Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Hussein Agha
Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Hussein Agha
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Tomorrow Is Yesterday
Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine

Author: Hussein Agha, Robert Malley

Narrator: Imani Jade Powers

Unabridged: 10 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/16/2025

Synopsis

Two insiders explain why the Israeli–Palestinian peace process failed, and anticipate what lies ahead.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas fighters killed more than eleven hundred Israelis and took more than two hundred hostages, prompting an Israeli response that has in turn taken tens of thousands of lives and devastated the Gaza Strip. Why did this happen, and can anything be done to grant peace and justice to Israelis and Palestinians alike?

In Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the analyst Hussein Agha and the diplomat Robert Malley offer a personal and bracing perspective on how the hopes of the Oslo Peace Process became the horrors of the present. Drawing on their experience advising the Palestinian leadership (Arafat and Abbas) and US presidents (Clinton, Obama, and Biden) and their participation in secret talks over decades, Agha and Malley offer candid portraits of leading figures and an interpretation of the conflict that exposes the delusions of all sides. They stress that the two-state solution became a global goal only when it was no longer viable; that U.S. officials preferred technical schemes to a frank reckoning with the past; that Hamas’s onslaught and Israel’s war of destruction were not historical exceptions but historical reenactments; and that the gaps separating Israelis and Palestinians have less to do with territorial allocation than with history and emotions.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About Hussein Agha

Hussein Agha has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and negotiations for more than half a century. He was a senior associate fellow at Chatham House and, until 2023, had been a senior associate member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford for over 25 years. He has co-authored books on Syria, Iran, Palestinian national security, and Track-II diplomacy with A. S. Khalidi. He is the editor of Mideast Mirror.

About Robert Malley

Robert Malley has served in senior Middle East positions in the administrations of PresidentsClinton, Obama, and Biden. He was President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. He isthe author of The Call from Algeria and currently is Senior Fellow and Lecturer at YaleUniversity’s Jackson School.

About Imani Jade Powers

Imani is an actor and screenwriter who has appeared on and off Broadway, and has narrated about 120 audiobooks of all genres, mostly in the YA, fantasy/sci-fi, mystery, and non-fiction genres. She speaks French, has great facility with accents (specifically regional UK accents) as she's lived in Paris, London, and New York, and is constantly working on mastering new dialects. Her narration style is conversational, intimate, and warm and she’s been the recipient of an Audie and three Earphones Awards. She's been an avid reader since her childhood, so to get to marry her two loves of performing and reading in narration is a dream!

Reviews

Goodreads review by Venneh on July 01, 2025

This may have suffered from reading it so closely to a book that acknowledges the Palestinian struggle, but this delves (to a point) to the US mediated peace process between Israel and Palestine over the last thirty years or so, given that our two authors were intimately involved, and why they faile......more

Goodreads review by Milena on September 09, 2025

I just finished reading “Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine” by Robert Malley and Hussein Agha. It is a book that I wish I had had at my desk as a young reporter covering the Middle East. For anyone watching the news from Israel and Palestine and wonderin......more

Goodreads review by Leah on July 02, 2025

As someone who has traveled to Israel and learned firsthand about the constant conflict and felt passionate about seeking peace and fair resolution, this book provided some interesting insights to some historical milestones and events. The flow of the book was challenging and less than engaging to w......more

Quotes

Praise for Tomorrow Is Yesterday

“Beautifully written . . . [Agha and Malley are] two people who have genuinely distinct perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and who have been in the room . . . A great book." —Chris Hayes (from "The Ezra Klein Show"

“Tomorrow Is Yesterday performs the vital service of encompassing competing narratives, cutting through lies, and telling the full story of how and why efforts to achieve a two-state solution repeatedly failed. This is an honest, eloquent, courageous, and deeply personal blend of history and memoir written by two people who have been at the center of the politics of Israel–Palestine for decades, and still insist upon a future that must be better than the excruciatingly painful present.” —Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security advisor and author of After the Fall: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the World We’ve Made

“The Middle East is the birthplace of the most influential religious traditions, and its inability to find peace constantly reignites the bitter resentments that plague our world. With their powerful narrative and elegant prose, the authors explain very convincingly why neither the local protagonists nor the foreign mediators have been able to put an end to the ordeal—and why tomorrow doesn’t look more promising than yesterday.” —Amin Maalouf, perpetual secretary of the Académie Française and author of Origins and The Crusades Through Arab Eyes

“Fascinating and essential reading for anyone interested in the Israel–Palestine conflict and peace process, this bleak yet bracing, vivid, and acute work, part analysis, part memoir, part history, by two veteran negotiators, one Palestinian, one American, is one of the best I’ve read on the Middle East peace process and the October 7 wars. I read it in one sitting.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography

“An exceptional book in the genre, Tomorrow Is Yesterday offers a brilliant and uniquely perceptive interpretation of what may be the most resilient, intricate, and multifaceted conflict of modern times. Combining the competencies of the historian and the essayist, even the dramatist, with the perspective of the insider, the authors lead us from the prehistory of the “peace process” and its presumed highest moments to its deceptions, mis-encounters, and tragic decline into oblivion. An unorthodox interpretation of the Israel–Hamas War, brilliantly woven into the book, makes it even more urgently relevant reading. Though it can be read as an obituary for the two-state solution, this is not a nihilistic treatise. The future scenarios the authors discuss could make the future somewhat brighter than “yesterday.” —Shlomo Ben-Ami, former foreign minister of Israel and author of Prophets Without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution

“This must-read book is the work of two experienced deep thinkers who are strong believers in peace. True to the character of its authors in its thoughtfulness, creativity, and constructive candor, it brings to life the pain of the Israeli–Palestinian tragedies and offers important insights into the politics and personalities of Middle Eastern peacemaking. It is highly recommended for all believers in the greater good.” —Nabil Fahmy, former foreign minister of Egypt

Awards

  • New Yorker Best Books of the Year
  • NPR Best Book of the Year
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