DS119.7.N825

Includes bibliographical references (p. [537]-542)

Sari Nusseibeh, a philosopher, was the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chief representative in Jerusalem from 2001 to 2002, in which role he advocated a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is the president of and a professor at Al-Quds University, the Arab University of Jerusalem. Nusseibeh was educated at Oxford and Harvard, and was a Radcliffe Institute Fellow at Harvard for 2004–05. He is the author of two previous books.

Contents Prologue: A Fairytale 1. The Key 2. The Pan-Arab Nation 3. Promises, Promises 4. The Herod Gate Committee 5. The Pepper Tree 6. A Grape Vine 7. Smashing Idols 8. Sunflower 9. Monticello 10. The Lemon Tree Café 11. The Salon 12. Military Order 854 13. Masquerade 14. Murder on the Via Dolorosa 15. Faisal Husseini 16. Annex Us! 17. Sticks and Stones 18. The Exorcism 19. A Declaration of Independence 20. Interrogation 21. Ramle Prison 22. Madrid 23. A Shadow Government 24. Oslo 25. The Disappearance 26. Porcupines and Roosters 27. Holy of Holies 28. The Possessed 29. Allies 30. Checkmate 31. The Iron Fist 32. The Tigers 33. The Perfect Crime Conclusion: A Night Journey Notes Acknowledgments

A prominent Palestinian's searching, anguished, deeply affecting autobiography, in which his life story comes to be the story of the recent history of his country. Sari Nusseibeh’s autobiography is a remarkable book—one in which his dramatic life story and that of his embattled country converge in a work of great passion, depth, and emotional power. Nusseibeh was raised to represent his country. His family’s roots in Palestine traced back to the Middle Ages, and his father was the governor of Jerusalem. Educated at Oxford, he was trained to build upon his father’s support for coexistence and a negotiated solution to the problems of the region. But the wars of 1967 and 1973 spelled the beginning of the end for the vision of a unified Palestine—and Nusseibeh’s response to these events, and to those that followed, gives us the recent history from a Palestinian point of view as no book has done. From his time teaching side by side with Israelis at Hebrew University through his appointment by Yassir Arafat to administer Arab Jerusalem, he holds fast to a two-state solution, even as the powers around him insist that it is impossible. As Palestine is torn apart by settlements and barricades, corruption and violence, Nusseibeh remains true to the ideals of his youth, determined to keep hold of some faint hope for the life of his country. Once Upon a Country is a book with the scope and vitality of an old-fashioned novel—one whose ending is still uncertain.