All the rivers by Dorit Rabinyan failed to move me. This Romeo and Juliet story updated with an Israeli and Palestinian was predictable. Rabinyan is a good writer and her dialogue and use of metaphors is excellent but if you can't make me cry, then it is hard for me to recommend. ( )

Israeli Liat and Palestinian Hilmi meet in New York, neutral ground, in 2001 and fall in love. Writing a political novel is a tricky balancing act, especially one in which the main characters are, in some sense, a personification of the political. Characters in fiction must also be people, not representations that exist to give speeches. Although there are a couple of explicit conversations about the conflict, most of the politics here are delicately drawn. Everything in their lives is political, from Liat's army service, to food, to the very languages they speak (they communicate in English; some of Hilmi's Arabic is rendered as it would have been in the Hebrew original, translated in footnotes).

There is no great resolution here, no grand statements. Their relationship is both wonderful and incredibly, impossibly sad. Rabinyan doesn't stake out a position on the conflict; she does, however, try to shrink it to a complex miniature. ( )

This story of a doomed love affair between an Israeli girl and a Palestinian man is moving and well written. The affair is possible because both are temporarily in New York. It is doomed, however, because both are too tied to their families, their homelands, and their political beliefs to consider working out a relationship that could last. The ending is profoundly sad, but not surprising. One strength of the book is the vividness with which is shows the political passion of the two protagonists. To some degree, this is also a weakness -- a love story in which there is no possibility of an ongoing relationship (forget happily ever after) lacks a certain suspense. Still and all, well worth reading. ( )

Thanks to a generous donation to our library, you will be able to read this love story fraught with controversy that was banned in Israeli schools by the Ministry of Education. This “Romeo and Juliet” story is about an Israeli linguistics student on a fellowship in New York, who meets, and subsequently, becomes enamored by a Palestinian painter who is from Ramallah, in the West Bank. Although fully aware of the potential complications and repercussions, she engages in an intense and passionate six-month relationship with him until she returns to Israel. The obstacle of their political differences seems nonexistent in the diaspora of New York City but poses impenetrable obstacles in their respective homelands. Although the couple attempts to put aside their political differences, the Israeli-Palestinian tension permeates every aspect of her relationship. “Through Liat’s narration, the reader is able to empathize with the lovers and ask themselves what, or who, is worth sacrificing our values and cultural identity for.”

All the Rivers is the title given to the English translation of a novel by Israeli author Dorit Rabinyan which was banned from Israeli schools. It's the story of a relationship that forms between an Israeli translator working in New York on a temporary basis and a Palestinian artist. The story is interesting, but unremarkable except for their heritages. Liat reacts by hiding the relationship from her family and living under a fear of being seen by someone from back home whenever they are together in public, a fear that extends to being seen by anyone from Israel. Hilmi is unafraid of their relationship and his frustration comes from being sent out of the room when her parents call, even as his insistence in including Liat in an evening meal when his brother visits from Ramallah results in an uncomfortable evening for everyone.

This book did give me an insight into how intractable the division between the Israelis and the Palestinians is, even as Hilmi remains optimistic about the future. They both live with the damage the long conflict has done to them, creating areas where they can't communicate. This isn't a trite story of love conquering all, and even when they are together in New York, their relationship is a very real one. In the end, Rabinyan fails to stick the landing, writing an ending that carefully skirts around any hard decisions on the part of Hilmi and Liat, and one that also avoids making any sort of meaningful comment on Israeli-Palestinian relations. I'm left wondering if this careful circling around of the issues still resulted in All the Rivers being viewed as controversial, what would have happened had Rabinyan refused to allow her characters an easy way out? ( )