Past Jewish-Arabic coexistence in Palestine teaches us that life in common prevails where “The Other” has a human face. Conflict did not always rule people's minds and hearts and it did not shape Jewish–Arab relations from the start.
The landscape of Jerusalem is some of the most confusing and fractured in the world. Various armistice lines, illegal annexations, settlements, the 26ft Israeli wall, etc. have made it nearly impossible to make sense of the landscape in any coherent way.
A former aid worker who worked in Gaza for two years in the mid-2000s writes to his friends there.
Seeing rocket fire from Gaza as a counter-discourse. This method of resistance is less about fatalities than undermining privilege structures in an anti-colonial context.
Calling the situation in Israel and Palestine a conflict normalizes it, when in actuality there is a very tilted power dynamic. There is power in this horror, however.
Something must be done about Israel’s number one ally, the Palestinian Authority, otherwise what we are witnessing today will be merely another flare-up, as opposed to a turning point for decolonization and the beginning of an end to the occupation.
If you care about human life you should be appalled by what is happening in Gaza right now. But you should also be appalled if you are a hardheaded political realist. Or even if you simply love Israel.
The latest effort by the Israel-aligned US to renegotiate the asymmetric power relationships of the Middle East has inevitably failed, with brutal violence following; it is time, as an alternative, for the EU to generalise the rule-based constraint on Israeli action it has tentatively essayed.
Kanafani can make you dream of a free Palestine in a multitude of ways. A Palestine freed through writing, through song, through poetry, through art, or through a rifle.
Arab Awakening's columnists offer their weekly perspective on what is happening on the ground in the Middle East. Leading the week: Syrian refugees in Turkey: “They are everywhere”.
The destruction of tram stations during the protests in East Jerusalem is much more than vandalism, it shows that Palestinians are not quietly acquiescing to the ‘unification’ of the city, which they understand as the annexation of occupied land.
