Death As a Way of Life by David Grossman tr. Haim Watzman <br></br>Someone to Run With by David Grossman tr. V Almog and M Gurantz

Julia Pascal admires the clear-sighted optimism and gripping fiction of a dove among hawks

In the 34 essays of Death As A Way of Life, novelist David Grossman charts the past 10 years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This is an eclectic mix of reflections which reinforces Grossman's position as a major political writer. Like Amos Oz, he stands as the moral conscience of Israel.

Despite the nadir of current politics, Grossman is one of the few public figures who still has some slight optimism about Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. Nowhere is this more poignant than in his "Letter to A Palestinian Friend". Like so many of the left, Grossman despairs at the current lack of contact between Jews and Palestinians. Attacking both sides, he blames his fellow Israelis for their coma-like collective paralysis and the Palestinian intellectuals for not daring to criticise the wave of suicide bombers sent from Hamas and tolerated by Arafat.

There are some wonderful insights. I loved his description of the intensity of Jerusalem where, "every year a hundred or so tourists lose their mind". His examination of assassinated prime minister Rabin is loving and insightful. He sees Rabin as "the DNA of the Israeli". Grossman adored Rabin's capacity for renewal and his ability to move from hawk to dove. "How many of us could have been so victorious over ourselves," he asks. This is the underlying thrust of all the essays: a constant, post-Talmudic need for self- examination.

In his January 2001 article, "Point of No Return", Grossman tackles the contentious issue of the "right of return". He takes on the Palestinian demand for the right of return to Israel, a natural right which is inscribed in Israeli law for Jews, and rebuts the Palestinian claim. Were the Palestinian demand to be accepted, Grossman realises that this would herald the death of Israel as a country for Jews. He even supports his argument by quoting the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, who sees a Jewish minority in Israel as "a great worry".

Two quirky essays – "The Pope's Visit to Israel" and "The Holocaust Carrier Pigeon" – connect the horrors of recent Jewish-Christian history to the present intifada. When Grossman watches the ancient Polish Pope inspecting the Jewish guard, he imagines his own father, full of amazement at the sight of John Paul II bent double with age and illness before the strapping Israeli soldiers. Grossman sees "the ironic reversal of stereotype" and gives us the 2,000-year history between Christian and Jew in one potent vision.

The war with the Arabs may be paramount in Israeli consciousness, but the tragic history of Christian-Jewish relations is not far behind. Grossman tells the story of a member of his family who had survived Treblinka, turning up at a wedding party with a bandage over her tattooed arm so as not to remind those celebrating a joyous event of the destruction of their family. Grossman is fascinated by this bandage which thinly hides the void.

The current stalemate threatens the very stability of a Jewish homeland and also any Palestinian aspiration for a nation-state. Grossman is certainly in favour of a withdrawal to his country's pre-1967 borders and is adamant that Israelis should not die to ensure the safety of the settlements in the Occupied Territories. He shows how today's Israel is frozen politically, emotionally and creatively because Sharon's policy of brutal force is not working. This refreshing critique from the inside of the crucible (sharply translated by Haim Watzman and well edited by Efrat Lev) helps us understand a little of what has been going on since Oslo. As Grossman says, "the writing is on the wall in three languages. Hebrew, Arabic and Death".

Aimed at teenagers, Grossman's novel Someone to Run With is also a gripping read for adults. As in See Under: Love, Grossman shows again how easily he identifies with the secret world of childhood. This is a gritty journey into the Israeli back streets, where war is not the Palestinian intifada but the off-centre skirmishes of Jerusalem life. Grossman explores three people on the fringe of Jerusalem society: Theodora, an elderly Greek nun doomed to spend her life in a cave; Tamar, a shaven-headed l6-year-old drop-out in search of her drug-addict brother, and Assaf, a teenager who links the two narratives. In an excellent translation by Vered Almog and Maya Gurantz, this is a harsh but absorbing look at the hermetic world of adolescence within the microcosm of Jerusalem subculture.

Julia Pascal's latest play 'Crossing Jerusalem' is published by Oberon Books