The Other Side of Despair: Jews and Arabs in the Promised Land

Daniel Gavron is a veteran reporter in Israel who has a great knowledge of the local scene. This book is an effort at finding a solution to the Arab- Israeli conflict, or as Gavron prefers to define and confine it here, the conflict of two peoples over one land. Gavron makes an effort to grope toward a solution by sympathetically interviewing people from both sides, people who seem closest to the idea of accomodation and peace. Gavron's fundamental idea is that the basic plan for solution of the 'peace camp' has been mistaken. He believes that it is impossible given the present mix- up of populations- over two hundred thousand Jews within ' the West Bank' and over a million Arabs within Israel to divide the land. He advocates instead one unified state that would presently have a small Jewish majority. Gavron has good - intentions and has a real capacity to listen to others and hear their stories. However his whole enterprise is undermined by the false symmetry he works to apply between the traditional Jewish and traditional Arab stances to the problems. i.e. the great majority of Jews have always sought a peaceful answer, and have made generous offers to that effect throughout the course of the conflict while the Arabs have said ' leh' repeatedly and continue to do so. Gavron also does a serious injustice to the Jewish citizens of Judaea and Samaria in indicting them as principal cause of the absence of peace. He makes a very serious moral error in not seeing that there is a world of difference between the deliberate murders of civilians the Palestinian Arabs have been engaged in, and the civilian casualties inadvertently caused by Israeli preventitive acts against terror. Aside from the fundamental misreading of the conflict in this sense Gavron also fails to flesh out his ' one- state - plan'. There is of course no sign whatsoever that the Arabs would agree to such a plan. And there is too no reason the Jews should accept a plan which would mean that in a fairly short number of years the Jewish state would be transformed into an Arab- majority one. For anyone who cares for the historical struggle of the Jewish people to return to their land and establish a state of their own this book's program is a non- starter.

As a fresh perspective on the world's most intractible (and dangerous) conflict, this book has to be worth more than 3 stars so I'm giving it 5 (unread - but see Arnold Wesker's review in the Guardian Online) - but why has no-one else reviewed this? Do those spectators most involved in the conflict, Jewish or Moslem, want to see it resolved - or perpetuated?