Intimate Enemies: Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land

One hundred years of life-and-death struggle between Jew and Arab over exclusive possession of Jerusalem and the Holy Land culminated in terrible blood baths and supreme acts of reconciliation, occurring during a short span of time: October 1990 to September 1993. Meron Benvenisti begins his excavation of this primordial struggle with the massacre on the Temple Mount in October 1990. Through this tragic lens, he brilliantly analyzes the entangled status of Jerusalem. He ends his book with the handshake of the Peace Accord in September 1993, a symbol of the promised peace. These are the two images of the intimate enmity between Israelis and Palestinians. Which image, he asks, represents the true nature of the conflict? Will a century of bloodshed prevent peace or will the future forgive the past? Is the conflict really over or have the rules of engagement simply shifted?