Rituals of Truce & the Other Israel (Reviewed)

If you're interested in the middle east, specifically what's going on there, then you should read Benjamin Hollander's Rituals of Truce & The Other Israeli, but you should start with Khaled's review of it which can be found here in the Palestine-Israel Journal.

This was my take on it when I first read it...

This is a book, this is not a book. I think Magritte would agree with me when saying this about Benjamin Hollander's work. One part citation, one part recitation, one part interior monologue, one part exterior dialogue makes for a complicated read that asks questions that are begging to be asked. However, in asking the important questions about conflict, the writer and the book take into account that the solutions may not necessarily exist in the current discussions about the conflict, but rather in asking fundamentaly different questions. There's a tension that can only be called frustration over a problem that is at once local and foreign. It's as if the book and its auther are refugees from each other and are searching for nothing more than a mode of communication regarding something that has pages and pages of preemptive "essays" in anticipation of the dialogue. How, in this kind of atmosphere, where the opinions are formed and declared before the discussion ensues, are answers to be found? At this point, it's safe to say that the conflict in question is the Israel/Palestine crisis. This book doesn't claim to be the spawn of a Jimmy Carter peace effort, but rather an intriguing inquiry into a problem that has been fought within the context of a stalemate. If you are looking for a political diatribe you will not find it here; however, if you are looking to read something that is fresh and invigorating, something that posits a problem outside of the normal battlefield in which you can't see the hills from the craters, then read this book. Even if you don't know what the green line is, or why this latest intifada broke out, you will gain a perspective outside of our sound bite culture into the possible rituals of truce that exist beyond the assumed positions of friend, foe and other.