Here is a small selection of books read and recommended by members of the Sacred Footsteps team about Palestine. The books included in the list are a mixture of history, politics, art, cinema and poetry and non-fiction literature.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi
The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi’s powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own terms.
Beginning in the final days of the Ottoman Empire, Khalidi reveals nascent Palestinian nationalism and the broad recognition by the early Zionists of the colonial nature of their project. These ideas and their echoes defend Nakba – the Palestinian term for the establishment of the state of Israel – the cession of the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, the Six Day War and the occupation. Moving through these critical moments, Khalidi interweaves the voices of journalists, poets and resistance leaders with his own accounts as a child of a UN official and a resident of Beirut during the 1982 seige. The result is a profoundly moving account of a hundred-year-long war of occupation, dispossession and colonisation.
All Faces but Mine: The Poetry of Samih Al-Qasim, trans. by Abdulwahid Lu’lu’a
All Faces but Mine gathers selected poems from the acclaimed Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim (1934–2014). A contemporary of Mahmoud Darwish, Al-Qasim was a celebrated resistance poet whose passionate call for independence inspired a generation of poets.
In this award-winning volume, poems are drawn from fourteen of the poet’s collections published over the last twenty years in addition to some of his final works. Lu’lu’a’s fluid translation captures both Al-Qasim’s innovative style and the emotional tenor of his poetry.
The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis 1700-1948 by Ilan Pappe
The Husayni family of Jerusalem dominated Palestinian history for 250 years, from the Ottoman times through to the end of the British Mandate. At the height of the family’s political influence, positions in Jerusalem could only be obtained through its power base.
In this compelling political biography, Ilan Pappe traces the rise of the Husaynis from a provincial Ottoman elite clan into the leadership of the Palestinian national movement in the twentieth century. In telling their story, Pappe highlights the continuous urban history of Jerusalem and Palestine. Shedding new light on crucial events such as the invasion of Palestine by Napoleon, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, World War I and the advent of Zionism, this remarkable account provides an unforgettable picture of the Palestinian tragedy in its entirety.
Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco
Rafah, a town at the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front rubbish-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. Situated on the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been reduced to rubble. Rafah is today and has always been a notorious flashpoint in this most bitter of conflicts.
Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinian refugees dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah – coldblooded massacre or dreadful mistake – reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco arrives in Gaza and, immersing himself in daily life, uncovers Rafah, past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, Footnotes in Gaza captures the essence of a tragedy.
Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State by Jeff Halper
For decades we have spoken of the ‘Israel-Palestine conflict’, but what if our understanding of the issue has been wrong all along? This book explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer understanding of the Zionist movement’s project to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab population and marginalizing its cultural presence. Jeff Halper argues that the only way out of a colonial situation is decolonization: the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a shared political community. To show how this can be done, Halper uses the 10-point program of the One Democratic State Campaign as a guide for thinking through the process of decolonization to its post-colonial conclusion. Halper’s unflinching reframing will empower activists fighting for the rights of the Palestinians and democracy for all.
Rifqa by Mohammed el Kurd
Rifqa is Mohammed El-Kurd’s debut collection of poetry, written in the tradition of Ghassan Kanafani’s Palestinian Resistance Literature. The book narrates the author’s own experience of dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah–an infamous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, whose population of refugees continues to live on the brink of homelessness at the hands of the Israeli government and US-based settler organizations. The book, named after the author’s late grandmother who was forced to flee from Haifa upon the genocidal establishment of Israel, makes the observation that home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba, but are in fact a continuation of it: a legalized, ideologically-driven practice of ethnic cleansing.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.
Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called ‘ethnic cleansing’. Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.
Palestine by Joe Sacco
A powerful graphic novel, capturing the heart of day-to-day life in occupied Palestine. In late 1991 and early 1992, at the time of the first Intifada, Joe Sacco spent two months with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, travelling and taking notes.Upon returning to the United States he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combines the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling to explore this complex, emotionally weighty situation. He captures the heart of the Palestinian experience in image after unforgettable image, with great insight and remarkable humour.
Dabke Back to Palestine by Maram Sabbah
A powerful and uplifting story for children about dabke in Palestine, and in exile. For Palestinians, dabke is much more than just a dance. It is a form of storytelling, solidarity, cooperation, strength, and cultural resistance.
Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora by Wafa Ghnaim
Palestinian tatreez embroidery is a centuries-old folk art, traditionally passed from mother to daughter over a cup of tea. In Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora, Wafa Ghnaim brings traditional Palestinian embroidery to life by resuscitating its roots as a powerful, provocative, and profound storytelling tool used by Palestinian women for hundreds of years to document their stories, observations, and experiences — including those from her mother, Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim. With 47 cross stitch patterns; six complete sets of dress patterns; tea, coffee, and quince jam recipes; detailed traditional Palestinian embroidery techniques and rare northern Palestinian Arabic tatreez terminology — each design, history and meaning is documented and preserved. Tatreez & Tea is far more than a book about traditional Palestinian embroidery designs and meanings: it’s an oral history documentation of the Nakba survivors in her family that captures the essence of tatreez stitching circles as they once were and how to recreate them in exile, as well as a way forward to resurrect tatreez as a source of identity—one that guided Wafa as she created a home in the Palestinian diaspora.
The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel by Ilan Pappe
For more than 60 years, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have lived as Israeli citizens within the borders of the nation formed at the end of the 1948 conflict. Occupying a precarious middle ground between the Jewish citizens of Israel and the dispossessed Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Palestinians have developed an exceedingly complex relationship with the land they call home; however, in the innumerable discussions of the Israel-Palestine problem, their experiences are often overlooked and forgotten. In this book, historian Ilan Pappe examines how Israeli Palestinians have fared under Jewish rule and what their lives tell us about both Israel’s attitude toward minorities and Palestinians’ attitudes toward the Jewish state. Drawing upon significant archival and interview material, Pappe analyzes the Israeli state’s policy towards its Palestinian citizens, finding discrimination in matters of housing, education, and civil rights. Rigorously researched yet highly readable, The Forgotten Palestinians brings a new and much-needed perspective to the Israel-Palestine debate.
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories by Ghassan Kanafani
Men in the Sun is a novel by Palestinian writer and political activist Ghassan Kanafani, originally published in 1962. Men in the Sun, the basis of the film The Deceived, follows three Palestinian refugees seeking to travel from the refugee camps in Iraq, where they cannot find work, to Kuwait where they hope to find work as laborers in the oil boom.
Also in the volume are “The Land of Sad Oranges” (1958), “‘If You Were a Horse . . .'” (1961), “A Hand in the Grave” (1962), “The Falcon” (1961), “Letter from Gaza” (1956), and an extract from Umm Saad (1969). In the unsparing clarity of his writing, Kanafani offers the reader a gritty look at the agonized world of Palestine and the adjoining Middle East.
Palestinian Art: 1850-2005 by Kamal Boullata
Kamal Boullata offers the first insider’s study of Palestinian art. The only authoritative account in English yet published, this scholarly analysis presents insights into the development of Palestinian art before and after the cataclysmic events of 1948 during which Palestinian society was uprooted and dispersed.
Palestinian Art includes the pioneering work of those who ventured into easel painting before 1948, of refugees who made their debut in the Arab world and whose art left its deep imprint on the development of modern Arab art, and more recent work by artists making inroads into the international art scene.
Boullata also discusses the work of artists who continued to live in their homeland. Representations of home and exile, the ongoing struggle between innovation and tradition, the relationship between verbal and visual expression and the role of women artists in Palestinian modernism are key areas of focus in this work.
The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians by Joseph Massad
In this erudite and groundbreaking series of essays, renowned author Joseph Massad asks and answers key questions, such as: What has been the main achievement of the Zionist movement? What accounts for the failure of the Palestinian National Movement to win its struggle against Israel? What do anti-Semitism, colonialism and racism have to do with the Palestinian/Israeli ‘conflict’?
Joseph Massad offers a radical departure from mainstream analysis in order to expose the causes for the persistence of the ‘Palestinian Question’. He proposes that it is not in de-linking the Palestinian Question from the Jewish Question that a resolution can be found, but by linking them as one and the same question. All other proposed solutions, the author argues, are bound to fail.
Deeply researched and documented, this book analyzes the failure of the ‘peace process’ and proposes that a solution to the Palestinian Question will not be found unless settler-colonialism, racism, and anti-Semitism are abandoned as the ideological framework for a resolution. Individual essays further explore the struggle over Jewish identity in Israel and the struggle among Palestinians over what constitutes the Palestinian Question today.
Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution by Nadia Yacub
Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution presents an in-depth study of films made between 1968 and 1982, the filmmakers and their practices, the political and cultural contexts in which the films were created and seen, and their afterlives among Palestinian refugees and young filmmakers in the twenty-first century. Nadia Yaqub discusses how early Palestinian cinema operated within emerging public-sector cinema industries in the Arab world, as well as through coproductions and solidarity networks. Her findings aid in understanding the development of alternative cinema in the Arab world. Yaqub also demonstrates that Palestinian filmmaking, as a cinema movement created and sustained under conditions of extraordinary precarity, offers important lessons on the nature and possibilities of political filmmaking more generally.
In the Presence of Absence by Mahmoud Darwish
One of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Darwish composed this remarkable elegy at the apex of his creativity, but with the full knowledge that his death was imminent. Thinking it might be his final work, he summoned all his poetic genius to create a luminous work that defies categorization. In stunning language, Darwish’s self-elegy inhabits a rare space where opposites bleed and blend into each other. Prose and poetry, life and death, home and exile are all sung by the poet and his other. On the threshold of im/mortality, the poet looks back at his own existence, intertwined with that of his people. Through these lyrical meditations on love, longing, Palestine, history, friendship, family, and the ongoing conversation between life and death, the poet bids himself and his readers a poignant farewell.
The books and authors mentioned do not necessarily represent the views of Sacred Footsteps.
