Travels with Bassem: A Palestinian and a Jew Find Friendship in a War-Torn Land

In the summer of 1988, about six months into the First Palestinian Intifada—an uprising by Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip—journalist Mike Sager, a Jew, was sent by the Washington Post Sunday Magazine to investigate the human toll of the uprising. While much was known about the political situation at the time, little had been reported about the actual conditions of Palestinians living as refugees in squalid camps on or near lands that were onc...