Making Peace with Contradictions: Reflections of Territory and Identity in Israel/Palestine

Both historical and personal essay, this culminating project is a creative non-fiction work exploring the modern historical roots of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Part I surveys the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Palestine, centering on two key figures: Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion (1886-1973), and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muslim Leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni (1897-1974). Interweaving historical fact, myth, personal story, and biography, with Israeli and Palestinian poetry and poses by the author, themes such as relationship to land, attachment to home, and the displacement created by industrialization upon a traditional, rural lifestyle are explored. Part II relates the personal experience of the author at a women\u27s Middle East peace conference in Oslo, while comparing the contradictions of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), inventor of war munitions and progenitor of the Nobel Peace Prize, with the contradictions found within Israeli and Palestinian societies