Crossing the Line: An Israeli-Palestinian Love Story

In Crossing the Line, journalist and writer Mya Guarnieri recounts the story of a real-life Romeo and Juliet: herself, a Jewish American immigrant to Israel lecturing at a Palestinian university, and Mohamed, a fellow journalist and the son of a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

This timely memoir chronicles how, despite the Israeli-built separation barrier that stood between them, Mya and Mohamed managed to meet, fall in love, and overcome the external and internal obstacles that threatened to keep them apart. With a reporter’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s knack for nuance, she shares the political, cultural, and family problems the star-crossed lovers faced throughout their courtship. Crossing the Line is not only a reflection on her own story, however; this compelling memoir also offers an intimate look at daily life in Palestinian areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank; it explores the complexity of loving one’s ＂enemy＂; and it serves as a tortured love letter to the land and the people who call the place home.

In a dark moment in the long history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Crossing the Line is a spot of light that imagines a different future for the two peoples. It is also a universal story about the challenges of overcoming our innermost emotional barriers and making ourselves vulnerable to love.

Mya Guarnieri is a writer and award-winning journalist who spent nearly a decade covering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Author of The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel’s New Others, which was shortlisted for a Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, her reportage, commentary, essays, and short fiction have appeared in a wide variety of international publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Post, Haaretz, Le Monde Diplomatique, Foreign Policy, Slate, Guernica, Narrative Magazine, and The Kenyon Review Online.