Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (review)

Kathleen Christison and her late husband, Bill, have produced a book which everyone who cherishes humanistic values should read. This remarkable couple has meticulously recorded the amoral, inhumane, and relentless cruelties that the US-abetted Israeli occupation has heaped on Palestinians with remarkable impunity. The Christisons have accomplished, in words, portrayals of the realities of Palestinian life which enable the audience to "see" and "feel" the wretchedness of Palestinian existence and to "experience" the intensity of gratuitous injustice committed by the Israeli occupiers.

Both authors served as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) political analysts until 1979. After leaving the Agency and moving away from the cloistered environment of Washington, DC, their humane instincts led them to an epiphany about American foreign policy and especially the tragedy of Palestine. They visited Palestine often — seven times from 2003 to 2008, the period covered in the book. There they pursued village to village, town to town, city to city in-depth observations and interviews with local people. No summary of what they saw can capture the vision as well as their own words.

Commenting on the situation in the small village of Wadi Fukin in the West Bank, they note:

Not only is the settlement [Betar Illit] encroaching on Wadi Fukin's land, but almost unbelievably, it occasionally — some sources say regularly, as often as twice a week — dumps sewage onto the village lands. This is sewage from a settlement of more than 29,000 people, dumped on a village of 1,200

(p. 112).

After we first visited Wadi Fukin, Ahmad [their driver] ... erupted in an angry tirade about the Israeli settlements and what they have done to the Palestinian landscape. "Why you want to put your shit in my salon?" he wondered pointedly

(p. 113).

Perhaps the most important point in the book, a finding made by others in more academic form, is that

... Zionism's long-term goal of ultimately bringing all of Palestine's land and resources under Jewish dominion is so transparent that it is possible to see it in concrete form during one intensive visit. When you have seen ... the permanence of Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem; when you have watched the Separation Wall ... tear Palestine apart ... ; when you have endured the checkpoints that ... confine Palestinians and stop ... Palestinian economic development in its tracks; when you have watched homes, the very center of people's lives, being demolished for no other reason than that their owners are not Jews; when even inside Israel you have seen the homes and villages of Palestinian ... citizens of Israel being destroyed ... when you have seen all these things, it is crystal clear that Zionism's design is absolute Jewish control over the entirety of a Palestine swept clean of Palestinians

(p. 166).

After surveying the ugly scene on the ground and adding their voice to those who early on exposed the Oslo agreements as a sham, the authors note poignantly that Palestinians are abandoned by the international community on behalf of Israel. Therefore, they state, Palestinians have developed their own strategies of resistance appropriate to their circumstances: initiation of a non-violent movement and a global effort to encourage the boycotting, divestment from, and sanctions on Israel. These efforts and the growth of international solidarity movements have led to greater criticism of Israel, especially after the Goldstone Report and the Israeli assault on the Mavi Marmara. Former European statesmen have now publicly voiced their criticism of Israel. To counter the criticism, a new Israeli public relations effort has been initiated. These cracks in the wall of Israeli impunity seem to augur the beginning of Palestinian and Israeli liberation from Zionism. Those who wish to understand the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy should read this excellent book.