The People on the Street

The times and events Grant describes in this excellent and often amusing book seem to me to be a million years ago. Israeli history, in my view has collapsed hundreds of years into just a few, and the last few years are no exception. From beginnings in the 1950s as agricultural producer of oranges and vegetables, through an industrial revolution that lasted only maybe a decade, Israel emerged as a high-tech powerhouse. Grant's descriptions of the 2003-2004 era make me think the same compression of time occurs there politically. Her portrayal of the removal of the Gaza settlers and her individual interviews with them are vivid. Yet the return of land to the Palestinians now seems so much more remote than a few years ago. Its consequences at the time she wrote were so unknowable: as the future always is. But now we do know, and this makes the events she describes seem beyond remote. Grant makes readers grasp the impasse over how to divide a contested and very small area between two sets of demands from two peoples. Today, the quest for justice and fairness that seems so unreachable seems unchanged from the time just a few years ago -- seeming so far in the past. Her many anecdotes about the Israelis and Palestinians she met brought the conflict to life. The future is as unknowable as ever, no matter how much one tries to grasp the present.