The Missing Peace period of the British Mandate and continues through the 1980s, giving a brief history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and its roots. His own involvement begins in the run-up to the Gulf War and the 1991 Madrid Conference. The book then covers the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, as well as the emergence of the 1993 Oslo Accords. Ross then moves on to the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, the 1995 Interim Agreement, and the November 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. He proceeds to the diplomatic fallout from the assassination to the election of Benjamin
Deputy Prime Minister of Australia accepted the view put to him by McEwen that to commission a Liberal temporarily as Prime Minister would give that person an unfair advantage in the forthcoming party room ballot for the permanent leader. McEwen's appointment was in keeping with the previous occasion when the main non-Labor party was without a leader; Earle Page of the Country Party was interim Prime Minister between 7 and 26 April 1939—the period between Joseph Lyons' sudden death and the United Australia Party naming Robert Menzies his successor. Since 1968 only two Deputy Prime Ministers have gone on to become Prime Minister: Paul Keating