Max Blumenthal in The Daily Beast:
On June 3, a day before President Obama arrived in Cairo, I met Israeli author David Grossman at a café in central Jerusalem. A small, soft-spoken man with a shock of sandy brown hair, Grossman shook with rage when he mentioned the settlers—“They have enslaved the future of Israel”—and insisted that Israel could not negotiate a solution to its conflict with the Palestinians without outside pressure from Obama. As for what form of leverage Obama should employ, Grossman said only that he hoped that any clash between Washington and Israel would “be settled between friends.”
Few Israeli literary figures have critiqued the country’s conflict with the Palestinians as commandingly as Grossman. In 1987, he published a series of searing but uniquely introspective reports from the West Bank that chronicled the mounting rage of Palestinians suffering under a deepening occupation. His dispatches infuriated many Israelis, however, when they were compiled into a book and translated into English as The Yellow Wind. Grossman became an internationally bestselling author, and when the first intifada exploded immediately after the book’s publication, he appeared prophetic.
More here.