Amira Hass in conversation with Ahdaf Soueif

on

In the end, my desire to live in Gaza stemmed neither from adventurism nor from insanity, but from that dread of being a bystander, from my need to understand, down to the last detail, a world that is, to the best of my political and historical comprehension, a profoundly Israeli creation. To me, Gaza embodies the entire saga of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; it represents the central contradiction of the state of Israel – democracy for some, dispossession for others; it is our exposed nerve. —from Drinking the Sea at Gaza, Amira Hass

Amira Hass lives in Ramallah in the West Bank, where she covers Palestinian affairs for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz, making her the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian affairs to live among the people about whom she reports. The child of Holocaust survivors, she was the recipient of the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize for 2003 in recognition of her work in the Gaza Strip. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza:Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege and Reporting From Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land.

Ahdaf Soueif, one of the most widely read Arab fiction writers in English, was born in Cairo, Egypt and spent part of her childhood in London. Her acclaimed novels include Aisha, Sandpiper, In the Eye of the Sun and Map of Love. Her most recent book, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, is a collection of essays and journalism covering an array of subjects including a vist to Palestine, women who choose to wear the veil, and post-September 11th commentary. Soueif was in Santa Fe in 2003 as a featured writer for Lannan’s Readings & Conversations.