Author Description

"Who are the Jewish settlers on the West Bank? How will they respond to the newly elected Labor government's call for a freeze on continued settlements? And how will they influence the prospects for an Arab-Israeli peace?" "In Zealots for Zion, journalist Robert I. Friedman takes us inside the West Bank settlements to explore their personal and political meaning. He vividly reports on this world of religious zealots, young urban commuters, Israeli soldiers, and the Palestinians who live among them, and offers new insights into the possibility of eventual reconciliation." "The awakening of the national spirit of Judaism that coursed through the American Jewish community after the June 1967 Six Day War found Aliza Herbst, a one-time singer in a San Francisco rock-and-roll band. Today she supervises the construction of West Bank settlements. The same spirit that possessed Herbst brought Ira Rappaport, a social worker from New York, to the West Bank, where he would place a bomb under the car of Nablus's Palestinian mayor Bassam Shaka. Yael Steinfeld, a forty-year-old Israeli, moved to Ariel, a booming Jewish city on the West Bank, to "help Israel grow and be strong... Today, I look at a person's face and wonder if I should tell them where I live." Friedman also writes about Feryel, a Palestinian whose face was hideously scarred when a terrorist bomb her colleague was making exploded prematurely, and Mohammed, a refugee in Gaza whose dream is to drive the Jews out of Palestine." "Yitzak Rabin said of Israel in his opening address as prime minister: "We have two choices - we can either attempt to seek peace or we can live by the sword." In Zealots for Zion, Robert Friedman provides an inside look into the intricacies of the West Bank settlements and thereby a means of understanding which of these two paths Israel will choose."--BOOK JACKET.