Book review: You Can't Hide the Sun, By John McCarthy

Brave, humane, well-observed, and free of cheap rhetoric, the former hostage's book about the Palestinian minority within Israel should sit on the desk of every Middle Eastern pundit.

As he travels from Haifa to Jaffa, Nazareth to Jerusalem, McCarthy meets the 20-odd per cent of Israel's people left in "permament limbo" after the state's creation in 1948.

Though he does visit the occupied West Bank, his book above all gives a voice to the Palestinians within - tinged by nostalgia, resignation, defiance, and bitter wit.