It is nearly impossible to side with either the Israelis or the Palestinians. If you understand both sides, you are sympathetic to both causes. But this isn't about choosing sides. For Sacco, this is about understanding. Like most Americans (and a lot of the world), Sacco had a certain view of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and that view usually said that Israel was fighting for its land against Palestinian terrorists.
So basically, around 1948, Britain decided to clear out the Palestinians and make a Jewish homeland, in present day Israel/Palestine. Around 400,000 Palestinian refugees were displaced from their homes. Now Israel, backed financially by the United States (to the tune of $2,400,000,000 annually for military alone) and Britain, possesses incredible amounts of control over the land and over the Palestinians, who now live in these kind of slums, under Israeli martial law.
Sacco is clearly, after his two month long stay in Palestine, sympathetic towards the Palestinian plight. And even knowing the Israeli side of things, it's hard not to side with the Palestinians. Yes, Hamas is a Palestinian organization but they are extremists, just like any other political state is going to have their extremists who think violence to the only solution. You can't point at a peoples extremist organizations and say, "Look! They are all terrorists!" It's more complicated than that. It's always more complicated than that.
Through Sacco's interviews with dozens and dozens of Palestinians and Israelis, we are left with little hope for the region. But the reader is given a chance to understand the voice of the Palestinian, a voice that has for too long been heard through the distorted megaphone of political rhetoric and media misrepresentation. They are prisoners in their own land. Families with children, living in squalor and fear. Stories of extreme non-safety, of random raids and emprisonment. Imagine your home is broken into, except you know it might be broken into at any moment and you will be home because there is a 8 o'clock curfew and you might be beaten or taken to prison or killed or forced to leave while they bulldoze your house and destroy your olive trees, your entire livelihood. This is Palestine.
"Israeli's are tired of apologizing for the occupied territories! There was a war! We won the land in the war! It's our land now!" -an Israeli, pg. 264
"You know what the peace process is? It is our Palestinian leaders signing papers to make what the Israelis have done legal. But it doesn't matter. Let them make it legal. It doesn't change a thing!" -an elderly Palestinian man, pg. 278
"And if I had guessed before I got here, and found with little astonishment once I'd arrived, what can happen to someone who thinks he has all the power, what of this---what becomes of someone when he believes himself to have none?" -Joe Sacco, pg. 283
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