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Reviewed by:
  • Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo
  • Joel Streicker
Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo, by David Grossman, translated by Haim Watzman, edited by Efrat Lev. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 192 pp. $40.00.

In an essay in this collection covering the last ten years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, David Grossman remarks that it is one thing to report on an imminent train wreck from a vantage point outside the train, but quite another to do so as a passenger on that train. Grossman is our guide on that runaway train. Warning of the wrong turns and missed junctions, he lays the blame for this ride into the hell of the second intifada squarely on the two peoples' leaders, who have played on the growing fear and desire for revenge of the peoples themselves.

At each step, the novelist and outspoken proponent of peace insists that true peace will require both parties to overcome their fears, recognize the justice in the other's claims, and make painful political concessions through an ongoing dialogue that will establish secure borders and normalize relations between the peoples. These concessions include dismantling most settlements, with the Palestinians to be compensated for the remaining settlements by ceding an equivalent amount of land within Israel's pre-1967 border; sharing sovereignty [End Page 167] over a divided Jerusalem; and renouncing the "right of return." Above all, Grossman affirms, violence, whether in the form of Palestinian suicide bombings or Israeli raids and "targeted assassinations," only leads to more violence, strengthening the hand of extremists in both camps and causing hope for lasting peace to recede even further from reach.

It is disheartening that Grossman has needed to repeat his exhortations so regularly during the past ten years in response to crisis after crisis: Rabin's hesitance to act decisively for peace after Oslo, Netanyahu's obstructionism, Hamas' barbarity and Arafat's refusal to rein in the killers, Barak's arrogance, Sharon's retaliatory escalation, the seductive illusions of the security fence, and so on. The repetition does not make for a great read, but neither does continually confronting the failures of one's leaders and fellow citizens, as well as of one's neighbors, make for a great life. Reading the same diagnosis and prescription over and over may numb the reader, but this is nothing compared to the alternating numbness and rage that, Grossman argues, the violence has induced in Israelis and Palestinians. As Grossman points out, the situation has lead the average Israeli to know "that his life could change in the bitterest way possible" at any moment. Along with this painful knowledge, Israelis repress any effort to "think about what the Palestinians are feeling" (p. 123). Life withers under the conflict's intense pressure: "Sometimes there is a sense that most of our energy is invested in defending the boundaries of our existence. And too little energy is left for living life itself" (p. 146). Despite the repetition—or because of it—it is tremendously heartening to find that Grossman is continually able to articulate a clear-eyed critique of the fears and despair that fuel the conflict while reiterating the policies and underlying attitudes that hold out hope for peace.

One danger of a collection of essays that respond to current events is that the essays date too quickly. Topicality does not lend itself to permanence. This collection does not suffer that fate because, unfortunately, some of the events that Grossman addresses are burned into the reader's memory, such as Rabin's assassination, the frantic negotiations between Barak and Arafat, Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif, and the death of twelve-year old Muhammed al-Durrah in a cross-fire in Gaza. Other events—the Sbarro and many other suicide bombings—require more contextualization. Fortunately, the collection's editor has prefaced each essay with a scene-setting paragraph that is both concise and fair-minded, and, wisely, rejects the impulse to editorialize. Moreover, the essays remain current because each party's wrong-headed policies and accompanying disposition toward the erstwhile peace partner have remained basically...

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