Voices from Gaza, historic city in ruins

00:00 05:40

Anthony Sattin has narrated this article for you to listen to.

I have been reviewing for decades and this is by far the most difficult book I have taken on: difficult to read because it relates to what Israel has done in Gaza over the last year, and difficult to write about because the subject is so divisive. But whether you think Palestinians deserve what is happening to them or that Israel is a rogue state, please read to the end.

First there is the title. Not Catastrophe, or Genocide, or Reckoning in Gaza, but Daybreak. This is a book that carries the promise of a new day, or a dawning – a book that looks forward, but does so also by looking back over 4,000 years of history. It has come out of a collaboration between the celebrated Jerusalem bookseller Mahmoud Muna and the British author Matthew Teller, whose excellent Nine Quarters of Jerusalem (2022) was a comprehensive and revelatory account of the troubled city.