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| Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege | 
 enlarge | Author: Amira Hass
Creator: Maxine Nunn
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy New: $2.98
You Save: $15.02 (83%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (15 reviews)
Sales Rank: 54385
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0805057404
Dewey Decimal Number: 956
EAN: 9780805057409
ASIN: 0805057404
Publication Date: June 1, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In 1993, amira hass, a young Israeli reporter, drove to Gaza to cover a story-and stayed, the first journalist to live in the grim Palestinian enclave so feared and despised by most Israelis that, in the local idiom, "Go to Gaza" is another way to say "Go to hell." Now, in a work of calm power and painful clarity, Hass reflects on what she has seen in Gaza's gutted streets and destitute refugee camps.
Drinking the Sea at Gaza maps the zones of ordinary Palestinian life. From her friends, Hass learns the secrets of slipping across sealed borders and stealing through night streets emptied by curfews. She shares Gaza's early euphoria over the peace process and its subsequent despair as hope gives way to unrelenting hardship. But even as Hass charts the griefs and humiliations of the Palestinians, she offers a remarkable portrait of a people not brutalized but eloquent, spiritually resilient, bleakly funny, and morally courageous.
Full of testimonies and stories, facts and impressions, Drinking the Sea at Gaza makes an urgent claim on our humanity. Beautiful, haunting, and profound, it will stand with the great works of wartime reportage, from Michael Herr's Dispatches to Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart.
Amazon.com Review
In what is sure to be a controversial book, Israeli reporter Amira Hass offers a rare portrait of the Palestinians in Gaza. Very few journalists have lived in that troubled region; Jewish ones are rarer still. "To most Israelis," Hass writes, "my move seemed outlandish, even crazy, for they believed I was surely putting my life at risk." But Israelis desperately need to understand the plight of the Palestinian people, she writes, and few of them read the unvarnished truth in the Jerusalem press. This has made most of them ignorant of what goes on right next door, and inspired unduly "harsh" attitudes toward Gaza and its one million residents. Hass even quotes the late Yitzhak Rabin, who wished that Gaza "would just sink into the sea," shortly before he signed the Oslo Accords. Wishing away the problem, however, is no solution, and Hass delivers a detailed--and highly opinionated--diagnosis of what's wrong with Israeli policy toward Gaza. Strong supporters of Israeli will say that Hass is nothing but a mouthpiece for the Palestinians. Indeed, this book's subtitle could apply as much to Israel, surrounded by bitter enemies, as it does to Gaza. Yet it would be wrong to ignore Hass: the scene in Gaza is woefully unreported. The book is not likely to change many minds--this is one of those subjects where passions run deep and fierce. Those who already sympathize with Hass's pro-Palestinian views will find Drinking the Sea at Gaza an invigorating book. --John J. Miller
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Terra Incognita ... May 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I first saw Amira Hass in a joint presentation with Ahdaf Soueif at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, NM several years ago. It was almost a full house, most were in awe of the quiet demeanor of this most courageous and unusual woman. She was a reporter for the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and a person of remarkable empathy for the dispossessed.
She conveyed her mother's memories of Sarajevo before the Second World War, "a tolerant city, almost idyllic..." where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together peacefully. Her book was for sale in the lobby after the lecture, and in it she explains her reason for choosing to live in Gaza, a place name many Israelis use interchangeably for "Hell." "In the end, my desire to live in Gaza stemmed neither from adventurism nor insanity, but from that dread of being a bystander, from my need to understand, down to the last detail, a world that is, to the best of my political and historical comprehension, a profoundly Israeli creation."(p. 7). Her approach is the antithesis of the "Big Man" theories of history, stating that: "... it has always been my conviction that history is made more in the currents of ordinary life than it is by rulers and their ceremonies."
She documents that ordinary life unflinchingly, in achingly painful detail. The daily humiliations that Palestinians endure in dealing with the Israeli bureaucracy she calls appropriately "Kafkaesque." For example, she says: "Israel's profound need to rewrite Palestinian history was evident in the identity cards issued to refugees born before 1948. If the card holder was born in the Gaza Strip, the space for `Place of Birth' was filled in with the name of a specific town or village, such as Khan Yunis or Jabalia. But if the card holder was born within the borders of what had since become the new Israeli state, then only one word appeared in that space: `Israel.' (p179). She describes the sadism that Yigal Amir, an Israeli soldier, practiced on the Palestinians, and which he eventually turned on Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister he assassinated. (p 23).
She is equally meticulous in documenting the economic inequalities and injustices committed on the Palestinians, the higher taxes they must pay compared to their Israeli counterparts, and the pitiful governmental services they receive in return. She explains the infamous "life" tax, even if you have no income, you must pay a tax for simply being alive - you must have income is the "reasoning" of the bureaucracy, otherwise you would be dead! She sums up these arrangements with that word that Jimmy Carter has also had the courage to use: "apartheid." (p148)
She lived in the Gaza for three years, never having her personal safety threatened. During this period, she also documented the corruption of the senior Palestinian leadership, which was a prime cause of the rise of various Islamic fundamentalist groups. It is even sadder to realize that this was during the "optimistic period" immediately following the Oslo Accords of 1993. Conditions today must be much worse than what she has described, and no hope is really in sight.
She deserves all the journalist and peace awards available for illuminating what she calls "terra incognita" for Israelis (but also for the world) "and easier now to demonize as a breeding round for terrorist intrigue and fundamentalism." (p342). This book should be read in every school, "war college," and diplomatic post.
A Hard Look at Life in Gaza March 31, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Written in the wake of the Oslo peace process, Drinking the Sea at Gaza vividly describes the unrelenting hardship that characterizes life in the Gaza Strip. Amira Hass, a journalist for the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz and a daughter of Holocaust survivors, shocked friends and colleagues when she became the first Israeli correspondent to live in the Strip. While there, she witnessed grinding poverty, the collective frustration that exploded into the first Intifada (uprising), and the hope instilled by the peace process, which gave way to desperation as it failed to assuage the suffering of the average Palestinian. "In the long run," Hass writes, "[Palestinians] will judge the Oslo Accords...by measuring the breadth of their freedom as a people and as human beings." The book demonstrates how, ultimately, Oslo achieved neither, and Hass' account in many ways foreshadows the current crisis in Gaza.
Hass begins with an account of conditions under the Israeli occupation, ranging from the military presence, mass arrests, and curfews to the economic burdens of heavy taxation and decaying infrastructure. She describes the largely grassroots uprising that sprang from these conditions in December 1987 and the military reprisals, including the imprisonment of a large part of the Palestinian population. Hass does not feign objectivity. She condemns the occupation in no uncertain terms and clearly sympathizes with the Palestinian plight, although her characterizations of Israeli troops show both cruelty and kindness, from a soldier who beats a young boy to a prison guard who surreptitiously brings a cake for a prisoner.
Much of the book, however, deals with the aftermath of the Intifada and the peace process, focusing on the economic stranglehold caused by frequent border closures, long waits at checkpoints (causing worker absenteeism and the spoiling of exported products sitting for hours in the sun), and the practice of banning males under 40 from working in Israel (the only source of income for most Gazans). Besides the economic repercussions of Gaza's isolation, Hass describes the inability of many Gazans to access adequate health care (available only in Israel) and inability of students to travel to their universities in the West Bank.
The book does not overlook the internal problems within Palestinian society. Hass describes the pervasive gender inequality in Gaza and the plight of its women. She also discusses Arafat's widespread corruption and his suppression of dissent. Crucially for understanding the current crisis, she portrays the inverse correlation between hope and religious extremism. Though written a decade ago, this book sheds important light on the situation in Gaza and how it got to be this way.
What it is really like January 9, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A very moving account of daily life without the politics, written with care and compassion.
absolutely essential. August 22, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have spent the last summer reading numerous books on the Palestinian perspective of the MidEast crisis, and Hass' 'Drinking The Sea At Gaza' is perhaps the finest and most comprehensive account I have come across to date. Mixing the intellectual depth of Edward Said with the readability of Wendy Pearlman (of 'Occupied Voices'), Hass, in painstaking detail, recounts the daily struggle for Palestinian self-determination within the occupied territories, specifially Gaza, and reveals an intensely human drama not often revealed in the world press. This book is a must read, as are all of Hass' Ha'aretz (Israeli daily newspaper) articles on the conflict.
One of the Most Important Books You'll Ever Read about the Middle East! July 14, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Amira Hass is an Israeli Jewish reporter living in Gaza with the Palestinians. When I first read this book about a few years ago, I became fascinated by this woman not only an Israeli Jew but the daughter of Holocaust survivors and her life in Gaza of all places by her choice. Amira Hass helps us to understand the life in Gaza even as an outsider. She helps us to understand the Palestinians' life better than any other reporter or author. Of course, there is always politics and the war between Israel and Palestinans. But as of today where Gaza is under seige. You begin to feel compassion for both sides and wonder when will there ever be peace. It's interesting that the author is an atheist or agnostic. Believe me, the book is the worth the read and the price. For all it's worth, the book is probably important to read more than ever.
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