cover image THE OTHER SIDE OF DESPAIR: Jews and Arabs in the Promised Land

THE OTHER SIDE OF DESPAIR: Jews and Arabs in the Promised Land

Daniel Gavron, . . Rowman & Littlefield, $65 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-7425-1752-3

In a part of the world where extremists seem to be driving political affairs, veteran Israeli journalist Gavron focuses on more moderate voices in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In doing so, he has created a moving, if somewhat uneven, book. Gavron (Israel After Begin ) presents brief profiles of 15 Israelis and Palestinians: old-time leftists, young fighters, bereaved parents. The result is a humanized portrait of individuals trapped in the "cycle of violence" and unable to see their way out. "It isn't true we want to throw the Jews into the sea," a Fatah militia leader says; a few pages later, an Israeli reserve soldier says that Israel "must get out of the territories." Activists on both sides may protest the implied moral relativism that is part of the book's structure—Gavron is fairly even-handed in apportioning blame for today's ongoing violence—but most readers will appreciate the honest, behind-the-scenes look at how ordinary people suffer from everyday violence and try to make sense of it. In the final two chapters, Gavron shifts gears and resuscitates an old idea: instead of a two-state solution, he proposes creating a single, binational state, shared by the Israelis and Palestinians. The idea has little currency in today's Middle East, but it's a measure of the failure of the two-state solution that, when Gavron points out the extent to which Israel and the territories are already enmeshed, the plan doesn't seem so ridiculous. But it deserves a fuller treatment than Gavron gives it here. B&w photos, maps. (Jan.)