“Gaza is a mirror of the future. A new world is being built, in which the rules of the game have changed. The Gaza genocide has much to do with the global drift toward the law of the strongest, led by the far right,” stated Cristina Mas, Deputy Head of International at ARA, in a meeting with subscribers. When asked by one of the attendees about the personal cost of working on the ground in conflict zones in the Middle East, she replied: “I accept the personal cost, and it is very small compared to what the citizens of the region suffer. As a journalist, it is my job and my duty to explain the Gaza genocide, and being able to explain it also helps me.”

Abu Salim, a journalist from Gaza, explained to Cristina Mas, a journalist from ARA and author of the book Palestine from within (Now Books), who returned home one day to find his wife and sister arguing over which library books they would burn so they could cook something: "They couldn't agree because, to one or the other, everyone was important." There are countless passages in the book that are much harsher and more shocking, from unspeakable torture to the cold-blooded murder of minors by snipers, but due to a professional flaw, this moment in the book has stayed with me. I think the same thing would happen to us at home. Like the women of the Salim family, books are the last physical object I would want to get rid of in a dire situation.

We already knew Cristina Mas's committed journalism from her chronicles and pieces in the ARA, but in the book Palestine from within (Ara Llibres) we find much more. Not only does it contain the substance of some seventy illuminating interviews, as befits a front-line reporter with extensive knowledge of the field in Gaza and the West Bank, but it also lets her historian's side shine through. The result is a clarifying and rigorous volume that allows us to fully understand one of the most entrenched conflicts on the planet: with the perspective of time but also from the proximity of those who live it, or suffer it.