(click for larger photo)
Editorial Review by a Reader from Washington, DC, posted on Tuesday, Sep 30, 2003
More than any other journalist, Amira Hass has intimate knowledge of the
experience of both Israelis and Palestinians. The daughter of concentration
camp survivors, Hass has chosen to live in a Palestinian town to provide a
firsthand description of what daily life is like for the population, in
particular, how the Israeli army behaves and the effects of the army's
presence. Writing for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and other journals,
Hass presents unsettling truths: As the Israeli government measures its
success in Palestinian deaths, many Palestinians can chart their victory
only in terms of the fear they can inspire. "The game is now who is more
afraid, and who is less afraid of dying," Hass writes.
From Publishers Weekly by a Reader from Washington, DC, posted on Tuesday, Sep 30, 2003
Hass, a Jewish Israeli journalist for the newspaper Ha'aretz, has chosen to
live on the West Bank-and her intimate knowledge of the plight of the
Palestinians illuminates this book. Culled from her dispatches during the
past five years, these pieces offer a three-dimensional portrait of the
daily experiences of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The early
pieces, written while serious peace talks were being conducted in the late
'90s, shows the roots of the current violence: most notably, Palestinians'
frustration that the Oslo peace accords hadn't produced many tangible
results. As Hass presciently wrote: "The distance from here to private and
collective acts of despair is not great." As the book wends its way through
the outbreak of violence in September 2000, that despair is increasingly on
display. Her pieces illustrate how Palestinian frustration-over detentions,
house demolitions, a life so riddled with restrictions that "hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians are criminals or potential criminals"-erupted into
suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism. But what distinguishes this
book is its emphasis on the personal-and how the conflict has created a
logic that has driven both sides to violence. In an in-depth interview, an
Israeli sharpshooter discusses the rules of when to open fire ("Every day,
the regulations... change"). Members of Palestinian society discuss the
difficulty of keeping children healthy and educated under the pressures of
violence and occupation. Members of Palestinian resisteance groups discuss
what drove them to their acts and the internal rivalries among competing
factions. Anyone who wants an in-depth, humanizing portrait of the
Palestinians should look no further.
dcpalestine.org