Intifada: Palestine and Israel - the Long Day of Rage

Armed with stones, Kalashnikovs, and the scarcely believable martyrdom of the suicide bomber, a generation of Palestinians has confronted one of the most lethal armies in the Middle East in a battle that has stunned and horrified the world. For almost two decades the Intifada has been the byword for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. But, for all its familiar usage in the media, many people remain unclear as to what the Intifada really is, or how it began. Just what fuels the anger? Who are the key players in this deadly clash and where, during these dangerous days in the Middle East, does the resistance go from here? Part reflection, part reportage, in The Long Day Of Rage award-winning foreign correspondent and film-maker David Pratt, takes the reader on a journey across the frontlines of the Palestinian uprising.

From the War of the Stones in the 1980s, to the eruption of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000, and the ultimate rise of Hamas, this is an eyewitness tour through the Islamic hotbeds, beleaguered refugee camps, and bomb-makers' dens of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Above all, it is a gripping and graphic account of a people's struggle to shake off oppression as viewed from the ground zero of besieged Ramallah and the ruins of a shell-shattered Jenin.

About the author: David Pratt has been a foreign correspondent and photojournalist specialising in the Middle East, Arab and Islamic world for more than twenty years. He has worked for Reuters, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), and is a regular contributor to the BBC on conflict and foreign affairs issues. During an adventurous career, Pratt has covered wars across the Middle East and Africa, including Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Congo, Sudan and Somalia, and has twice been a finalist in the Amnesty International Media Awards for his reporting on human rights issues. In Afghanistan in 1989 he had the dubious pleasure of having tea and a chat with Osama bin Laden during a lull in fighting around the city of Jalalabad.

David Pratt is currently the Foreign Editor of the Sunday Herald.

REVIEWS

"I met Pratt when I was in Baghdad... I was impressed. This is a journalist who goes out on the front lines and risks his life to bring us back the news. "Nothing is neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," wrote Pratt. "If there is one thing as a journalist I've learned during the almost 20 years of covering this story, it's the impossibility of ducking the political flack and sometimes downright vitriol that inevitably comes the way of anyone writing about this emotive issue." But Pratt really tries to get beyond the vitriol in this book -- and he succeeds."Jane Stillwater OPEDNEWS.com,06/2007

"With heart-stopping accuracy and literary GENIUS, Pratt makes his readers think and feel as if they too were there during every single moment of every bloody event. Amazing.... Buy this book. Read it and weep. And then work in whatever way you can to stop the escalation of violence and war. "By Jane Stillwater http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com

"This is eyewitness reporting at its best-clear,well-observed, fair. Read it, and you'll understand why most of what you read about Israel and the Palestinians is nonsense." -CHARLES GLASS, former ABC News Chief Mideast Correspondent, and authorof The Tribes Triumphant and The Northern Front

"This book will be an eye-opener for many readers, Americans in particular. Written by a correspondent on the scene in the Mideast the past 20 years, it unveils a longstanding lapse in the Western concept of justice. Here we learn intimate details of a gallant people who have withstood both foreign occupation and domestic desperation, yet whose aspirations to national dignity will doubtless never be quelled." -STEPHEN TANNER, author of Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban

"David Pratt, an experienced journalist covering the Middle East, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and other war zones, skillfully combines his own experience reporting on the second Intifada...with background on Israeli independence in 1948, the first intifada ..., and the disappointing negotiations of the 1990s. His picture of the brutal human rights abuses carried out by the Israeli army and occupation includes the disintegration of Palestinian economic and social organization and the political irresponsibility of their leaders. .... A(n) essential portrayal of the ongoing human tragedy." Library Journal, 10/2007

" ...drawn from 20 years of covering the Israel-Palestine conflict from both sides of the "Green Line,"... largely described from the perspective of his on-the-ground reportorial eye, but necessary political background is included."Book News Inc., 11/2007