Ehrenreich is the author of two well-received novels and he brings a novelist’s eye to his subject, framing the bulk of his book around one village, Nabi Saleh, 30 miles north-west of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and around a group of a few dozen protesters, most of them confusingly from the same extended Tamimi family ... It is in the author’s descriptions of the Tamimis that the hope, and the love, are to be found; the dedication day after day to an effort that yields only failure, sometimes arrest and injury, and even death; and the concern that the Tamimis share for each other, waiting outside detention centres and hospitals for news of a relative ... Mr Ehrenreich did not set out to write an objective book; he does not even think it is possible. This is simply a description, detailed and sometimes too much so, of what the facts on the ground look like if you are one of a particular group of Palestinians in the West Bank. It should be read by friends and foes of Israel alike.
...utterly heartbreaking ... Ehrenreich moves among them, visits their homes, shares their meals, and again and again in the course of the book seems surprised and touched by the quiet resolve, even the grace, with which they bear up under day-to-day circumstances that would very quickly drive most of this book's readers to complete despair ... The inhabitants of towns like 'Planet Hebron' face this kind of violence virtually every day, and Ehrenreich is a keen observer both of the ways this has deepened their family bonds and also the way it's sharpened the cynicism of everybody he meets ... For those ordinary people of the West Bank, whose lives Ben Ehrenreich has so sadly and wonderfully chronicled in The Way to the Spring, it means a further tightening of the noose, the light of a better future receding that much farther away.
...a sobering, iconoclastic 'collection of stories about resistance, and about people who resist,' marred slightly by the author’s unwillingness to subject Palestinian militant activity, which has often included terrorism, to moral scrutiny ... Those eager to dismiss Ehrenreich’s shocking anecdotes as selective would do well to take heed of the facts and figures that the author, like others before him, painstakingly cites to support his arguments ... There are a few problems with The Way to the Spring. All the resistance Ehrenreich documents in Nabi Saleh, Hebron and elsewhere is either nonviolent or potentially violent but in reality ineffectual (as with the youths throwing stones at heavily armed and armored soldiers). He acknowledges that Palestinians have resorted to violence and sometimes killed Israeli civilians, but he doesn’t linger on this issue or reveal his thoughts on the matter, despite the generally reflective nature of his writing ... These concerns aside, Ehrenreich deserves kudos for digging beneath the unsightly outer manifestations of the occupation to reveal its even uglier innards.
Some will argue that in making this argument, the author reveals he’s not an impartial journalist. Ehrenreich doesn’t dispute this interpretation — he embraces it ... Such boldness is one of the book’s defining traits. Convinced that it’s impossible to discuss the relevant issues without appearing to pick a side, Ehrenreich, a novelist and a National Magazine Award winner, is open about his sympathies ... those willing to listen will find that Ehrenreich’s industrious reporting can help us better understand some of those at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. His scope is narrow and his book has its flaws. But this doesn’t mean that The Way to the Spring is any less distressing or important ... the vast majority of The Way to the Spring is made up of much more solid reporting. Ehrenreich proves to be the kind of tough-minded yet searching writer we need to help us understand this intractable divide, and the people shaped by it.
...both heartbreaking and eye-opening ... The intimacy of Ehrenreich’s reporting domesticates the violence and injustice, thus rendering it more shocking ... The narrative doesn’t linger for long with any one character. Like an overeager tour guide, Ehrenreich has too much to show us and too much to say ... Ehrenreich’s haunting, poignant and memorable stories add up to a weighty contribution to the Palestinian side of the scales of history.
[Ehrenreich] plunges into hotbeds of Palestinian resistance with an intimacy one rarely sees from a Western journalist. And good for him: an American readership needs to see what makes the Palestinian struggle tick ... you might like to know if this testimony is coming from supporters of suicide bombings — I want to know that. Ehrenreich’s book is not entirely forthcoming on this subject ... What you feel when you finish the book is that — alongside its author, with his brilliant eye for detail and his deep compassion — you have walked with the Palestinian people for a time.
By the time Ehrenreich started writing this heartfelt book, he had decided that Israeli political and military leaders were monsters, cruelly ordering Jewish troops and civil servants to harass, oppress and sometimes murder Palestinians day after day. Much of Ehrenreich’s conclusion is based on what he observed directly. The remainder derives from a copious amount of interviewing, as well as archival research and extensive reading of contemporary texts ... At times, Ehrenreich attempts to understand and explain the Israeli/Jewish perspective, but such passages in the book are rare. He did not intend to offer any sort of balance. Whether the intentional imbalance resulted in a necessary exposé or an emotional screed must be left with each reader ... Speaking only for myself, I am grateful to have absorbed Ehrenreich’s accounts.
