A Season in Bethlehem A Season in Bethlehem

A Season in Bethlehem

Unholy War in a Sacred Place

    • 4.0 • 1 Rating
    • $10.99
    • $10.99

Publisher Description

Newsweek's Jerusalem bureau chief Joshua Hammer arrived in the West Bank in October 2000 -- just after Ariel Sharon made his inflammatory visit to the Haram al-Sharif, otherwise known as the Temple Mount. Sharon's trip ignited the worst violence the Middle East had seen in decades. Overnight, the peace process gave way to an ever-worsening cycle of attack, revenge, and retaliation, destabilizing the entire region, killing thousands, and culminating in Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian towns in 2002.
A Season in Bethlehem is the story of one West Bank town's two-year disintegration, as witnessed by a reporter who was there from the beginning. Woven together from Hammer's own firsthand reportage plus hundreds of interviews, it follows a dozen characters whose lives collided on the streets of this biblical city. They include a Bedouin tribesman who rose to become the commander of Bethlehem's most feared and brutal gang of gunmen; the beleaguered governor, an opponent of the al-Aqsa intifada, who believed he had a mandate to stop the violence, only to discover that Yasser Arafat was undermining him; a Christian businesman who watched helplessly as his community was squeezed between Muslim militants and the Israeli army; an eighteen-year-old female honors student turned suicide bomber; and an Israeli reservist, son of a leader of the Peace Now movement, who wrestled with his left-wing convictions as he rode to battle through the predawn streets.
The narrative reaches a climax with a moment-by-moment recreation of the epochal drama that drew many of these characters together: the thirty-nine-day siege of the Church of the Nativity. A clear-eyed chronicle of deepening chaos and violence, in which Hammer lets the opposing sides speak for themselves, A Season in Bethlehem is both a timely and timeless look at how longstanding religious and political tensions finally boiled over in a place of profound resonance: the birthplace of Jesus.

GENRE
Nonfiction
RELEASED
2003
September 22
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
304
Pages
PUBLISHER
Free Press
SELLER
Simon & Schuster Digital Sales LLC
SIZE
935.9
KB

More Books Like This

The Land of Hope and Fear The Land of Hope and Fear
2023
To the Ends of the Earth To the Ends of the Earth
2014
A Country Called Amreeka A Country Called Amreeka
2009
Yemen Chronicle Yemen Chronicle
2006
Defeating Terror Defeating Terror
2017
Gideon's Spies Gideon's Spies
2013

More Books by Joshua Hammer

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
2016
Murder In Yosemite Murder In Yosemite
2011
The Falcon Thief The Falcon Thief
2020
The Last Czar The Last Czar
2011
The Trail to an Iranian Jail The Trail to an Iranian Jail
2011
Sherlock Holmes' London Sherlock Holmes' London
2011