This Heated Place: Encounters in the Promised Land

This Heated Place takes readers into twenty-first century Israel and the occupied territories. Deborah Campbell, a Canadian student at Tel Aviv University during the Gulf War, returns to the region after a ten-year absence, seeking insights into one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. She drives through the West Bank with an American-Israeli settler in his bombproof SUV; attends the Love Parade in Tel Aviv, where thousands of Israeli ravers celebrate under armed guard; visits a Palestinian family in Hebron following an Israeli army raid; talks to girls at an Islamic school in Gaza; meets Israeli refuseniks who have spent time in prison for their stance; and drinks tea at the refugee camp home of the family of twelve-year-old Mohammad al-Durrah, whose dramatic death in his father’s arms made him the Arab world’s symbol of opposition to Israeli occupation.