveals . . . that extensive intelligence even before the Camp David negotiations showed that the Palestinians were preparing for war. . . . The terror wave, in other words, took Israel by surprise, but not Barak and his government. Here one must ask: why did Barak fail to take the proper precautions? . . . Why did he leave Israel open to such a devastating assault?

While Olmert’s failures may have left behind a smaller body count, he is, in Kerstein’s evaluation, far less willing to acknowledge it:

In the First Person is, one regrets to say, a laborious read: badly written, arrogant, ill-structured, laden with self-pity, self-evidently dishonest, and unremittingly bitter.

Olmert . . . spends dozens of pages describing the intricate negotiations [with the Palestinians], his personal cultivation of Mahmoud Abbas, and most of all the far-reaching concessions he was prepared to make to reach peace. It is clear that he is . . . proud of his efforts. But in retrospect, they seem both quixotic and ill-conceived from the start.

[The] concessions Olmert was prepared to make, like those of Barak, now seem to be at best reckless and at worst disastrous. . . . Olmert’s concessionary attitude seems to have bordered on obsession. On one occasion the Palestinian president, while being hosted for a dinner at the prime minister’s residence, asked Olmert for the release of 500 prisoners. Olmert said no: he would be happy to release 900. Unlike Barak, Olmert is unable to entertain the possibility that for Abbas, . . . peace may simply be undesirable.

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.