Blessed Are the Peacemakers: A Palestinian Christian in the Occupied West Bank

"Blessed Are the Peacemakers" is an autobiographical study of one of today's least understood conflicts: the Israeli-Palestinian dispute over title to the same property - the "Palestinian problem." As a result of the United Nations' partition in the wars of 1948-49, Palestinians lost 77 percent of their homeland to Israel who then, in 1967, established military control over the other 23 percent. In 1987, occupation of the West Bank exploded into the intifada - the unified Palestinian attempt to shake off Israeli military occupation. Evicted from his Palestinian home as an 11-year-old in 1948, Rantsi advocates that "Israel must accept Palestine as a nation with the right to choose its own leaders," and "equally, Palestinians must accept Israel as a nation. . . because in the final analysis Muslims, Jews and Christians must sit together and discover solutions that will honor all. . . The answer to the question, then, is to encourage each person who is interested in helping the Jews and Palestinians to persuade his or her own government to deal evenhandedly with the two people and assist them toward a just peace."