Twenty-eight miles long and five miles wide, the Gaza Strip has caused controversy for Israel ever since the 1967 Six-Day War. Emerson takes a penetrating look at the country's "iron fist" policy in the Occupied Territories from the start of the intifada (uprising) in '87 and the brutal interrogation, torture and imprisonment of Palestinians under the direction of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency. She describes violent encounters between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian women and children; (hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, she reports, are full of youngsters with broken arms). Emerson lets the Gazans speak for themselves--a barber, a supermarket owner, a human-rights lawyer, a surgeon, among many others. The collective voice we hear is that of a severely oppressed people whose revolution, the author predicts, will continue "until the Palestinians have their nation." Her brief but passionate indictment of Israel's occupation will win considerable sympathy for the Palestinians. Emerson ( Winners and Losers ) won a George Polk Award for her Vietnam War reporting.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.