Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Philosophy professor and political leader Nusseibeh, as the Oxford and Harvard-educated descendant of an ancient and influential Jerusalem family, draws on deep roots in his account of a dramatically displaced life. That's one reason why, despite his relative privilege, his autobiography dovetails persuasively with the larger story of Palestinian dispossession and struggle in the 20th century. Nusseibeh, as a former PLO representative, also has the vantage of a political insider. Equally instructive are his differences from his fellow Palestinians, many of whom he encountered as his students in the classrooms and cafes at Birzeit University in the West Bank, and later as president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem. These interactions, among others, give shape to the story of this curious but reticent loner's immersion into national politics, which is overshadowed by the memory of his father (a fiercely independent former Jordanian minister and governor of Jerusalem). In relating the Palestinian perspective on the expulsions, expropriations and deprivations during and after the wars of 1948, 1967 and beyond, Nusseibeh convincingly interweaves personal experience and tectonic historical shifts, while charting his own political evolution and eventual and resolute insistence on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. (Apr.)
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From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Robert Malley

In 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising and amid harsh Israeli military offensives, two prominent individuals unveiled a courageous peace plan. The Israeli author was Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet, his country's internal security agency. Plunging headfirst into the public debate was, for him, a relatively novel exercise.

Not so for his Palestinian partner. Sari Nusseibeh, the author of the captivating Once Upon a Country, is a repeat offender. This Oxford-trained philosopher was an unlikely recruit to politics, which probably explains why he practices such an unlikely brand of it. Born into an illustrious Palestinian family, he sought early on to escape the life of influence and authority for which he appeared to be destined. He ended up deeply involved in aspects of Israeli-Palestinian relations and dealt with virtually every major Palestinian leader. But philosophy was his true calling, and, even as the draw of politics ultimately proved too hard to resist, he always had intellectual pursuits on which to fall back. And so he maintained a distant, insouciant relationship to the perks and privileges of power as well as an affectionate, abiding one to controversy. It shows.

Nusseibeh, now the president of al-Quds University in Jerusalem, was a believer in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue long before it was in favor, an advocate of nonviolence when other Palestinians were glorifying suicide bombers, an embodiment of secularism as the Islamist Hamas movement was conquering new ground in Palestinian politics. In the late 1960s, when so many of his compatriots still dreamed of ridding the land of those it considered intruders, he argued for coexistence among Arabs and Jews in a secular, binational state. When he later came around to the idea of a two-state solution, with Israel living in peace alongside Palestine, many Palestinians were clamoring for a single state. Even now, one senses that his commitment to splitting the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean may not be everlasting. If a two-state solution is not reached soon, he writes, Palestinians will fight for "one man, one vote" in a unified Arab-Israeli state -- a comment one can take as warning or wish. Not a few Palestinians consider his moderation traitorous; a respectable number of Israelis consider it their most potent threat.

Nusseibeh's new memoir, Once Upon a Country, is a remarkable chronicle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seen through this improbable pair of eyes. His Palestinian colleagues come in for abundant criticism -- for negotiating without a clear vision or sufficient expert knowledge and, above all, for becoming intoxicated with their own deadly delusions about violence. Nusseibeh's message is clear: that the two sides are divided by ignorance, not malice; that the burden is on the Palestinians to win over their Israeli counterparts; that this can be done only through dialogue and nonviolent resistance; that Palestinians should not insist on the right of their refugees to return to what is now Israel proper; that Palestinian negotiators need not be intransigent to be tough and need not surrender their principles to reach a deal with Israel.

Nusseibeh's eloquent and compassionate book no doubt will stir yet another round of polemics; his actions usually do. Like Nusseibeh, most Palestinians have concluded that the ways of the past need rethinking. A decade of peace-processing, they feel, has led to more misery and less security without getting them any closer to their goals of sovereignty and independence. Unlike Nusseibeh, however, many Palestinians are not at all convinced that the answer is more dialogue and less violence, let alone conceding up front on the refugees' right of return. These are familiar Palestinian dilemmas: If you regularize discussions with Israelis, do you render routine the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip? If you abandon armed struggle, do you retain leverage over a militarily superior opponent? If you compromise in advance, do you weaken your hand?

The humane worldview of Once Upon a Country is one answer to this Palestinian conundrum. Hamas is another, and Nusseibeh -- who quickly dismisses the radical Islamists as sloganeering, inauthentic fanatics -- does not quite do it justice. To be sure, as he writes, Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 discredited the concept of land-for-peace negotiations and so gave a boost to the Islamists, who crowed that their bombs and rockets had driven Israel out. But the roots of their January 2006 election victory run far deeper. Hamas is a response to the Palestinians' material and psychological condition, a reaction to years of lost dignity, an affirmation (however troubling) of a yearning for self-respect.

A Hamas leader recently explained to me that dealing with Israel required retaining Palestinian leverage and displaying patience. Palestinians who had opted for the route of compromise "cannot prevail, because they have defeat in their hearts." He was not referring to Nusseibeh specifically, but one gets the point. Once Upon a Country is a magnificent study of hope under siege. Nusseibeh offers a possible means of escape. Far more will be needed to convince his fellow Palestinians it is the best one.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (March 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374299501
• ISBN-13: 978-0374299507
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #296,994 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Neither black nor white . . ., May 19, 2007

By	Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Written by Palestinian peace activist Sari Nusseibeh, this book is an immensely readable personal and political memoir - an account of a life lived in a "broken and violated land." Descendant of a patrician family in Jerusalem, tracing its history back to the seventh century, the author was educated in England and, following in his father's footsteps, devoted his years to advocating reason and nonviolence in the resolution of Arab-Israeli conflicts. A student and later a professor of philosophy, he first believed that Arabs and Israelis could live together as citizens of a single nation. Then, after the 1967 war, he came to the conclusion that a two-nation solution was in the best interests of both peoples.

Over the years, in his account, he has watched both of those objectives resisted and undermined by the objectives of those with political power - the Israelis through a campaign of seizing territory in the West Bank for Jewish settlements, and the PLO by demanding the return of all occupied lands. Meanwhile, moderates such as himself are cast as "dangerous," and his efforts at building bridges between Arabs and Jews are often frustrated. When the intifada of the 1980s flares up, Nusseibeh plays a strategic role in secretly writing and publishing materials that provide it with a voice and direction, channeling the energy of street demonstrations away from violence. And he is instrumental in building a nation-building organization to set the stage for Arafat's return from exile in Tunis to govern the West Bank and Gaza. At the same time, he is reaching out to peace activists among Israelis, even while the second intifada surges to life and Arab extremists begin to have a deadly impact with suicide bombs.

The entire story - which brings us to the present with the building of Sharon's walls and the victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections - is a continuing account of hopes raised and then crushed. While it can be read as an indictment of Israeli policies against the Palestinians, it portrays the PLO as ridden with corruption and the Islamist Hamas organization as blindly and dangerously irrational. Moved deeply by visions of Jeffersonian democracy, Nusseibeh is confronted over and again with the extreme difficulty of seeing reason prevail in the service of government, diplomacy, and building social institutions. What he falls back on at the end is a belief that the fundamental decency of humans - as reflected in sacred scriptures - will eventually lead people to see the folly of their ways. This is a fine book for portraying a moderate and measured history of the Arab-Israeli conflict from 1948 to the present. Readers may also enjoy Jeffrey Goldberg's "Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide."

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Once Upon a Peace Maker!, August 7, 2007

By	AA "ashour001" (Newton, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This is a truly important book for anyone wishing to understand fully the Arab / Palestinian - Israeli conflict. It sheds tremendous light on very important events, thus far not fully presented from the Palestinian side, especially that of the non rejectionist Palestinian camp. Sari Nusseibeh is a truly visionary man with tremendous courage and is a highly gifted activist and indeed very clever politician despite his own denials.

I have thoroughly enjoyed, and was often moved by, the first half of the book which dealt with the history of Nusseibeh's family and contained his even handed description of the events leading to 1948 and all the way through the 1967 war and his subsequent return to live in Palestine with his British wife. Nusseibeh's portrayal of the lives of the Palestinians between the wars of 1948 and 1967 was very helpful.

In the second half of the book Nusseibeh hammers in, over and over again, on the tacit unspoken alliance of the extremists on both sides and shows how Israel supported the creation of Hamas as a counter weight to the Fateh and PLO. He coherently and very persuasively presents the thought process that he went through to move from the one state solution to the two state solution and demonstrates very effectively the threats that prolonging the conflict would cause to it.

Nusseibeh was often right at the center of things or at least presents himself as such; we see him as a leading figure in standing up to the Israelis and to the Islamists, we see him as the key engine behind the first intefada, or uprising, and we see him winning the respect and approval of Yasir Arafat. In this, second, half, this book moves from being a truly exceptional account of the personal and family history more into an aggrandizing politician's memoir. This should not reduce nor detract from the tremendous personal sacrifice and commitment Nusseibeh made to his cause.

I have heard of the peace work of Dr. Nusseibeh and read some of his articles and interview for some years and while I admire him more than any other Palestinian public figure, this book troubled me in a number of ways. Unlike the other three Palestinian memoirs, originally written in English, that I have read (Gada Karami, Fay Kenfani & Edward Said) Nusseibeh sought to justify every action he has ever taken, to defend his various historic positions and to settle the scores with those of differing views. Most unlike the other three biographies, the book contained virtually no retrospective sole searching whatsoever and important topics such as his obvious passion and skill for politics vs. his academic eccentric persona were packaged for the purpose rather than thought through. Nusseibeh repeatedly simply presented himself as the reluctant professor, yet left us wondering about his very savvy organizational, political and survival skills. He seemed to know exactly how to deal with wily old Arafat, Hamas, the Israeli intelligence and the various factions of the PLO yet retain the freedom to advance his own agenda as well as build important relationships with Israelis.

The tremendous heights, in which, Nusseibeh holds his father, a former Governor of Jerusalem, ambassador and member of cabinet gives the feeling of an immature biography lacking in the distance to be objective. Indeed the first half of the book contains rework of the some of the father's own unpublished memoirs. Obvious points such as the father's commitment to an idealistic form of pan Arabism, albeit non Bathist and non Nasserist, and Nusseibeh own movement into being Palestinian nationalist, seeing Palestine being in natural alliance with Israel did not cause him to reflect further on the role and thinking of his father. A respectful critique and contrast of the views would have enhanced and not hindered the understanding of his father and need not be disloyal to his memory.

Most grating perhaps is the competitiveness displayed with other Palestinian peace advocates and the various attempts at discrediting them. This was particularly evident in describing the efforts that led to the Geneva Accord, which Nusseibeh referred as the plan by the name of the Israeli negotiator, thus marginalizing the Palestinian partner. At some point Nusseibeh clearly fell out with Hanan Ashrawi and Dr. Barghouti, both articulate advocates of the Palestinian cause and for peace and coexistence with Israel, he made his disdain of them very obvious and has not troubled himself to analyze their positions even in retrospect.

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Towards a just peace between Israel and Palestine, April 18, 2007

By	H. S. Shapiro (Raleigh NC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nusseibeh's book allows us to break through the stereotypes of the Palestininan struggle and see behind the images the humanity of a people struggling for an end to the Israeli occupation of their land. Far from the images of unbridgeable fanaticism, Nuseibeh offers us another view of people prepared to compromise in order to ensure an end to this bitter conflict. His represents the only way forward in this conflict--acceptance of two states--viable and contiguous in their territories; a shared Jerusalem; and a reasonable solution to the problem of refugees that involves acknowledgement of loss and compensation. I urge people to read this book for its honest recognition of the shortcomings of Palestinian politics and its generous and rational understanding of the needs and pain of two peoples.