Introduction Summary

The introduction opens with a lyrical wandering through the streets of Jerusalem from sunrise to high noon, painting word pictures of a myriad of buildings and people. It continues with meditations on the author's final weeks in the city before his 1984 reassignment. Shipler focuses on the variety of life at the Damascus Gate. Four thousand years of history pass in compact summary, helping the reader feel how Palestinians and Israeli Jews experience the past.

After his brilliant sketch of history, Shipler declares his plan for the book: first, he will reveal the broad forces that contribute to aversion and serve to scar the minds of individual Arabs and Jews; second, to catalog the images by which individuals on each side perceive their neighbors; and third, to unravel the complexities of interaction by which the tiny minority of high-minded individuals on each side strive...