A collection of essays by Sheldon Richman on the history of Israeli dispossession of the Palestinian people

A Unique Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Based on Historical Precedent and Biblical Prophecy. This book addresses: Human Rights--The Jews deserve the rights claimed in their Proclamation of Independence. So do the Palestinians. Nationalism--The Jews are entitled to their state in Mandate Palestine. So are the Palestinians. History--Israeli leaders claim their ancestral land. Yet the Jews never possessed present Israel's southern coast. Defense--Israel must retain the West bank in order to provide secure borders. Economics--A Palestinian state in the separate territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will not succeed. Religion--God will not give the Jews all of the Promised Land until they seek to keep the Law of Moses. Bible Prophecy--The Jews will keep the West Bank. The Palestinians are destined to have their own state in the Plain of Philistia.

A stunningly honest memoir of growing up with a political father amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that “captures the rage and despair of lives stunted by occupation” (The Boston Globe) This “is not a political book,” Anthony Lewis writes in his foreword. “Yet in a hundred different ways it is political . . . Shehadeh shatters the stereotype many Americans have of Palestinians. Hath not a Palestinian senses, affections, passions?” This revealing memoir of a father-son relationship, the first of its kind by a Palestinian living in the occupied territories, is set against the backdrop of Middle East hostilities and more than thirty years of life under military occupation. Three years after his family was driven from the coastal city of Jaffa in 1948, Raja Shehadeh was born in the provincial town of Ramallah, in the rural hills of the West Bank. His early childhood was marked by his family’s sense of loss and impermanence, vividly evoked by the glittering lights “on the other side of the hill.” Growing up “in the shadow of home,” he was introduced early to political conflict. He witnessed the numerous arrests of his father, Aziz Shehadeh, who, in 1967, was the first Palestinian to advocate a peaceful, two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He predicted that if peace were not achieved, what remained of the Palestinian homeland would be taken away, bit by bit, through Israeli settlement. Ostracized by his fellow Arabs and disillusioned by the failure of either side to recognize his prophetic vision, Aziz retreated from politics. He was murdered in 1985. Strangers in the House offers a moving description of the daily lives of those who have chosen to remain on their land. It is also the family drama of a difficult relationship between an idealistic son and his politically active father complicated by the arbitrary humiliation of the “occupier's law.”

A stand-alone companion to the successful Tasting the Sky, this memoir further examines the author's childhood in Palestine.

Israeli Jews and Palestinians appear side by side for the first time in this remarkable book to share powerful feelings and reflections on growing up in one of the world's longest and most dangerous conflicts. Here, thirty-six men and women, boys and girls, tell of their coming-of-age in a land of turmoil. From kibbutzim in Israel and the occupied territories to Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israeli Jews and Palestinians tell of tragedy and transcendence as they face their deepest fears and dream of a peaceful future. Listen to them as they recount stories of their brief and often violent youth. No matter what their ethnic identity, how much and how long they have suffered, these courageous autobiographers most often reveal a deep longing for peace. Perhaps their hopes and fears are best illustrated by a parable retold by eighteen-year-old Redrose (a pseudonym): "Two frogs got trapped in a jar of cream. They couldn't jump out of the liquid and they couldn't climb because the sides of the jar were slippery. One frog said, 'By dawn I'll be dead,' and went to sleep. The second frog swam all night long and in the morning found herself floating on a pat of butter."