It used to be a universally accepted axiom that the Palestinian Israeli conflict is an intractable and immovable impasse of epic proportion. Its Sisyphean nature cemented its reputation as an insoluble focal point of hatred and endless violence. Such universal truths, of course, derive their power and resonance from within the constraints of geography, ideology, and the construction of the imagination that is always trapped under the feeble nature of temporal movement. One can certainly say that Jewish history is filled with the grotesquery of blind hatred; that Jews were singularly reduced to an alienated other. Their disjointed and fractured identity was preserved only by the portability of a religion that would help them survive the darkest hours. But fate is not without irony, as the Palestinians were forced to accept the collective guilt of all those who committed unspeakable acts against the Jews. The Palestinians had to endure the systematic dispossession of their land and loss of identity. They were forced to accept defeat as a bitter reminder of their subaltern status in a world of proud nation states. Palestinians and Israelis were connected by a fatalistic dialectic, whose movement was punctuated by violence and directed towards an apocalyptic conclusion. One might argue that this dialectic enveloped a land, mythical and actual, spiritual yet earth-bound, ancient yet very much poised towards unfolding actualities. This land conjures images of return and redemptive possibilities. Palestine and Israel are two strands intertwined in our collective imagination. They are linguistically exclusive and yet reference a singular place. We are embarking on a peaceful resolution to a conflict that has left deep psychological scars. Of course, peace is not determined by the signage of treaties or the wishes of leaders. Peace is not a discrete event; rather it is a renewable proposition, filled with affirmations designed to mitigate against the collective distrust of two people who knew little beyond hatred, suspicion, blame and counter blame, intellectual gamesmanship, fear, paranoia, historical necessity, retribution, and a host of other deeply engrained emotional projections that are constantly lurking beneath the surface. -Prologue Absolution is a love story unlike any other. It is a love that transcends the oceanic chasms that have come to define one of the most intractable conflicts in modern history. It is the year 2018 and Israel's Prime Minister, Avi Eban, is in Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. One year earlier, on the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Israel and the Palestinians forged a peace that resulted in the creation of Palestine. What the world did not know was the story behind the peace- a story of hope and redemptive possibilities.

Zola's surprisingly contemporary novel. A tender love story told against a backdrop of PLO terrorism. Can love blossom in the midst of terrorism and death in modern-day Israel? Ask Isaac, a Jewish immigrant from America, and Rebecca, the daughter of a rabbi. And ask the Hebrew Christian!

An Israeli lieutenant and a Palestinian woman find themselves on opposite sides when rioting breaks out after the lieutenant refuses to let the woman and her sick child through a checkpoint. The child's grandfather, a prominent Palestinian American surgeon, must also make choices as the violence continues.

A controversial, award-winning story about the passionate but untenable affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from one of Israel’s most acclaimed novelists When Liat meets Hilmi on a blustery autumn afternoon in Greenwich Village, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer. Despite knowing that their love can be only temporary, that it can exist only away from their conflicted homeland, Liat lets herself be enraptured by Hilmi: by his lively imagination, by his beautiful hands and wise eyes, by his sweetness and devotion. Together they explore the city, sharing laughs and fantasies and pangs of homesickness. But the unfettered joy they awaken in each other cannot overcome the guilt Liat feels for hiding him from her family in Israel and her Jewish friends in New York. As her departure date looms and her love for Hilmi deepens, Liat must decide whether she is willing to risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man. Banned from classrooms by Israel’s Ministry of Education, Dorit Rabinyan’s remarkable novel contains multitudes. A bold portrayal of the strains—and delights—of a forbidden relationship, All the Rivers (published in Israel as Borderlife) is a love story and a war story, a New York story and a Middle East story, an unflinching foray into the forces that bind us and divide us. “The land is the same land,” Hilmi reminds Liat. “In the end all the rivers flow into the same sea.” Praise for All the Rivers “Rabinyan’s book is a sort of Romeo and Juliet, a forbidden love affair between a Jewish girl from Tel Aviv and a Palestinian boy from Hebron. . . . [A] beautiful novel.”—The Guardian “A fine, subtle, and disturbing study of the ways in which public events encroach upon the private lives of those who attempt to live and love in peace with each other, and, impossibly, with a riven and irreconcilable world.”—John Banville, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea “I’m with Dorit Rabinyan. Love, not hate, will save us. Hatred sows hatred, but love can break down barriers.”—Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature “Astonishing . . . [a] precise and elegant love story, drawn with the finest of lines.”—Amos Oz “Rabinyan’s writing reflects the honesty and modesty of a true artisan.”—Haaretz “Because the novel strikes the right balance between the personal and the political, and because of her ability to tell a suspenseful and satisfying story, we decided to award Dorit Rabinyan’s [All the Rivers] the 2015 Bernstein Prize.”—From the 2015 Bernstein Prize judges’ decision “[All the Rivers] ought to be read like J. M. Coetzee or Toni Morrison—from a distance in order to get close.”—Walla! “Beautiful and sensitive . . . a human tale of rapprochement and separation . . . a noteworthy human and literary achievement.”—Makor Rishon “A captivating (and heartbreaking) gem, written in a spectacular style, with a rich, flowing, colorful and addictive language.”—Motke “A great novel of love and peace.”—La Stampa “A novel that truly speaks to the heart.”—Corriere della Sera

Reading a wide range of novels from post-war Germany to Israeli, Palestinian and postcolonial writers, The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature is a comprehensive exploration of changing cultural perceptions of Jewishness in contemporary writing. Examining how representations of Jewishness in contemporary fiction have wrestled with such topics as the Holocaust, Israeli-Palestinian relations and Jewish diaspora experiences, Isabelle Hesse demonstrates the 'colonial' turn taken by these representations since the founding of the Jewish state. Following the dynamics of this turn, the book demonstrates new ways of questioning received ideas about victimhood and power in contemporary discussions of postcolonialism and world literature.

A heart-wrenching novel explores how several generations of one Palestinian family cope with the loss of their land after the 1948 creation of Israel and their subsequent life in Palestine, which is often marred by war and violence. A first novel. Reprint. Reading-group guide included.

The book that is providing a storm of controversy, from ‘Israel’s bravest historian’ (John Pilger) Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking work on the formation of the State of Israel. 'Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history.' NEW STATESMAN Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called 'ethnic cleansing'. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East. *** 'Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' JOHN PILGER 'Pappe has opened up an important new line of inquiry into the vast and fateful subject of the Palestinian refugees. His book is rewarding in other ways. It has at times an elegiac, even sentimental, character, recalling the lost, obliterated life of the Palestinian Arabs and imagining or regretting what Pappe believes could have been a better land of Palestine.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'A major intervention in an argument that will, and must, continue. There's no hope of lasting Middle East peace while the ghosts of 1948 still walk.' INDEPENDENT