BOOK REVIEWS

PEACE FIRE:

Fragments from the
Israel-Palestine Story

Edited by Ethan Casey & Paul Hilder
Free Association Books in Association with BlueEar.com (October 2002)

Reviewed by Adel Iskandar

In all the accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, few have avoided volunteering their own prescriptive remedies to the ongoing struggles in the Holy Land. This is where Peace Fire begins. Unlike most publications on this volatile topic, the book has no decipherable political agenda, making it palatable and yet challenging to every reader. It does not offend the reader’s intelligence, instead opting to leave issues of resolution for the reader to contemplate and reflect on.

Peace Fire offers a collection of narratives from 107 voices that chronicle a human tragedy from a multitude of angles, some coherently analytical, others heart-wrenchingly emotional. The personal narratives, political statements, poetic reflections, and eye witness reports contained within are expressions of IDF soldiers, academicians, reporters and students are all fabrics interwoven into a larger tapestry. The editors craftily bring together the pieces of a mosaic to design a holistic view of the conflict. Like photojournalists they mindfully capture the best snapshots of a world gone astray in the Holy Land. From Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Ariel Sharon and from Gideon Levy to Marwan Barghouti, and everything in-between, Peace Fire is a true kaleidoscope. A conflict where the voices of suffering are overshadowed by impersonal statements from politicians, Casey and Hilder have excavated these voices. Each voice is a piece in the puzzle, a puzzle that cannot be complete unless all the pieces are present. This makes Peace Fire perhaps the only non-judgemental exhibition of this puzzle, all pieces intact. A complete picture.

The tragedy is best expressed through the eyes of a 4-year-old child. Toine Van Teeffelen tells of his daughter Jara’s renditions of the political climate around her in Bethlehem. One time she is role-playing a man injured by Israeli gunfire, Jara now believes there are only two types of people in this world: those who shoot and those who don’t! What could possibly shape a child’s logic in this fashion? Peace Fire tells of the drastic sequence of bloody events that have scarred memories, like Jara’s, and traumatized lives.

What is bound to strike every reader regardless of their position vis-à-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is the immense complexity of the narratives and how they intertwine, often to create disparate worldviews. This complexity is best represented by the book’s cover. The seemingly unlikely image of a Palestinian boy hurling a stone at a Palestinian police officer is reminder that the conflict is far more nuanced than may appear. Likewise, the editors could just as well show an Israeli peace activist brawling an IDF soldier or obstructing an Israeli tank or perhaps a Palestinian medic treating an Israeli victim. This nuance is what makes the conflict as complex as it is. Complex to the extent that the book title itself, Peace Fire, expresses an unsettling juxtaposition of antagonisms, a world of contradictions

The string of action-reaction retaliatory violence ad nauseam between the Israelis and Palestinians has left two populations scarred, precipitated psychopathic tendencies within them, and a helpless world of perpetual voyeurs. The voices of these and more are clearly audible in Peace Fire.

What Peace Fire accomplishes best is offer us a reminder of the human tragedy that may be obscured by the mind-numbing tally of death figures recited on sound-bite-length news bulletins. It also provides a chronological tour of the tragic events that transpired between 2000 and 2002. It offers a 3-dimensional treatment of a crisis so intangible and seemingly unsolvable. Like the conflict it espouses to represent, the book takes its reader on a roller coaster ride with every page. Some pages will infuriate, others will offer jubilant hope, and several pages will squeeze the tears out. Casey and Hilder have succeeded in every account to bring forth the conflict’s humanity to the forefront with such timeliness and urgency. Without saying so explicitly, their compilation is an act of protest against the tragedies perpetrated on all fronts of this struggle. Peace Fire is a commendable effort for a laudable cause.

Ethan Casey is editor-in-chief and co-founder of the global journalism community BlueEar.com.

Paul Hilder is co-founder of openDemocracy.net, the independent network for debate and invention.