Amazon amazon.com Category:  Cultures Publisher: Free Press ISBN-10:  0743250478 Pages: 320 ISBN-13: 9780743250474 In-depth stories from within Palestinian and Israeli society, this book shows how our focus on the battle between the two sides is misleading. We should be looking at the disputes within the societies -- only when they're resolved can peace come to the Middle East. In this gripping, in-the-trenches account of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, award-winning journalist Matt Rees takes us deep within Israeli and Palestinian societies to reveal the fractures at the core of both. While the world focuses almost exclusively on the violent clash between the two camps, Rees steers our gaze toward their centers, exposing the internal rifts that drain each society of its ability to act cohesively. The Palestinians focus on the occupation of the West Bank, the Jewish settlers, and other Israeli actions, while the Israelis see only the intifada and the suicide bombings -- and both overlook their bitter infighting. This dazzling, groundbreaking narrative goes behind the familiar moves of the big players to reveal the individuals who are at war not only with the enemy, but also with their own people. Beginning with the astonishing story of a Hamas member who is targeted both by Israel for his hand in attacks against Jews, and by the Palestinian Authority for the revenge killing of a police officer who murdered his brother, each chapter concentrates on one or two individuals with whom Rees has personal contact, and whose stories uncover the chaos at the hearts of these two warring groups. From Palestinian car thieves and filmmakers to Israeli settlers and Holocaust survivors, Rees traces the minute and numerous ways that Yasser Arafat betrays his people and the Israeli leadership veers between placating and abusing its clashing factions. Rees has unparalleled access to groups and people on both sides of the conflict, as well as an extraordinary talent for looking beyond the usual stories. In Cain's Field, he suggests that the world has been looking in the wrong place to explain the unending battles and in the wrong place for a solution. With heartbreaking detail, incisive revelations, and terrible and often moving stories of the human beings behind the intractable attitudes and violence, Rees offers a bold new perspective on this tragic and seemingly insoluble situation. In so doing, he also offers hope -- the hope that by turning the spotlight inward, these societies might heal their internal wounds and move toward a peaceful future.

New York Times
When a 38-year-old Palestinian named Adnan Shahine was gunned down on the streets of Bethlehem four years ago, the incident seemed unremarkable. Word quickly spread that Mr. Shahine had been working for the Israelis. In time-honored fashion, he was dealt with. The real story was somewhat different. Four months into the intifada, Israel's hit squads were beginning to strike successfully against Palestinian gunmen, using information provided by collaborators. It was imperative that a collaborator be found quickly and executed, to serve as an example. Unfortunately, no one knew who the collaborators were. Mr. Shahine, a nobody from a small, weak clan, was chosen to take the fall.

att Rees, the Jerusalem bureau chief for Time, found his way to stories like the Shahine killing only gradually. Like most reporters, he focused on the conflict between Arabs and Israelis, and the ups and downs of the peace process, which was up when he arrived, soon after the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993. He quickly found his attention turning, however, to "the truly disturbing betrayals and hatreds within these two communities - between Islamic fundamentalists and Palestinian rulers, between Israeli settlers and peace campaigners, and other ruptures I would never have imagined." Until these conflicts can be resolved, he argues, neither Israelis nor Palestinians will ever feel secure enough to deal with each other constructively.

Like the Holy Land, "Cain's Field" is split in two. In the first half, Mr. Rees plunges into the seething Palestinian refugee camps and the tortured politics that distort daily life for Palestinians. In the second, he explores the tensions between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis, between settlers and those who would trade land for peace, and between Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the more privileged Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe, the Jews who founded the state of Israel and who long controlled its politics and economy.

His sharply detailed reporting arrives at an opportune moment, when the death of Yasir Arafat has thrown a spotlight on the Palestinians' internal struggles and on their government, the Palestinian Authority. Anyone hoping for a favorable outcome will find little hope in "Cain's Field," which paints an utterly damning portrait of Arafat, the P.L.O. and the Palestinian Authority, and shows, in dramatic fashion, exactly why Hamas and Islamic Jihad have won so many hearts and minds.

The tunnels under Rafah, on the southern border of the Gaza Strip, offer a vivid illustration. After the 1981 peace agreement with Egypt, residents of the town established a thriving trade smuggling cigarettes and other goods from Egypt, just across the border. But with Arafat's return from exile in Tunis in 1994, P.L.O. gunmen muscled in on the trade and began running weapons through the tunnels as well. From time to time, they would fire away at a concrete Israeli guard tower at the edge of the town's refugee camp. When the Israelis fired back, the P.L.O. gained credibility, and the right to brand opponents to their racketeering as Israeli collaborators.

Eventually, after the intifada heated up, the Israelis began bulldozing houses in the refugee camps. And so it happened that Ahmed Muhammed, an unemployed tiler, woke up one day to find that he and his five children were homeless. No help was forthcoming from the Palestinian Authority for Mr. Muhammed and his neighbors, but Hamas responded, donating blankets. Hamas also took on the Israelis in earnest, detonating 400 pounds of TNT in a tunnel underneath the guard tower. Hamas scored double victories in contests like this. It showed muscle against the Israelis, and earned gratitude for its humanitarian work when the Israelis struck back. The P.L.O., meanwhile, reaped nothing but resentment.

This sentiment is worth bearing in mind as Mahmoud Abbas mounts his bid to become Arafat's successor. He makes an appearance in "Cain's Field." Mr. Rees describes his showy mansion in Gaza, "surrounded incongruously by rubble-strewn sandlots" where his bodyguards lounge in the shade. "I spit on the day they came from Tunis,"' a Palestinian tells Mr. Rees as he stands in line at the U.N. Food Distribution Center. "'I'd like to see them all shot in the street."'

The Israelis, meanwhile, have their own internal problems, in a society that Mr. Rees describes as "a skein of fraternal hostility." He tells the story of Elhanan Ben-Hakoun, the owner of a photo store in Jerusalem that also sells Hollywood movies on CD. In the mid-1980's, ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews began taking over the neighborhood, and suddenly films like "Free Willy," which showed men and women kissing, or wearing skimpy clothing, became a serious problem. Confrontations occurred. Then demonstrations. In a confused struggle, Mr. Ben-Hakoun knocked a revered rabbi, known as Reb Yudel, to the ground. He struck his head against a police van and later died. That night, the photo store was burned to the ground.

Mr. Rees searches the horizon for hopeful signs. He finds a few. There is Nizar Hassan, an Israeli Arab whose documentary film about the 2002 Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp, "Invasion," tries to move beyond the portrayal of Palestinians as passive victims and Israelis as inhuman oppressors. On the Israeli side, he draws a sentimental portrait of Haim Uliel, the son of Moroccan Jews who records an album of traditional Moroccan music, sung in Moroccan Arabic, that, against the odds, is an underground best-seller and strikes a blow for Sephardic culture.

But otherwise the picture is bleak. In Mr. Rees's view, Israelis and Arabs both feed on the myth that their problems begin and end with the other side. "Each wishes to see himself as Abel," he writes, "no matter how much he might in reality be Cain, lashing out resentfully at his own."

Jewish Week
Journalist Matt Rees drew on the story of Cain and Abel for his first book on the Middle East.

Journalist Matt Rees was born in Wales, the great-nephew of two brothers who joined the Imperial Camel Corps and made their way to Egypt in 1916. His uncles fought in a World War I campaign that brought fame to another Welsh-born soldier, Col. T.E. Lawrence of Arabia. In 1917, the year in which the Balfour Declaration was issued, they rode through Jerusalem astride their camels.

Eighty years after his uncles’ journey, Rees traveled to the Middle East to report on the conflict. Now bureau chief in Jerusalem for Time, he has been covering the region for eight years. In his first book, the award-winning correspondent looks to the relationships between brothers who, unlike his uncles, don’t get along. His focus is not the conflict between Palestinian and Israeli, but among the people on each side; it’s a picture of betrayals, hatred and, sometimes, violence.

Rees draws on another pair of brothers for the title of his book, “Cain’s Field: Faith, Fratricide and Fear in the Middle East”(Free Press). As he writes, “These two Middle Eastern nations battle over a land that was the field Cain farmed in the Book of Genesis. Cain’s offering of “the fruit of the ground” pleased God less than the “firstlings of his flock” offered by his brother Abel, a shepherd. He explains that Cain, who felt wronged by God, answered with a new wrong, murder. As he traveled around Israel and looked more closely at different readings of the text, he began to see the story differently than he had as a child, when Cain was seen as simply evil. Instead, he empathizes with Cain’s simple humanity and sees divine injustice. But, as he points out, people on each side, both Palestinians and Israelis, see themselves as Abel, having been wronged by their brother Cain.

The book is particularly timely, in light of Arafat’s death and new possibilities for hope in the Middle East. Rees writes about individuals, many of whom have not spoken publicly before, and he proves himself a good listener and skillful storyteller. Each chapter is built around internal rifts, whether between supporters of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, or secular and fervently Orthodox Jews. While still the objective journalist, it’s clear that Rees cares deeply about the people he’s writing about. He has a great eye for detail, noticing, for instance, that the cell phone of a Palestinian father — whose unarmed son was killed by Arafat’s police and another son is wanted for the revenge killing — trills out the Lambada.

“Neither side,” he writes, “will be able to risk a true peace with the other until it feels secure enough in its own society. Without such a sense of security, the internal ruptures will prove deep and will be disastrously exacerbated by attempts to make peace with the other side. That’s why an Israeli rightist shot Prime Minister Rabin, and it’s also why the peace process inexorably led the Palestinians toward their violent intifada of the last few years.”

“It seems to me now,” he writes, “that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is like the spark that jumps between two electrodes. The electrical charge flashing between the two is sides is real, but to focus entirely upon it, as interpreters of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle are do, is to ignore the tangle of wires leading back from each electrode to the source of the current.”

The Jewish Week met with Rees, 37, while he was in New York last month. He looks like Central Casting’s version of a foreign correspondent: Tall and confident with rugged good looks, he speaks both Hebrew and Arabic, and his English is Welsh-accented. Before moving to Israel, he lived in New York for six years and covered Wall Street. From the time he arrived in Jerusalem, he was struck by how much he liked the people he met. He says that he never met people who explained the drama of their lives in ways that are eloquent and real, as Israelis and Palestinians do.

Unlike his uncles, Rees is a Jew. He converted before his marriage, although he is now divorced. To the Palestinians, he doesn’t look like an Israeli, “which is what a Jew looks like,” so his identity is concealed.

Even those who study the conflict intently will learn something from this book. On the Israeli side, one of the most surprising and troubling chapters, “The Dark Refuge,” relates to the treatment of Holocaust survivors in the country’s mental institutions. He profiles Dr. Yoram Barak who has been working to ease their current suffering, recognizing that absolutely nothing can make up for being “consigned to little more than a steamy dungeon for half a century by the State of Israel, the country that was supposed to be a haven for people just like this.”

When Dr. Barak takes a new job as head of a hospital psychogeriatrics ward, he learns that most of his patients do not speak, and all are survivors. Rees explains that “this ghostly quiet was a mirror of the silence that greeted these people in Israel when they came from Europe. It was not only Barak’s predecessor who was complicit. An entire society refused to listen to these people when they arrived.” After experiencing the worst of inhumanity, most suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. But they were incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenics and were treated over the years with insulin shocks, cold-water showers, antipsychotic drugs, electroconvulsive treatments and lithium — beatings too. No one talked to them.

He highlights the Sephardi-Ashkenazi rift by interviewing a singer who asserts a new identity performing the songs of his Moroccan background. And he interviews settlers and those on the Israeli left.

On the Palestinian side, he follows stories of splits between the old guard and young guard, between power brokers and street fighters, fugitives and henchmen. He interviews Zakaria Baloush, an official who had been part of Arafat’s inner circle, who speaks openly about Arafat’s destructive and divisive rule. Rees spends time with Hamas member Imad Akel, tracking him down in a refugee camp and in relatives’ homes. Akel, who was sought both by the Palestinian Authority, for a revenge killing, and by the Israelis, for killing Jews, told Rees that if he wrote truthfully about him, the two men would be in paradise together one day. But Rees thought that surely Akel would arrive first, “for he sought it and there were many who wished to send him to the world beyond life, whether he found paradise there or not.”

Although the stories in the book can be harsh and profoundly sad, Rees is ultimately hopeful about positive changes, both within the two societies and between them. “I think that right now we have the opportunity, with the death of Arafat, to really change Palestinian society fundamentally,” he says. He sees the situation getting better between individuals, if people learn to listen to one another and to look inward. “It’s harder to hate a person you can put a face on than an institution,” he adds.

He’s critical of much daily reporting, which he sees as cliché-ridden and formulaic, too dependent on what the leaders are thinking. Unfortunately, he says, many journalists are trying to find the story, not the reality.

Time
TIME Jerusalem bureau chief Matt Rees has spent almost a decade living and working at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here he recounts how the internal divisions within the two traumatized societies inspired his new book, "Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East":

When I was a boy in Wales, my great-uncle Dai used to get drunk at Christmas and drop his trousers to show my scandalized aunts the scar on his buttock. A Turkish bullet struck him as he and his brother secured the road north of Jerusalem in 1917 with the Imperial Camel Corps.

A couple of years ago, I found myself on the same stretch of road where Dai got his wound, with gunfire all around. Thankfully my backside was saved the fate of my great-uncle’s rear-end, but it was a reminder that the bullets haven’t stopped flying since the Camel Corps rode through the Holy Land.

Those two brothers, who came from a Welsh mining valley, thought they were liberating the holy city. At the same time, their political leaders issued the Balfour Declaration, supporting a home for the Jews in Palestine. In England, when the news came of the Camel Corps’s success, church bells rang for the peace of Jerusalem.
So much for that. It’s often easy to imagine the firing will never stop. But none of the explanations and conventional wisdom about why the violence continues made sense. It was clear to me that the divisions within the two societies contributed to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — in fact, they perpetuated it. Yet on both sides people told me they’d deal with their internal differences after they made peace with the other side. I realized they had it the wrong way around, and so I decided to write my book.
In my new book, Cain’s Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East (Simon and Schuster), I write that “from Lawrence of Arabia to Bill Clinton, Westerners applied their apparently logical perceptions of the conflict to a potential resolution, colored by romantic notions of the noble desert Bedouin or an evangelical inspiration to succor the biblical Hebrews in their homeland. These solutions failed because they missed something — the terrible insecurity which afflicts both societies.”

Until Israelis can feel secure about their own ability to live together, they can't take the risk to make a real peace with the other side. The same is true of Palestinians, whose leaders find it impossible to turn away from violence as a way of pressuring Israel — and controlling their own people.

I began my book with the tale of a member of Hamas who is wanted both by Israel, for his hand in numerous attacks against Jews, and by the Palestinian Authority, for the revenge killing of a police officer who murdered his brother. It's a story of one man slowly learning that the straightforward realities he believed were at the root of his people's struggle are more confused than he thought, dirtied by the corruption of people at the top. In the end, the only solution he can find is to kill one of his compatriots. Meanwhile, for the first time anywhere in an independent source, I detail the way Arafat funded the gunmen of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades while failing to pay the salaries of his own police force.

Cain’s Field concentrates each chapter on one or two individuals with whom I've had personal contact, from an Arafat henchman to a bereaved Israeli settler and one of Tel Aviv's most popular rock stars. Their stories tell truths about the chaos at the hearts of these peoples. But my book also offers hope — that by turning the spotlight inward, these societies might heal their internal wounds, and move towards a peaceful future.

Most foreign correspondents roll through the Middle East for at most four or five years, and usually only a few months. By the time they start to sense the superficiality of most news coverage in the region and to understand the way historic injustices spread their tentacles through every layer of society, it's time for them to move on to another posting. I've been in Jerusalem eight years, working first for The Scotsman and for the last four years for TIME, and I'm still here.


I spent years in the dusty streets of Gaza and the noisy synagogues of Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, documenting the divisions between Israelis and other Israelis, and the rifts amongst the Palestinians. From the actions of the people I met in those places, I realized that neither side of this conflict can make the other side change. But they can change their own societies and, in doing so, they can bring peace closer.