Last update: 2022-04-22 09:49:43
Gianluca Solera’s tale begins with the wall that divides Israel and the Palestinian territories: it is the tale of a year in his life, from 2004 to 2005, spent in a land whose very name, as he writes provocatively, it is hard to define, whether Holy Land or Palestine or yet another name. The author, an untiring and curious pilgrim, moves constantly from one side of the wall to the other, gathering stories from those who live as though enclosed in a prison with an open sky and those who justify the situation as the result of a people continuously under the threat of terrorism and which therefore needs to be protected. The encounters, which take place in the most informal and quotidian of places, ultimately bring Solera to the conclusion that both he who is “occupied” and he who is the “occupier” are victim of a painfully absurd and tragic situation, which can only be resolved if civil society as a whole, Muslim, Jewish and Christian, responds and asks for the end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Only then, according to Solera, can one lay down a lasting peace for this land.
The preface is written by H. E. Msgr. Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem
