Between River and Sea

Book excerpt: None of Dervla Murphy's journeys have been easy, but with Between River and Sea she has kept her most difficult destination till last. In cramped Haifa high-rises, in homes in the settlements and in a refugee camp on the West Bank, Dervla Murphy talks with whomever she meets. She tries to understand the attitudes of both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis with her customary curiosity, her acute ear and mind, her empathy and her moral seriousness. While she keeps an open mind, her sympathies are clearly with the Palestinians, remorselessly dispossessed of, and cut off from, their lands and frustrated and humiliated on a daily basis. Clinging to hope, she comes to believe that despite its difficulties the only viable future lies in a single democratic state of Israel-Palestine, based on one person, one vote - the One-State Solution. Book jacket.