Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege

In 1993 Amira Hass a young Israeli reporter drove to Gaza to cover a story-and stayed the first journalist to live in the grim Palestinian enclave so feared and despised by most Israelis that in the local idiom Go to Gaza is another way to say Go to hell. Now in a work of calm power and painful clarity Hass reflects on what she has seen in the Gaza Stripss gutted streets and destitute refugee camps.Drinking the Sea at Gaza maps the zones of ordinary Palestinian life. From her friends Hass learns the secrets of slipping across sealed borders and stealing through night streets emptied by curfews. She shares Gazas early euphoria over the peace process and its subsequent despair as hope gives way to unrelenting hardship. But even as Hass charts the griefs and humiliations of the Palestinians she offers a remarkable portrait of a people not brutalized but eloquent spiritually resilient bleakly funny and morally courageous.Full of testimonies and stories facts and impressions Drinking the Sea at Gaza makes an urgent claim on our humanity. Beautiful haunting and profound it will stand with the great works of wartime reportage.