A Season of Stones: Living in a Palestinian Village - Hardcover

From Winternitz (East Along the Equator, 1987)--an absorbing, often moving, eyewitness account of a West Bank village's growing involvement with the Intifada. In an effort to understand Palestinian concerns, the author spent a year, beginning in the spring of 1988, immersing herself in the life of Nahalin, a seemingly quiet ``backwater'' of 4,000 near Bethlehem. Concentrating on the day-to-day activities of a simple farming community while remaining alert to odd and revealing scraps of conversation, Winternitz does an admirable job of conveying the sense of entrapment that pushes her subjects into political activism. Living in a valley surrounded by Israeli outposts, the villagers have no recourse when their carefully tended olive trees are bulldozed for settlement development. At the same time, bored and frustrated teenagers, their schools paradoxically closed to stem unrest, easily drift into the ranks of stone-throwing shabab (literally, ``the boys'')--''the makeshift army of the intifada.'' Unsurprisingly, nearly every member of the village is revealed as aligned with one or the other of the two main PLO factions--Yasir Arafat's Fatah and George Habash's more militant Jebha. In a succession of vivid, alternately pastoral and troubling scenes, the narrative moves from the intricacies of native embroidery to the perfunctory justice of Israeli military courts and, finally, to an apparently unprovoked attack by restless Border Police. Unlike Michael Gorkin in his excellent study of a Palestinian village in Israel (Days of Honey, Days of Onion, p. 907), however, Winternitz too often strays from the challenges facing the Palestinians to her own concerns, and fails to offer the deeper political analysis necessary for a truly balanced account. Yet the testimony of the villagers, caught between a learned hopelessness (``...there is no future,'' notes one local leader) and a fervent desire for peace, gives the work urgency and importance. A flawed but worthwhile addition, then, to current Middle East reportage. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Moving to a Palestinian village on the West Bank in 1988 gave Winternitz an opportunity to watch the intifada unfold and to observe Israeli soldiers and international journalists intrude on what had been a quiet backwater. A local extended family welcomed her with their traditional dignity and warmth until the tempo of village life changed drastically under the pressure of Israeli army occupation and harassment, the increasing resistance of the village youth, and the relentless construction of an Israeli housing project. Growing political tension erupted in an armed military assault that left several villagers dead, others wounded, and the whole community devastated by anger and despair. Although the author's style is sometimes intrusive, she skillfully conveys the human character of the village and the realities driving the Palestinians to fury and rebellion. This book complements Michael Gorkin's Days of Honey, Days of Onion ( LJ 9/15/91), whose focus on an Israeli Arab village emphasizes social and cultural qualities in contrast to the more political approach here. Both are recommended.
- Elizabeth R. Hayford, Associated Colls. of the Midwest, Chicago
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.