About the Book

Curiosity, a nose for a good story, and the pleasure of traveling together led two journalists to make four fifteen-day visits to Gaza between January and November 2004. As they put it, "Day after day, Gaza had been in the news, but it never added up to anything more than a confused impression of violence and frenzy. The whole place seemed populated only by caricatures. It was just a place on a map, a name in the newspapers, the locus of some insoluble conflict, a place about which, fundamentally, most of us really didn't know a thing. So Jerome called me and we agreed we should go and get the story, in a photo essay, of the day-to-day life of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip." They steered clear of political analyses and meetings with prominent figures, but visited with individuals and families from Palestinian "tunnellers" to Israeli "settlers," creating an informal survey of the views on all sides. Perhaps, they thought, a more human and less institutional take on this ever-so-complex and so inflamed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where every word hits as hard as a shot from a Kalashnikov or an M16, would be useful. In exploring the subject they were exploring the nature of the violence that attended it. Peace, after all, can never be achieved solely on the basis of argumentation, of opposing lines of logic that each has its own legitimacy, but by stepping back, by getting a little bit of distance, that would bring a human perspective to the real people who live behind the faces. They took their time, going back at different times of the year, once every season, seeking to get beyond the surface of appearances and, if not to understand, at least to actually get close to the essenceof this story. Herve Equer took notes; Jerome Kempf took photographs. And the adventures they shared are now their gift to the reader.

Product Details

Media: Paperback Book, 260 pages

Language: English

Publisher: Algora Publishing

ISBN-10: 0875864406

ISBN-13: 9780875864402

Dimensions: 7.50 x 9.25 x 0.55 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.00 lbs

• Categories: Israeli History