Disheartening may be the best word to describe Wendy Pearlman's poignant book: Occupied Voices: Stories of Loss and Longing from the Second Intifada. As the Middle East peace process sputters along, this book stands as a timely reminder of deep-seated conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians.

Pearlman is a writer on Middle Eastern affairs and Karl Deutsch fellow of Government at Harvard University. She is also Jewish. For this project, she immersed herself in the lives of Palestinians to offer oral narratives from everyday people: mothers, doctors, shop owners, professors.

"The personal stories and heartfelt reflections that I encountered did not expose a hatred of Jews or a yearning to push Israelis into the sea," she writes. "Rather, they painted a portrait of a people who longed for precisely that which had inspired the first Israelis: the chance to be citizens in a country of their own."

Pearlman's observations, as well as those of her subjects, reflect the frustrations and fears Palestinians have experienced in the last few years.

The Second Intifada, or armed uprising of which Pearlman writes, erupted in September 2000 after Ariel Sharon and his 1,000-soldier entourage visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. According to the author, Palestinians took up arms because they were trying to express their exasperation over seven years of talks that saw the transfer of administrative duties to the Palestinian Authority, but still left Israel in control of their lives.

It was a time of violence. "The period from Sharon's visit to Al-Aqsa until the end of 2000 was a period in which the Israeli army shot ambulances and journalists . . . uprooted thousands of trees, demolished hundreds of homes and gave cover to armed settlers roaming the Palestinian countryside as if it were the Wild West."

Central to the Palestinian problem is land, and this is reflected in the author's presentation of oral interviews, which are stunning and vivid.

A mother tells the tragic story of her "good" son being killed by Israeli soldiers as he was trying to drag his wounded friend out of the street. A farmer who has 12 children watches in shock as Israeli settlers demolish his farmland and greenhouses. A doctor's tears fall into the abdomen of his nephew whom he's desperately trying to save.

The situation seemed worse when Pearlman returned to the Palestinian territories just prior to 2003. Dr. Mohammed Aida, the director of Ambulance and Emergency Services for the Palestinian Ministry of Health, told her that when the Israelis re-entered Ramallah, the hospital morgue was overflowing with bodies. Because of curfews, cadavers couldn't be transported to the cemetery so they were dropped off at the hospital parking lot. There were times when telephones, water and electricity had been cut off. In Hebron, the city's infrastructure had been destroyed, schools scorched and roads gutted.

Overriding anger and frustration permeates the end of Occupied Voices, especially when the author refers to Palestinian children's fear and sense of hopelessness. The author concludes that Palestinians, like Israelis, brace themselves for a future dominated by unknowns.

Occupied Voices doesn't offer the other side of the story. There are no Israeli voices here; Israeli officials were given no chance for rebuttal. In this way, you can't say it's a balanced presentation of the Middle East situation.

But it isn't meant to be.

Pearlman offers up the words of Palestinians, fresh and raw. One can almost see this author sigh when she writes that Palestinian families "expect the worst."

Dolores Derrickson is a freelance writer living in Aurora.