Sublime

A long-cultivated Zionist dream had come true. It was a dream of safety, of confidence, of pride, of international admiration. It would not last long.

a player on the international stage, and was quickly cultivating national, political, and cultural traditions. Many challenges undoubtedly lay ahead, but nineteen years after its founding, Israel had fared far better than anyone might have dared imagine when the United Nations had voted in November 1947 to create a Jewish state.

Darwish, like other Palestinian writers and poets, was the voice of a people seeking independence and freedom. The anger of which he warned was undeniably real, and would soon become one of the most…

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Jerusalem, with a Jewish population of 100,000, was to be internationalized but cut off from the Jewish areas.

And after one too many terrorists walked freely across the unfenced mountain terrain from Ramallah to Tel Aviv, covered in bombs and ready to explode themselves among the civilian population inside Israel, the separation wall around the West Bank was erected, cutting up Palestinian land and forcing millions of Palestinians to live under oppressive

Peaceful mass protests began. The best known was Motti Ashkenazi’s lone demonstration across from the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, where he held a sign that read: “Grandma [the nickname given to Prime Minister Golda Meir], your defense minister is a failure and 3,000 of your grandchildren are dead.”28 Prior to the war, speaking that way

In terms of territory, the war changed Israel dramatically. Israel had gained forty-two thousand square miles in the war, more than tripling its original size.38 (See Map 8.) It captured the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River (including East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights. Israel felt like a different country. Hai