• DOI:10.1017/S0041977X00008326
• Corpus ID: 162270467

Valerie J. Roebuck: The circle of stars: an introduction to Indian astrology. 178 pp. Shaftesbury, Dorset and Rockport, Mass.: Element Books Ltd., 1992. £8.99.

@article{Werner1993ValerieJR,
  title={Valerie J. Roebuck: The circle of stars: an introduction to Indian astrology. 178 pp. Shaftesbury, Dorset and Rockport, Mass.: Element Books Ltd., 1992. £8.99.},
  author={K. L. Werner},
  journal={Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies},
  year={1993},
  volume={56},
  pages={645 - 646}
}

• K. Werner
• Published 1 October 1993
• Political Science
• Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

other matter. Of this collection of his essays, written between 1970 and 1991, only the introduction has not been published before. The collection includes a long essay on the history of the Mandate and a group concerned with the so-called peace process, beginning with ch. ii., the influential paper entitled ' Thinking the unthinkable', which was first published in Foreign Affairs in 1978 and was the first full Palestinian discussion of the option of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 frontiers. Of course, the possibility was unthinkable only to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the government of Israel—everyone else had thought it many times—and this circumstance does point to one of the limitations of these essays, namely, that they have to be seen not so jnuch as academic contributions (although in that regard they are respectable enough) but rather as part of a process of political education, partly of Palestinians but also of many others concerned with the dispute about Palestine, notably Americans. Many of the essays are concerned with the tactical situation of the Palestinian dispute at the particular time at which the essays were written and some of the details are now of mainly historical interest. But running through the essays are some recurrent themes. In his foreword, the late Albert Hourani points to one of these themes, namely, the assertion that the Palestinians exist and (more doubtfully) have always existed and that they could not (or should not) simply be represented as an interchangeable component of a group known as Arabs. Another is the argument that a Palestinian state could not be a security risk to Israel, a contention intended to destroy one of the most prominent Israeli arguments and one which has found much favour in the United States. A third is a persistent appeal to fairness and justice—there is an interesting collection of information about Israeli and Palestinian casualties during the period since 1967 (ch. 50). Perhaps, after all, the essays are worth reading twice, in order to separate the wood from the trees.