Surviving Censorship: El-Hakawati’s Mahjoob Mahjoob and the Struggle for the Permission to Perform

Abstract

The history of censorship in Palestine remains mostly undocumented and unstudied. Because the complex history of the land and its people spans from antiquity to the present, the periodization, scope and disciplinary orientation of most historical accounts on censorship would likely prevent an in-depth chronology in a single study. However, the emergence of the Israel/Palestine conflict at the end of the nineteenth century presents a compelling case for the examination of the topic. The foundation of Israel and the near eradication of Palestinian cultural production in 1948 have left a significant mark on the history of censorship of performed content in Palestine. The extensive record of controversial encounters between the Israeli authorities and Palestinian artists since 1948 suggests that Palestinians have contended with a constant stream of closures, bans and arrests (Slyomovics 1991: 18–35).1 The struggle for the permission to perform, which serves as a reminder of the disparity in power between the occupier and the occupied, characterizes the relationship between the Palestinian theatre artists and the State of Israel. To perform, the artists had to survive the interventions of the Israeli office of censorship.