Laetitia Bucaille. Growing up Palestinian: Israeli Occupation and the Intifada Generation.

• Position: Book review

Laetitia Bucaille. Growing up Palestinian: Israeli Occupation and the Intifada Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2004. Hardback $21.95.

The book is an intense account of growing up as a Palestinian in the context of social and political despair. Bucaille describes, in immense detail, the daily lives and experiences of three Palestinian youth since the first Intifada in 1987, to their raised hopes in 1994 after attaining the Palestinian Authority, and to their disappointment when they realized that their leaders were incapable of achieving the goal of national liberation. She contends that the Al-Aqsa Intifada is a consequence of this disappointment. The author further explores how "for at the end the history of the Palestinian confrontation is inseparable from the history of the Palestinian's confrontation with themselves" (XIX).

Bucaille swiftly recognizes that the aim of Israel's continuous repression is to exhaust Palestinian society. Israel's Intensifying repression led to serious escalation of violence, including suicide martyrdom and radicalization. However, though she does not specify the dialectical relationship between the two, she arrives at the same conclusion. The increase in repression and sophistication of the methods of repression produce their antithesis and sophistication of the resistance to the occupation by the Palestinians.

In her analysis of the effect of the continuation of conflict on the Palestinian side she suggests that it weakened the Palestinian society. The...