An honest and troubling snapshot of Israel—both Palestinian and Israeli—that reveals the creeping realization that a two-state solution may no longer be possible."—Kirkus (starred review)

For most of my adult life, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a incomprehensible morass of claim and counter claim, with horrific violence committed by both sides. It seems like an intractable conflict, destined never to be resolved. But I once thought of the Northern Ireland conflict in the same way, and yet there is peace there now. It may be an uneasy peace – especially in the aftermath of the last UK election – but the Good Friday Agreement has allowed a generation to grow up in peace and the longer it holds the more there is to lose by breaking it. So it was in the spirit of tentative optimism that I tackled Nir Baram’s new book, A Land without Borders, my journey around East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Nir Baram is the author of one of the best books I read last year. His novel Good People (2016, Text Publishing, first published in 2010, see my review), was an exploration of the reasons why otherwise good people in totalitarian regimes end up collaborating with evil. At the 2016 Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival Baram said that it is known that 98% of people do collaborate, and fiction is a useful way of exploring the motivations of characters who represent that overwhelming majority. Yet Baram has chosen not to use fiction for his new book, which steers a course through East Jerusalem and the West Bank: he has taken a journalistic approach and allowed the people he interviewed about the conflict to speak for themselves. What is interesting is the way that nearly all of these intractable opponents find ways to justify their motivations, just as Baram’s fictional characters did.

Baram is an Israeli citizen born in Jerusalem to a political family, so he’s not an indifferent spectator. But what he has tried to do is to go behind the separation wall in Jerusalem, and into the contentious Jewish settlements on the West Bank, to listen to opposing points of view. He interviews secular and orthodox believers on both sides, he talks to survivors of the war in Gaza, and he meets Palestinians who have spent half their lives in prison, using it as an opportunity to get an education and remembering it as a time when they actually had more autonomy in their lives. He hears about the privatisation of kibbutzim and how that shapes political attitudes. He sees pride in the accomplishments and courage of the settlers.

He goes into Ramallah where a little boy is gobsmacked by his presence:

On the street outside the building with the broken windows, the group that welcomed us in the morning gathers again. We talk about recent events. A little boy in a red Liverpool T-shirt walks past and hears us talking. He stops. ‘Inte Yahudi?’ he asks with a strange glint in his eyes ‘Are you Jewish?’ he repeats, his expression curious. I nod. He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘He’s Jewish?’ he asks the crowd around us in Arabic. One of the older Palestinians explains: the boy has never seen a Jew before. ‘He’s always hearing about Jews, but you’re the first Jew he’s ever seen in his life.’ (p. 77-8)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/07/19/a-land-without-borders-by-nir-baram-translat... ( )

This is a tricky book to review - partly because anything negative I may feel towards the book is more to do with my ignorance regarding current affairs in Israel rather than specifically relating to the narrative written by the author. The author has worked as a journalist and this comes across strongly. The book is very well written and much of it is on the basis of interviews with ordinary (and not so ordinary) people throughout the country. If you have a passing interest in what is going on in the West Bank and beyond, then this book is well worth a read. Some of the content is interesting, some fascinating and some shocking. I didn't realise 'the divide' crops up and is still being newly imposed throughout the country or that if you live on the wrong side of the wall you may not get your rubbish collected or be able to call an ambulance if you are sick. Equally shocking, when you live in a diverse society, is that in a holy city, some sectors of that society are not allowed to pray in a traditionally holy place. This could be an important book which educates people (like me) more widely about the issues people in Israel face, over and above what is reported on the news. I like travel books and was hooked by the second part of the title 'My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank' but this is much more than a travel book! Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. ( )