Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents) [Paperback]

Amira Hass (Author), Rachel Leah Jones (Editor, Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1584350199 | ISBN-13: 978-1584350194 | Publication Date: May 27, 2003

The only Israelis this generation of Palestinians know are soldiers and settlers. For them, Israel is no more than a subsidiary of an army that knows no limits and settlements that know no borders.Recipient of the UNESCO Guillermo Camo World Press Freedom Prize in 2003, Amira Hass is the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian affairs to live among the people about whom she reports. The child of Holocaust survivors, Hass prefers the title "expert in Israeli occupation," and, as such, is relentless in her quest for both truth and justice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hass, a Jewish Israeli journalist for the newspaper Ha'aretz, has chosen to live on the West Bank-and her intimate knowledge of the plight of the Palestinians illuminates this book. Culled from her dispatches during the past five years, these pieces offer a three-dimensional portrait of the daily experiences of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The early pieces, written while serious peace talks were being conducted in the late '90s, shows the roots of the current violence: most notably, Palestinians' frustration that the Oslo peace accords hadn't produced many tangible results. As Hass presciently wrote: "The distance from here to private and collective acts of despair is not great." As the book wends its way through the outbreak of violence in September 2000, that despair is increasingly on display. Her pieces illustrate how Palestinian frustration-over detentions, house demolitions, a life so riddled with restrictions that "hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are criminals or potential criminals"-erupted into suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism. But what distinguishes this book is its emphasis on the personal-and how the conflict has created a logic that has driven both sides to violence. In an in-depth interview, an Israeli sharpshooter discusses the rules of when to open fire ("Every day, the regulations... change"). Members of Palestinian society discuss the difficulty of keeping children healthy and educated under the pressures of violence and occupation. Members of Palestinian terrorist groups discuss what drove them to their acts and the internal rivalries among competing factions. Anyone who wants an in-depth, humanizing portrait of the Palestinians should look no further.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This book is particularly timely given the current peacemaking efforts in the Palestinian territories. And with her experience as an Israeli journalist actually living in Ramallah, Hass brings particular insights into the social and political issues involved in the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. In this collection of her news accounts from 1997 through 2002, Hass writes eloquently of the "violence of plenty," the hearty resentment and animosity between the haves and have-nots underlying much of the tension in the region. "Plenty draws the line between the worthy and the unworthy," she writes, noting the inequities in the administration of everything from land for farming and development to road construction and utilities. Hass provides a firsthand description of the day-to-day lives of the Palestinians under Israeli military occupation, the hypocrisy of administrative bodies that bend the law to the advantage of Israeli settlers, and the escalation of violence on both sides as Palestinians and Israelis lay claim to the territory. Readers interested in understanding this conflict will appreciate Hass' honesty and insight. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: Semiotext(e) (May 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584350199
• ISBN-13: 978-1584350194
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #445,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can this be true?, August 15, 2003

By 

Vernon L. Newhouse (Rosemont, Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents) (Paperback)

As an individual who has taken a life-long interest in Israel and the Zionist movement, I was shocked by this book because it has forced me to realize that many of my firmly held beliefs about Israel and Zionism were mistaken. Specifically this book shows that the Israeli government is in many respects guilty of mistreating its Arab citizens, and in doing so creating a type of hopelessness and despair, which explains their suicide attacks on Israel. At the same time the book explains that the Palestine Authority itself is riddled with corruption, and therefore equally unable to satisfy the hopes of its own citizens. This is an important book which should be widely read.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and Humane Reporting, December 17, 2004

By 

Bob (Texas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents) (Paperback)

Amira Hass is a wonderfully perceptive and deeply humane reporter. This book is a collection of her reports from the Occupied Territories, in which we meet individuals who daily experience the humiliations, abuse, violence, frustrations and injustices of living under conditions in which every aspect of their lives is controlled by an occupying military force, while also having to deal with the corruption and injustices of their own civil authorities. Ms Hass spares neither the IDF nor the Palestinian Authority nor the radicals of both sides from criticism, while always revealing the cost of occupation: the lives and dreams of ordinary people shattered, the suffering, the struggles, the anger and yet the human spirit that shows through, hoping and yearning for justice and peace. I was so moved by this book that I bought several copies for friends and asked them to pass them on to their friends after reading it.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars State of siege . . ., August 14, 2007

By 

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

This review is from: Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents) (Paperback)

No matter where your loyalties lie in the Israel-Palestine conflict, this book will almost surely make you angry. It is a selection 37 articles and op-ed columns written by an Israeli journalist who was during 1997-2002 chief West Bank and Gaza correspondent for one of her country's leading dailies, Ha'aretz. Her observations of life in the occupied territories cover the years following the Oslo accords and the first two years of the second Intifada. As investigative reporting, her stories focus - sometimes in stomach-churning detail - on the collapse of law and order under the boot heel of Israeli security forces, the negligence and corruption of the Palestinian authority under Yasser Arafat, and finally the obsession for revenge among armed resistance fighters, young, undisciplined, and beyond the reach of reason.

While many may justify the heavy-handed actions taken against Palestinians, and carried out by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), Hass points out over and over the devastating impact on noncombatants - the bulldozing of homes and businesses, the roadblocks, the building of Israeli settlements and the bypass roads for the exclusive use of the settlers, the confiscation of property, the poverty and unemployment, the curfews, the unending disruption of everyday life, the tanks and helicopters, the observation towers, and the "collateral damage" of unarmed civilians wounded and killed.

In one account, a contingent of IDF soldiers invades the apartment of a family to use their home as an observation post for days. In another, the Palestinian Ministry of Culture is taken over by IDF troops for a month, leaving behind not just destruction of its contents but a wasteland of human excrement, urine, and rotting food. A chilling interview with a young IDF sniper reveals the unofficial policy of shooting to kill children as young as 12. While none of this justifies a single suicide bomber, it goes a long way to account for the rage, humiliation, and despair of a people with little or no right to self-determination in their own land. Not objective, Hass admits, but a fair appraisal of Israeli policies that she regards as totally counter-productive.