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personal story about young Palestinians? and Israelis? efforts to renounce violence and war will certainly contribute to the new atmosphere of d?tente in the Middle East. - Elie Wiesel
An American's Search for Hope in the Middle East
Ballantine
September 2005
304 pages
ISBN: 0345469240
Hardcover
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Contemporary | Non-Fiction Memoir
Writing with fierce honesty, Jennifer Miller has created an
extraordinary synthesis of history, reportage, and coming-
of-age memoir in Inheriting the Holy Land. Her
groundbreaking perspective on the conflict is presented
through interviews with young Israelis and Palestinians and
conversations with some of the most influential officials
involved in the Middle East, including Shimon Peres, Yasir
Arafat, James Baker, Benjamin Netanyahu, Colin Powell, Ehud
Barak, and Mahmoud Abbas. This book will open eyes, open
hearts, and open minds. Miller grew up in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C.,
surrounded by the chaotic politics of the Middle East. Her
father was a U.S. State Department negotiator at the Oslo
and Camp David peace summits, and dinnertime conversation
in the Miller household often included discussions of the
Middle Eastern conflict. When Miller joined Seeds of Peace,
a program that brings Middle Eastern kids to Maine for
intensive sessions of conflict resolution, her real
experience with the Middle East began. As she befriended
young Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, and Jordanians,
Jennifer came to realize that their views were missing from
the ongoing debate over the Holy Land. By helping these
young voices be heard, she knew she could reveal something
vitally new and deeply challenging about the future of this
torn region. Miller, however, learned fast that it was one thing to hang
out at the idyllic Seeds for Peace camp in Maine and quite
another to confront young people on their own turf–in the
alleys of East Jerusalem, behind the armed gates of West
Bank settlements, in the teeming refugee camps of Gaza.
Friendships that had blossomed in the United States
withered in the aftermath of yet another suicide bombing.
Big-hearted teens on both sides of the conflict shocked
Miller with the ferocity of their illusions and the twisted
logic of their misconceptions. But she also found rays of
hope in places where others had reported only despair–
surprising open-mindedness among the ultra-religious,
common ground shared by those who had lost loved ones to
the violence, a yearning for peace amid the rubble of
refugee camps and the shards of bombed cities. A deft writer, she interweaves her startlingly candid
interviews with the vibrant realities of life in the
streets. Just as Jennifer Miller was forced to confront her
biases as an American, a Jew, a woman, and a journalist, in
Inheriting the Holy Land, she similarly challenges readers
to reexamine their own cherished prejudices and assumptions.
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