An estimated 3,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel currently volunteer to
serve in the Israeli military, a force fighting other Palestinians just
miles away in occupied territories. Surrounded takes a close look at
this controversial group of soldiers, examining the complex reasons
these people join the army and the wider implications of their decisions
in terms of security and citizenship.
Most observers perceive a clear and powerful divide in the political
tensions and open hostilities between the State of Israel and the
Palestinian people, but often fail to notice those who straddle this
divide--Palestinian citizens of Israel. These soldiers comprise no more
than half a percent of this population, but their stories provide a
powerful vantage point from which to consider a question faced by all
Palestinians in Israel: to what extent are they, in fact, Israeli?
Surrounded contains over seventy interviews with soldiers, and
provides a unique glimpse of their conflicting experiences of
acceptance, integration, and marginalization within the Israeli
military. Concluding with comparisons to similar situations around the
world, the book upends nationalist understandings of how wars and those
who fight in them work. A key to a more complex understanding of ethnic
conflict, this gripping and revealing look at a select group of soldiers
will immensely alter ideas about the reasons why people choose to fight,
particularly on "the wrong side" of a war.