This Burning Land (ebook)

Argumento de This Burning Land (ebook)

No other conflict in the world has dragged on longer, engendered more bitterness or defied more attempts at resolution than the battle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Over the past decade, Greg Myre covered this conflict for the New York Times, and his wife Jennifer Griffin covered it for Fox News, and they arrived at the same surprising conclusion: the conflict cannot be solved anytime soon.

In This Burning Land, they address a fundamental paradox. Israel is stronger than it has been at any time in its history; it has a vibrant society, a thriving economy, and a powerful military that suppressed the most recent Palestinian uprising. Yet, it cannot find a way to end the feud with the Palestinians. In turn, the entire world supports the Palestinian goal of statehood, and yet no such state is likely to emerge any time soon.

Arriving in Jerusalem shortly before the onset of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, Myre and Griffin soon found themselves reporting not on a new peace deal, but on the worst violence in the long history of this feud. They show how the conflict has changed dramatically in recent years as new physical and psychological barriers have gone up between the two sides.

The couple takes us to the heart of the conflict, where few writers have gone before. They delve into the thinking that motivates some Palestinians to be suicide bombers and other Palestinians to work as informants for Israel's security forces. Myre and Griffin travel to isolated West Bank outposts where Israeli settlers vow never to relinquish the land, and accompany Israeli troops as they stage midnight raids in militant strongholds.

Having also spent two decades chasing wars across Africa, Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East, the authors are students of modern, asymmetrical warfare that has become the norm in today's conflicts. They draw on this experience to offer lessons crucial to understanding the Israeli-Palestinian fighting, and other wars as well.

To cite a few:

• Clear, decisive military victories belong to an earlier era, yet elements on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have a stake in keeping the conflict going rather than negotiating a solution.

• Controlling the public relations battle is often as important as the actual fighting, and the competing Israeli and Palestinian narratives continue to diverge in societies that are ever more segregated from one another.

• Actions that seem completely irrational to outsiders often make perfect sense to the participants. Extremism can become a virtue; moderation a vice. Despite the heavy suffering on both sides, many Israelis and Palestinians are prepared to make continued sacrifices in the belief they will ultimately triumph.

Myre and Griffin demonstrate an anthropologist's feel for the hidden sides of Palestinian and Israeli culture, a historian's understanding of the larger forces at work, and a novelist's ear for telling the stories that bring it all together. The broader lessons in This Burning Land will help inform the debate in the Middle East for years to come.0Authors? Note.

Chronology.

Introduction.

1. ?Go to the Temple Mount?.

2. Preparing for War.

3. There Will Be a Bomb.

4. ?Hamas Doesn?t Need to Recruit?.

5. The Chase.

6. The Invisible Hand.

7. Double Jeopardy.

8. Versions of the Truth.

9. A Battle in Jenin.

10. ?We?ll Take the Ambulance, It?s Free?.

11. Soldiers to the Left of Us, Militants to the Right.

12. The First Man at the Scene.

13. Men of Goodwill.

14. A Revolution or a State: What Do the Palestinians Want?

15. Arafat?s Final Days.

16. After Arafat.

17. Unintended Consequences.

18. Hamas Rising.

19. ?We Failed Entirely?.

20. Soul Searching.

21. The New Jerusalem.

22. The Big Squeeze.

23. The Fence in Johnny Atik?s Backyard.

24. Americans in the Holy Land.

25. Follow the Money.

26. Misery by the Sea.

27. Into the Abyss.

28. Alone on a Hill.

29. The Traitor.

30. Grapes of Wrath.

31. Rainbow of Rockets.

32. What to Do When Friends Are Kidnapped.

33. Is There a Solution?

Afterword.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Index.