Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israel/Palestine - History (Modern), Israel - Diplomatic Relations, Israel/Palestine - Politics & Government, Treaties & Alliances - General & Miscellaneous

This Side of Peace: A Personal Account

Name: This Side of Peace: A Personal Account
Author: Hanan Ashrawi
ISBN: 9780684802947

by Hanan Ashrawi

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Overview

As the spokesperson for the Palestinians in Occupied Territories, Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi has become the most recognized and most articulate voice of their struggle. The world turns to her to make sense of the often conflicting attempts at peace in the Middle East as much for her clarity and vision as for her actions and experience. When the intifada began, Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi was at the front lines, trying to reason with the Israeli soldiers and to articulate the feelings of an occupied, and troubled, nation; when peace talks were initiated, she brought the human element into the increasingly complex diplomatic meetings; and when Arafat and Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn, she had worked out the last-minute details that finally made it possible. Now, in a revealing and important account, Ashrawi tells of her own struggles, as a Christian Arab woman in a Muslim, male-dominated world, torn between motherhood and the demands of her cause, and as a pivotal peacemaker in the most monumental negotiations of our lifetime. She offers an inside view of Mideast diplomacy, Arafat and the PLO hierarchy, and the thinking of the Palestinians, and she shares the emotional complexities of her everyday and extraordinary life.

In a revealing and important memoir, Ashrawi, the founder of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights, tells of her struggles as a Christian Arab woman in a Muslim, male-dominated world, torn between motherhood and her cause, and as a pivotal peacemaker in the most monumental negotiations of our time. Photos.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Ashrawi, who came to international media attention as a spokeswoman for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) during the long, frustrating peace negotiations with Israel, gives a notable behind-the-scenes account of the events leading up to the signing of the accord by Prime Minister Rabin and PLO chairman Arafat on the White House lawn. A major player in these events, she speaks proudly of her participation in organizing the intifada, with passion of her people's anger and humiliation under Israeli occupation and with dissatisfaction of the final agreement, which brought on her resignation. Here we see the human side of the Arab-Israeli dilemma, through the eyes of an independent, intellectual Arab woman brought up in a freethinking Christian-Muslim household where daughters were considered a gift, not a curse. Ashrawi offers a close-up portrait of Arafat as well as of the major American and Israeli negotiators, Palestinian women emerging from passivity to join the intifada, the outrage at the U.S. pro-Israel policy and the dissident Israelis who became her friends. Though committed to peace, Ashrawi is intransigent on still unresolved problems, among them the Arab claim to Jerusalem. A revealing document of a partisan who has helped make Middle East history. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (May)

Library Journal

Ashrawi, a Christian Palestinian woman from a prominent family and a political activist who has been a spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation in the on-going peace talks with Israel, provides a rare insight not only into the diplomacy involved but also into her ethnic community. This autobiographical approach is extremely well characterized. Ashrawi delves into the attitudes of many of the Palestinian political elites, examining their cultural heritage and how it has affected their behavior. Of course, she also provides an intimate detailing of the intricate diplomatic process by which the Palestinian delegation treated its demands dealing with the PLO, several Arab states, and the United States. The reader gets a firm feel for the delicacy of multilateral diplomatic talks and the pressure that can be brought to bear by major and more powerful political bodies on groups with no recognized government. This work is essential to the understanding of the current phase of the Arab-Israeli conflict and is required reading. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/95.]-Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C

Hazel Rochman

Well known in this country as the eloquent Palestinian spokesperson on the nightly news, Ashrawi has written a compelling autobiography that fuses the political and the personal "to reveal in human terms our side of the truth." She mocks the prevailing stereotypes of Palestinian terrorist and veiled woman ("I was not going to jump up and start belly dancing between the salad and the main course, nor was I going to toss a grenade into the dessert"). Raised in a middle-class Christian home, she sees herself as a humanist, a radical, a peace activist, and a Western-educated academic; she also speaks as mother, daughter, wife, and personal friend of Jews as well as Palestinian leaders. Whether she's talking about her insider role in daily negotiations with Baker and Christopher and the U.S. State Department, or about her pain at her own family's internal exile under the Israeli occupation, or about the physician father who raised her to be an independent woman in a male-dominated society, there's no self-righteousness, no talk of "them and "us." Furious at the brutality of military occupation, she's clear also that there's no monopoly of pain, no "upmanship" on suffering among Jews and Palestinians, and she calls for an ongoing self-examination to heal oppressor and oppressed alike. Anyone wanting an informed, reasonable view of what's happening in the Middle East will welcome this account. Running throughout is a sense of what is lost; it didn't have to be this way.