An Improbable Friendship ─ The Remarkable Lives of Israeli Ruth Dayan and Palestinian Raymonda Tawil and Their Forty-year Peace Mission

Sometimes you can find the most astounding of friendships in the most unlikely of places.An Improbable Friendship is the dual biography of Israeli Ruth Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s widow, now ninety-seven, and Palestinian journalist Raymonda Tawil, Yasser Arafat’s mother-in-law, now seventy-four. It reveals for the first time the two women’s surprising and secret forty-year friendship and delivers the story of their extraordinary and turbulent lives growing up in a war-torn country.

Based on personal interviews, diaries, and journals drawn from both womenRuth lives today in Tel Aviv, Raymonda in Maltaauthor Anthony David delivers a fast-paced, fascinating narrative that is a beautiful story of reconciliation and hope in a climate of endless conflict. By telling their stories and following their budding relationship, which began after the Six-Day War in 1967, we learn the behind-the-scenes, undisclosed history of the Middle East’s most influential leaders from two prominent women on either side of the ongoing conflict.

An award-winning biographer and historian, Anthony David brings us the story of unexpected friendship while he discovers the true pasts of two outstanding women. Their story gives voice to Israelis and Palestinians caught in the Middle East conflict and holds a persistent faith in a future of peace.

Anthony David is the author of eight books. His biography of Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh (2007) was voted one of the best books of the year by theChristian Science Monitor. He lives in Jerusalem.