Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor: A New York Times Bestseller on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Hope for Peace

New York Times Bestseller

"A clarion call, not to arms but to empathy. . . a profound and original book."—Wall Street Journal

Attempting to break the agonizing impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes. And now, in a new epilogue, Palestinian readers have been given a chance to respond through their own powerful letters.

I call you "neighbor" because I don’t know your name, or anything personal about you. Given our circumstances, "neighbor" might be too casual a word to describe our relationship. We are intruders into each other’s dream, violators of each other’s sense of home. We are incarnations of each other’s worst historical nightmares. Neighbors?

Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians and into the hearts of "the enemy." In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi explains what motivated him to leave his native New York in his twenties and move to Israel to explore the complexities of Zionism and participate in the drama of the renewal of a Jewish homeland, which he is committed to see succeed as a morally responsible, democratic state in the Middle East.

This is the first attempt by an Israeli author to directly address his Palestinian neighbors and describe how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes. Halevi untangles the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the conflict for nearly a century, offering a powerful Israeli perspective on the path to peace. In lyrical, evocative language, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel, using history and personal experience as his guide.

Halevi’s letters speak not only to his Palestinian neighbor, but to all concerned global citizens, helping us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately help determine the fate of the region, making this book essential reading for anyone interested in Middle East peace.

Based on a lifetime of wrestling with the region’s politics and his own religious identity, Halevi offers a powerful framework for understanding:

• The Zionist Dream: Why a young American Jew would leave the comfort of New York for the heart of the Middle East conflict, and what the renewal of a Jewish homeland means to Israelis.
• The Israeli Narrative: A frank and vulnerable look at how the conflict appears through Israeli eyes, untangling the complex strands of faith, pride, anger, and anguish that define the nation’s identity.
• A Path to a Two-State Solution: A painful but necessary exploration of partition, acknowledging the trauma for both sides while arguing for a future of mutual respect and recognition.
• Groundbreaking Interfaith Dialogue: A courageous attempt to reach beyond the wall, inviting response and initiating a conversation that continues in a new epilogue featuring powerful letters from Palestinian readers.

Yossi Klein Halevi is an American-born writer who has lived in Jerusalem since 1982. He is a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land and Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, which won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Family Book of the Year Award for Best Jewish Book in 2013. Together with Imam Abdullah Antelpi of Duke University, he co-directs the Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative. He and his wife, Sarah, have three children.