Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land

by Amira Hass

Book Overview

The writings of an Israeli journalist who has chosen to live in a Palestinian town in order to provide a firsthand description of what daily life is like for the population.

The only Israelis this generation of Palestinians know are soldiers and settlers. For them, Israel is no more than a subsidiary of an army that knows no limits and settlements that know no borders. Recipient of the UNESCO Guillermo Camo World Press Freedom Prize...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1584350199
• ISBN13: 9781584350194
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Semiotext(e)
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.4" x 6.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

State of siege . . .

No matter where your loyalties lie in the Israel-Palestine conflict, this book will almost surely make you angry. It is a selection 37 articles and op-ed columns written by an Israeli journalist who was during 1997-2002 chief West Bank and Gaza correspondent for one of her country's leading dailies, Ha'aretz. Her observations of life in the occupied territories cover the years following the Oslo accords and the first two years of the second Intifada. As investigative reporting, her stories focus - sometimes in stomach-churning detail - on the collapse of law and order under the boot heel of Israeli security forces, the negligence and corruption of the Palestinian authority under Yasser Arafat, and finally the obsession for revenge among armed resistance fighters, young, undisciplined, and beyond the reach of reason. While many may justify the heavy-handed actions taken against Palestinians, and carried out by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), Hass points out over and over the devastating impact on noncombatants - the bulldozing of homes and businesses, the roadblocks, the building of Israeli settlements and the bypass roads for the exclusive use of the settlers, the confiscation of property, the poverty and unemployment, the curfews, the unending disruption of everyday life, the tanks and helicopters, the observation towers, and the "collateral damage" of unarmed civilians wounded and killed. In one account, a contingent of IDF soldiers invades the apartment of a family to use their home as an observation post for days. In another, the Palestinian Ministry of Culture is taken over by IDF troops for a month, leaving behind not just destruction of its contents but a wasteland of human excrement, urine, and rotting food. A chilling interview with a young IDF sniper reveals the unofficial policy of shooting to kill children as young as 12. While none of this justifies a single suicide bomber, it goes a long way to account for the rage, humiliation, and despair of a people with little or no right to self-determination in their own land. Not objective, Hass admits, but a fair appraisal of Israeli policies that she regards as totally counter-productive.

Insightful and Humane Reporting

Amira Hass is a wonderfully perceptive and deeply humane reporter. This book is a collection of her reports from the Occupied Territories, in which we meet individuals who daily experience the humiliations, abuse, violence, frustrations and injustices of living under conditions in which every aspect of their lives is controlled by an occupying military force, while also having to deal with the corruption and injustices of their own civil authorities. Ms Hass spares neither the IDF nor the Palestinian Authority nor the radicals of both sides from criticism, while always revealing the cost of occupation: the lives and dreams of ordinary people shattered, the suffering, the struggles, the anger and yet the human spirit that shows through, hoping and yearning for justice and peace. I was so moved by this book that I bought several copies for friends and asked them to pass them on to their friends after reading it.

Can this be true?

As an individual who has taken a life-long interest in Israel and the Zionist movement, I was shocked by this book because it has forced me to realize that many of my firmly held beliefs about Israel and Zionism were mistaken. Specifically this book shows that the Israeli government is in many respects guilty of mistreating its Arab citizens, and in doing so creating a type of hopelessness and despair, which explains their suicide attacks on Israel. At the same time the book explains that the Palestine Authority itself is riddled with corruption, and therefore equally unable to satisfy the hopes of its own citizens. This is an important book which should be widely read.