|
 |
|
|
| November 11, 2005 |
REVIEW: Barrier: The Seam of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 It is -- we might as well stop fighting it -- possible to recognize the necessity of something while simultaneously recognizing the hardship it places on others, and our moral responsibility for that. It's never as simple as a reasonable justification excusing the need for further contemplation or attempts to alleviate the suffering caused by an action. And if you were at all having problems with that, you should read Isabel Kershner's latest book.
Barrier: The Seam of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is... what's the word, good. Impressive even. An examplar of fine reporting work and lucid prose. All of that jazz that literary critics like to say.
What Kershner has accomplished here is to distill the whole issue of the security barrier being erected by Israel more or less along the boundaries of the West Bank. She's pulled it out of the cloudy rhetoric of partisans who look at the barrier and quite literally can't see the other side. Palestinians placed under incredible hardship, farmers cut off from their groves just for starters, find it difficult to impossible to see the Israeli need for security. It's a security that, for better or worse, is effectively provided by the wall, the fence, the whatever you want to call it.
Israelis, on the other hand, can't bring themselves to admit to the hardship the barrier places on ordinary Palestinians. To do so, perhaps, would undermine the barrier and force Israel to abandon it. I don't actually believe it need play out that way, but too many Israelis nevertheless refuse to give an inch more than the Palestinian militants.
In this breach, or seam as she aptly describes it, goes Isabel Kershner. Her reporting conveys the myriad realities that find their intersection along the barrier route. The bureaucracy imposed on Palestinians caught on the wrong side of the wall -- The fence? Again, call it whatever you want -- is discussed in detail. One wonders if Kershner's legs ever got tired chasing down so many protagonists who help tell of the real life hurdles presented by the barrier.
No biased apologist, Kershner then jumps over the fence -- The wall? Politicized speech can be the worst kind -- to show us Israeli planners, academic opinion-makers, disillusioned activists too close to the action, etc. If ever there were a physical crystallization of the conflict, it lies in this monstrosity of a barrier that nobody wants and nobody has an alternative to. Kershner's empathetic depiction and massive on-the-ground investigating yields a moving and deeply informative look at that symbol, and at the reality it disrupts.
|
|
|
|
