In four main sections Sibony analyzes the emotional quandary each side (and there are more than two) finds itself in with respect to the untenable situation. First, he takes account of the experience of the Palestinians; next, of the rest of the Arab world; then on to the Jewish-Israeli dilemma; and finally, the rest of the West.

All are coming up against something much greater than the obvious sparks of discord: land, socio-economic inequality, or differences in religious views. The unspoken source of the conflict and the surrounding hatred (which to the psychoanalyst looks a lot like a return of the repressed) is the unconscious and unbearable debt that Islam owes Judaism: indeed, according to Sibony, the very foundation of Islam, the Koran, is a rewriting of the Bible that includes a total expulsion of Jews and Christians, the “un-submissive." If Islam’s existence rests on this primal expulsion, then the Jewish return to the Holy Land, symbolized by the State of Israel, directly and painfully confronts the Muslim consciousness in a nefarious and paralyzing (in the case of the suicide bombers) hold.

As a first step out of the quagmire, Sibony calls for an evolution of the Koran’s place at the heart of the Muslim faith: from a text to be followed at face value to something closer to what Christians and Jews have made of their sacred texts, venerated depositories of tradition and inspiration, to be contemplated from the distance of time and through the prism of history.

In a powerful blend of history, religion, literary criticism, and current affairs, Daniel Sibony unearths some essential and embedded truths that need to be recognized, spoken, and reckoned with before any real peace in the Middle East can be achieved.