I just read No Man's Land: Despatches from the Middle East
by Richard Crowley. Crowley has been a correspondent for RTE, the Irish broadcast network, covering Israel and Palestine since 2001. He writes well, and provides details from many interviews in the book.He notes that Ireland, and perhaps the Irish Catholics especially, tends to be sympathetic to the Palestinians. He attributes this sympathy to the Irish Catholic experience of 800 years of occupation by the English, giving them a deep understanding of the experience of an occupied people. I found Crowley's book to be much more sympathetic to the Palestinians than I am used to in the U.S. press.
He presents a sad picture of Palestinians living in an economy broken by their Israeli masters, subject to daily indignities by occupying forces, and subject of violence which targets those believed by Israelis to be leaders of the terrorism as well as collateral damage of innocent people killed and wounded in Israeli attacks.
Crowley suggests that the Israeli policies are succeeding in driving most Christians out of the Israeli controlled areas, in part because most Christians there are also Arabs. He is worried about Israeli actions that would diminish the quality of Christian religious experience in the Holy Land, such as the plan to create a path around the Sea of Galilee to make it more attractive to vacationing Jews.
I came away from the book feeling that the factions of Israeli society who don't want peace, but rather want to absorb all of the territory of anccient Israel into the modern state of Israel, are winning. Crowley cites there being 250,000 Israelis in West Bank settlements, and 200,000 in East Jerusalem. The 78 percent of the original Palestine that Israel now claims, is being expanded by continuing settlements in the occupied territories not to mention the annexation of East Jerusalem against the requirements of international law, and the land blocked off from Palestinian control by the wall. These folk take the long view, and can look back on a process of greater and greater control of the ancient lands over my lifetime. Why should they accept a Palestinian state? How can the Israeli Left and Center make peace without them?
3 comments:
I am very interested in this topic and in the various voices surrounding it (probably being from Israel explains this somehow). This is why i was so interested in your post, particularly since I haven't read the book.
What triggered my comment however was the fact you chose to highlight about the plans to create a path around the Sea of Galilee. That caught my attention because of quite a bizarre interpretation Crowley gave to this initiative.
It happens that the particular issue is close to my heart because I sincerely hope that the path initiative will actually happen. I'll explain why.
The situation around the Sea of Galilee right now is such that most of the lands, that are not swamp, are illegally fenced by nearby kibbutzim and local farmers. The former made it into paid recreation zones or camping sites, and the latter use it for orchards. I do not remember the exact numbers, but something like 80% of the water line is now not freely accessible to the common folk.
Just to give you an example, about 10 years ago, when i finished high school, a group of friends and I wanted to hike around the Sea (it is only about 60 km or less than 40 miles). We got our camping gear and a simple map (it's round, so you can't get lost if you follow the water), and drove to the place. We ended up walking along a highway for a day and camping alongside it, before we gave up and hiked back to the city. Since then, the situation became even worse.
Ironically, few of the places where you can actually access the water line are Christian cites. I think a few of them have fenced the access too, but others keep it open. I had a chance to take a few of my Christian friends to tour Israel and particularly the Sea of Galilee, and none of us had a feeling of these places being chased out.
The initiative for the path is coming from the green organizations, who want to allow access to the water line for general public. Its primary target are the kibbutzim and the farmers and the issue has been quite hot a couple of years ago. The idea is to keep a thin path (few meters) of sea line preserved from commercial/institutional use and have it more like a naturally preserved hiking route.
Knowing some background of this initiative and placing it in broader context of green initiatives that are primarily grassroots in Israel, i find the idea of it being aimed at "driving most Christians out of the Israeli controlled areas" slightly detached from reality. It is more or less like claiming that advocating for environmentally responsible behavior in light of the Global Warming is an anti-Christian act.
Again, i have not read the book and i am not very familiar with Crowley 's work as a journalist. But this little piece of information i read in your review makes me questioning the integrity of the whole book.
Thanks for the comment, Dima.
Crowley devotes a relatively small part of the book to the impact of Israeli actions on Christian sites, and I may have misinterpreted his specific comment on the Sea of Galilee. His overall point, however, is that there are problems for the Christian as well as the Muslim sites in the Holy Land.
I continue to recommend Crowley's book. Of course it represents his experience in the region filtered through his own background and attitudes. That can be said about anyone who writes about Israel and Palestine, or the religious sites of the Holy Land. We gain in understanding by reading different people and their different accounts.
I am not an expert on the region, having only visited Israel a couple of times, Egypt for a few months, and Jordan once. I once knew something about the scientific and technological capabilities of these countries, but not as much as many people knew about those subjects.
Still, I feel it important that people everywhere (and especially in the United States and Europe) know more about the region and its problems, and that people of good will share their ideas and understanding.
I am of course most concerned about the people who will be harmed in the future as the conflict continues, and by those continuing to suffer from the harm it has caused in the past.
Thank you John!
I agree with you that it is important that people everywhere know more about the conflict or at least remain curious and open minded about what goes on in the region. And it is absolutely important to be attentive to the personal perceptions everyone is bringing in describing the situation. After all perceptions are as important in this case as the actual situation on the ground.
As i wrote, i did not read the book and what caught my eye was the specific example you decided to highlight, simply because this is a topic i care about (and for reasons totally not related to conflict itself).
I also share your concern in the follow up post, but i am not sure i agree with the dichotomizes presentation of Israelis and Palestinian. I think there are many more shades of gray and other colors than just two camps of black and white.
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