Terre d’amour et de feu

Terre d’amour et de feu brings together three pieces of reportage written in Palestine, then Israel, in 1926, 1948 and 1961, bearing witness to successive stages in the creation and growth of the State of Israel. Kessel, born to Jewish parents, decided in 1964 to gather these writings and rework them into a personal, updated account of the history of Palestine and Israel, from the earliest desert settlements, through the war that led to its official founding, to the age of its sovereignty. “Few things are as moving as the sight of a few young women watching over the sleep or play of dozens of children with the same love. Tomorrow, they will go to the fields to do a man’s work. I am not exaggerating, I am not carried away by facile lyricism. What I write, I saw, I witnessed.”

At the time, he saw only the first sketches, the first dreams of a coexistence that aspired to be peaceful.

Sixty years later, it must be acknowledged that this hope has, unfortunately, not been fulfilled.