BOOKPATHS

Israel; Palestine

Kai Bird talks about his latest book, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate, a description of  “his experience ‘coming of age between the Arabs and Israelis.’”

‘I don't think it's rocket science to understand what should happen and what eventually will happen between the Palestinians and the Israelis,’ he says. ‘It's a very small place ... Eventually these two people are going to have to live with each other.’ – from “Kai Bird’s Gate: One Foot in Israel, One in Palestine,” NPR Website

Palestine; Israel; Gaza

Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh talks with Morning Edition’s Ari Shapiro about the fighting in Gaza.

Even so, what we saw in Gaza must make us in fact jump forward now as quickly as we could in order to arrive at the final peace agreement… and if we can’t make use of this horror that we witnessed in Gaza to make us go ahead and do that than that’s it. I think we’re just going to enter into a phase of history which is going to be dreary for both sides, both peoples, and it’s not going to get any better as time goes on. – Sari Nusseibeh, NPR

Palestine; Israel; Gaza

Novelist Amos Oz talks with Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep about the conflict in Gaza.

In the long term the only thing that will work for Israel and for the Palestinians is the unavoidable, one and only, political solution which is a two state solution. – Amos Oz, NPR

Palestine

Abby Aguirre talks with Raja Shehadeh, whose Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape won this year’s Orwell Prize.

“Of course, it is difficult not to be restricted by time and place in the occupied territories, where movement is everyday more limited by a growing number of Israeli-built fences, walls, barriers, checkpoints, settlements and the separate roads constructed to link them. But Mr. Shehadeh — a lawyer and founder of Al Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, who apart from a sojourn in London for law school has lived his entire life in Ramallah — still tries.” – from “Roaming Freely in a Land of Restraints,” by Abby Aguirre, The New York Times

Neblus, Palestine

Matt Beynon Rees talks about his choice of “the market, or casbah, in the 2,000-year-old Palestinian city of Nablus” as the setting for his new book, The Samaritan’s Secret.

"‘To me, the casbah is the perfect setting for a mystery novel, because it is a mysterious place,’ says Rees. ‘The roots of this go back through the Turkish period to the Ayyubids and right way to the Romans.’" – from “Mystery and Decay in an Ancient, Occupied City,” by Eric Westervelt, NPR’s Morning Edition

Palestine

Ethan Bronner remembers Mahmoud Darwish.

"Mahmoud Darwish, whose searing lyrics on Palestinian exile and tender verse on the human condition led him to be widely viewed as the pre-eminent man of Palestinian letters as well as one of the greatest contemporary Arab poets, died Saturday night in Houston after complications from heart surgery. He was 67." – “Mahmoud Darwish, Leading Palestinian Poet, is Dead at 67,” by Ethan Bronner, The New York Times

Palestine; Israel

Scott Thill interviews Joe Sacco, “a cartoonist who is more often recognized as a journalist” and whose American Book Award-winning collection, Palestine, is “now receiving the deluxe-reissue treatment from comics powerhouse Fantagraphics.”

“Merit? Palestine bleeds gravitas, even as it is populated by avatars leaning closer to caricature than photo-realism. And it's not a polemic, which is why it has stuck around so long and blown down so many doors. Sacco analyzes the Israelis and the Palestinians on equal time, giving their intractable, millennia-old tribal conflict the type of complexity you rarely experience elsewhere.” – from "Joe Sacco on Comics, the Arabs and the Jews,” by Scott Thill, LA Weekly

West Bank, Palestine and Israel

NPR's Terry Gross interviews Philip C. Winslow whose new book, Victory for Use is to See you Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis, “details the time he spent working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the West Bank.”

Palestine

Ian Black talks with Palestinian lawyer Rajah Shehadeh whose “memoirs lament the losses caused as Israeli settlements encroach.”

“’It was as though the tectonic movements that had occurred over thousands of years were now happening in a matter of months, entirely redrawing the map,' Shehadeh writes. 'The Palestine I knew, the land I thought of as mine, was quickly being transformed before my eyes.’” – from “Lost Landscapes”, by Ian Black, The Guardian