When Pulitzer Prize-winning Australian author Geraldine Brooks returned to the frontline of the Israeli Palestinian conflict after an absence of 30 years she found it much changed.
Reporting from the contested territories for The Wall Street Journal until the late 1980s, there had been about 60,000 settlers in the West Bank; now there were more than 600,000.
”The huge workforce that used to enter Israel daily from Gaza no longer exists,” she said. ”West Bank Palestinians need permits to enter Israeli territory and even if they get one, they must traverse arduous checkpoints where delays can take hours.
”Apart from settlers and soldiers, few Israelis venture into the Palestinian territories, so the societies have grown even more divided, with very little casual interaction even possible.”
Brooks is the only Australian among a group of prominent international writers to contribute to a new essay collection, Kingdom of Olives and Ash, published to mark the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Read the article by Linda Morris in The Sydney Morning Herald.