A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

Content Warning: The novel addresses themes of violence, conflict, trauma, and political tension, sensitively focusing on the human stories behind the headlines. It includes references to suicide bombings, terrorism, death, and mental health conditions.

Throughout the 20th century, intermittent wars and subsequent efforts at peace and reconciliation created a state of ever-fluctuating hope and despair for people in Israel and Palestine. While the conflict has origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many historians mark its modern onset as the 1948 Palestine War, which began with a plan from the United Nations for partitioning Palestine, resulting in the expulsion of most Palestinian Arabs and the establishment of Israel on Palestinian territory. More wars and conflicts followed throughout the 20th century, in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982.

There have been attempts to resolve the conflict, with significant progress during the Oslo Accords brokered by President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1995. Tal references this period several times in the novel, describing her father’s unfulfilled hopes for the future: “[T]he Palestinians and us, the Israelis, are finally going to agree about how to live in peace. There won’t be any more war, ever” (11). These negotiations between Israel, represented by prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, represented by Yasser Arafat, broke down after the assassination of Rabin at a demonstration for peace in 1995.

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea is set in 2003, in a historical moment characterized by the Second Intifada (or “Uprising”), also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which Tal describes as “a time of darkness, sadness, and horror” (1). There was heightened violence in the Palestinian territories and Israel between 2000 and 2005, when the hopes raised by the Oslo Accords and the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in 2000 came crashing down. The violence began in September 2000 when Israeli politician Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa compound atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; this is widely considered the third holiest site in Islam, and angry demonstrations by Palestinians who viewed Sharon’s visit as a provocation erupted into rioting. In the following days, Israeli police used rubber bullets, live ammunition, and tear gas to put down the riots.

As time wore on, the violence escalated; Israeli security forces employed tank attacks and airstrikes in the West Bank and Gaza, while Palestinians began using rocket attacks and the first suicide bombings, in which individuals bearing explosive devices enter crowded spaces and detonate them. These bombings became one of the more prominent features of the Second Intifada. It is one such bombing at the Hillel Cafe near Tal’s house that sets the plot in motion, motivating Tal to try and make contact with someone on the other side of the conflict.