Rating: 
Summary: About People¿s Feelings--Not About Politics or Agreements
Review: This book is more important today than when it was orginally written, in 1988. It contains a new afterward by the author. The author, a journalist, gives his impressions, and relates various converstaions, as he travels all over the West Bank, and through parts of both Israel and Palestine. He presents views from both sides of the issue very well. The book is not about politics, or various peace agreements. It is about individual people's feelings. I have read many books on this topic, and this is one of the BEST. I feel that I understand MUCH better why all the peace agreements come to nothing. To sum it up in a nutshell, the extremists on both sides will EACH never accept less than ALL of the land-that is why nothing works.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading
Review: This is a good book providing good insight into the human dimension of the conflict. Well worth reading. I found two chapters particularly striking. First one is about a Palestinian village divided in two after a Jordanian and Israeli border agreement, and how members of the same family could grow differing identities (and even come to be not so fond of each other) due to such cruel separation for years. Second one is about a terrorist's father. Grossman gives this poor man's account as he told him, without adding his own commentary. Briefly, the son, who was grown up and living in another town away from the father's home, got involved in a terrorist act that took innocent Israeli lives. The father was subsequently picked up from work by the Israeli authorities, and pressured to disclose whereabouts of his son, which he maintained he didn't know (of the son's whereabouts and his alleged terrorist act). Torture and all sorts of humiliation were used, including threats of rape of his wife and daughters. His house was bulldozed to ground on fifteen minute's notice. He lost his work permit, and reduced to wander as a beggar from one village to another, avoiding his own out of shame. He and his family ended up living in one bedroom at a neighbor's house, without kitchen or bathroom. The son was found and killed eventually without the help of any of this effort on the father. After telling this story, Grossman says something like (paraphrasing), "of course, one's heart doesn't go out to this man's suffering and pain" vis-a-vis, I guess, the pain suffered by the Israeli victims of the son's act. And he continues (still paraphrasing), "but I guess, it is such instances where we have to be more rational and measured." Well, maybe this was all my misreading Grossman, but why wouldn't one's heart go out to this man? Mine did. And I thought modern states and tribes would have to differ a bit in such law enforcement and crime investigation matters. What is new about this? Maybe this (i.e., Grossman's slip, as I see it) too is an indication of how tough and convoluted the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has become. Actually, throughout the book, Grossman seems to respect and listen more to those Palestinians who manage to maintain their honor and dignity no matter what, and who therefore arouse curiosity and would impress anyone. Those who are truly wretched seem to barely touch him, if they do at all. I guess such condition of theirs is their own fault, or their parents' or sons' and daughters'. In any event, the book is free from preaching; it's not like the author's value judgments will get in the way of your reading. By all accounts, Grossman did a commendable job, and my little critique is, well, mine only.
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