Palestinian Literature Research Articles

A Locus-Less Literature: the Parallel Geographies of Palestinian Literature during the Tunis Period (1982–1994)

Abstract Emerging from the rubble of the civil war in Lebanon, a group of literary figures sought shelter in Tunis, alongside the PLO and its political factions. Although the ‘Tunis period’ lasted more than a decade, from 1982 to 1994, it remains a neglected period of Palestinian literary history. As part of a larger project that seeks to reconnect disconnected periods of Palestinian literature from 1948 to the present, this article probes the lost Tunis period to better understand Palestinian literature’s North African foray. Using the lens of Arabic literary periodicals, and supported by the tools of Digital Humanities, the article surveys the contents and contributor networks of Tunisian, Moroccan, as well as local and transnational Palestinian periodicals. By tracing literary networks and personal trajectories, the article reveals the parallel geographies of Palestinian literature during a period of intense exile and deterritorialization, an itinerary that includes stops in Tunis, Paris, Casablanca, Nicosia, Jerusalem, and Haifa.

Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature, written by Abu-Remaileh, Refqa

Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature, written by Abu-Remaileh, Refqa

Ways of being Palestinian: autobiography as critical emplotment in the work of Fawaz Turki

ABSTRACT Autobiography has become an increasingly prominent form of Palestinian literature since the 1980s, giving rise to scholarly discussions about how best to read, interpret, and analyze Palestinian life narratives. Using the memoirs of Palestinian poet Fawaz Turki as an illustrative example, this article challenges a prevailing scholarly view that Palestinian narratives should be read and understood, before all else, as “counterdiscourse” to Zionism. However much this framework illuminates the colonial backdrop and testimonial potential of Palestinian life-writing, it risks flattening Palestinian autobiographies into a single national mold and framing Zionism as the central locus of Palestinian self-expression. Mindful of these dangers, this article draws on the work of David Scott to argue that Palestinian autobiographies can be more fruitfully interpreted as exercises in “critical emplotment” and analyzed as narrative undertakings by which Palestinians creatively (re)interpret their pasts and identities in light of the always-shifting circumstances in which they find themselves.

Politics and Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story, by Joseph R. Farag.

Politics and Palestinian Literature in Exile: Gender, Aesthetics and Resistance in the Short Story, by Joseph R. Farag.

الأدب الفلسطيني وسيلة لاسترداد حرية القدس Palestinian Literature as a Mean of Recapturing the Freedom of al-Quds

This study aims to highlight the position and the role of the Palestinian literature in emphasizing the spirit of resistance and defiance for the sake of liberation of Jerusalem. The study relies on the analytical descriptive approach, which it analyses the content of several Palestinian poems which call to defend the land of Jerusalem. This study found that literature is a reflection of societies where it portrays the social realities of specific societies. And as Palestinian people witness a major political and social conflicts for more than fifty years up until now, hence some of them choose to express their experiences through literary writings. Therefore, this study concludes that Palestinian literature plays a very important role in proliferating the Palestinian issues to the people all around the world, encourages people to defend the land of Jerusalem and later on liberate it from the Israeli occupiers by any appropriate and suitable means.

Resistance in Mahmoud Darwish’s “I Come From There”: A Discourse Analysis

Postcolonial studies have dealt with the protest literature since they consider it as the voice of the oppressed people. In the same aspect, resistance literature begins in Palestine with Ghassan Kanafani and Mahmoud Darwish after 1948. Protest literature aims not only at freeing the oppressed from dominating powers and overturning the authority but also at liberating the humans from oppression. “The term resistance "Moqawamah" was first applied in a description of Palestinian Literature in 1966 by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanfani in his study "Resistance Literature in Occupied Palestine" (Harlow, 1987). Mahmoud Darwish has been involved in Palestine’s political affairs throughout his entire life. In “I Come from There”, Darwish tries to raise the voice of Palestinians; therefore, it can be heard all over the world. The theme of this poem assures his refusal to forget his country and unveils the struggle for a doomed homeland. By appropriating the descriptive and analytical method, along with the discourse analysis of Darwish’s terms and phrases in the poem “I Come from There”, this paper clarifies the symbolic meaning of the words to represent his sense of loss and sense of possession that he feels towards his land. Against this, the paper argues whether resistance protest literature succeeds in defending oppressed people and giving the subaltern their voices and whether literature helps the occupied people to get free and believe in non-violent resistance instead of violent resistance.

Sanatını Filistin’in Özgürlüğüne Teksif Eden Edebiyatçı: Gassân Kenefânî

Novels and stories, which are types of prose in literature, deal with the social, individual and psychological events experienced by individuals and society from different aspects. Thus, a topic or event is conveyed in a more exciting, emotional, dramatic and literary way by making the heroes talk and is presented to the appreciation of the readers. As it is known, the most dramatic social event of the 20th century was the massacre of Palestinians, their exile from their homeland and their becoming refugees. To this day, the oppression and persecution of a small number of people who have not left their homeland has continued, and the killing of a few Palestinians every week has become an ordinary event. The few Palestinians living in difficult conditions in their homeland have been brutally murdered in front of the world since October 7, 2023. One of the Arab writers of the 20th century who saw and experienced these troubles before and devoted his art to the Palestinian cause is Ghassan Kenefani. He wrote works in the field of novels, stories and theater and expressed in a literary way the troubles, pain, despair he experienced during the occupation of his homeland and the exile of his people, the sadness of living away from the homeland, and the ways of returning there again. He is one of the rare literary figures who concentrated his art in this field. Again, he encouraged his people with his works and ideas and tried to motivate them to defend the homeland and return to his country. The author chose most of the subjects he discussed in his works from real life. In the study, first of all, attention will be drawn to the life, works and literary aspects of Gassân Kenefânî. At this point, some topics and events that Kenefânî deals with will be touched upon, and the general characteristics of some of the characters in his novels, the subject of time and place, and narrative techniques will be included. Then, his language and literary style will be examined, especially based on some of the novels and stories he wrote. While doing this, some of the similes, descriptions and symbols he used in his novels and stories, as well as some sentences with literary characteristics, will be presented to the attention of the scientific and literary world. In the last part of the study, some criticisms directed at Kenefânî and his novels will also be included. Key Words: Arabic Language and Rhetoric, Ghassan Kenefani, Palestinian Literature, Novel, Style, Homeland

I Saw Ramallah and its Approach to Realistic Colonial Literature

The concept of alienation and exile was very important among the postcolonial enthusiast literary researches. Due to the sporadic nature of the topic, it was estimated that a new area of research exists to be investigated. Due to this interest, this study attempted to discuss the concepts of exile, alienation from homeland and the colonialism in Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah with postcolonial theory.The research attempted to discuss the problem of resistance and personal choices in dealing with the wave of modernization in the colonized countries or regions. It should be mentioned that while this study focused on the ideological clashes caused by colonialism, it was interested to see how a new concept of comparative literature as a discourse tolerance can reveal the meaning of literary works. To do so, this study investigated comparative literature as a form of literary studies against nationalism. In this case, the Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah investigated new ways of reading about the literature of Palestine. On the Other hand, I Saw Ramallah showed that the ideology of nationalism was one of the main reasons which cripples the Palestinian literature to offer a more realistic investigation of colonial situation in Palestine which Mourid Barghouti attempted to criticize in the novel.

PALESTINIAN LITERATURE: A RECORD OF PERPETUAL DISPLACEMENT AND FAILURES

Within the framework of Palestine's international, political, and aesthetic contexts, this study delves into the historical evolution of Palestinian literature, serving as a testament to the people's history of suffering. terrifying trials, and being banished from their whole country. It provides context for reading Palestinian literature and learning about the writers' legacies. As authors seek new ways to play out their histories and express themselves, the study delves into significant topics, such as the British Mandatory from 1948 to 1967, the Six-Day War, and the continuing colonization. In order to claim their displacement and suffering above the constraints of history, Palestinian intellectuals use the mystical power of language. The persistence of Palestinians under Israeli occupation is shown by the evolution of "Writings of Resistance" that began in the mid-20th century and continues to this day. Still going strong now, Palestinian literature cites classics while denying the "horror of history."The literary works of the Palestinian people eloquently portray the hardships endured by the Palestinian people and their continuous fight for survival.

Semiotics of Flags in Colonial Spaces: The Flag as an Identity Rhizome in the Literature of Palestinians in Israel

Semiotics of Flags in Colonial Spaces: The Flag as an Identity Rhizome in the Literature of Palestinians in Israel

Tracing Palestinian Literature: An Interview with Refqa Abu-Remaileh

In this interview, Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh discusses her new project, Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature. Country of Words combines literary history, a rich and expansive set of primary sources, and digital humanities tools to trace Palestinian literature’s development in the twentieth century. Abu-Remaileh resists the de facto use of the predominant nation state framework to categorize Palestinian literature, an approach, she asserts, that is inadequate for conveying continuities between periods and literary geographies. Instead, Country of Words demonstrates the possibility of methodologies for studying the creation and dissemination of national and exilic literature beyond set physical and temporal borders. Her project primarily uses periodicals published throughout the Arab world and across the North and South American mahjars to demarcate Palestinian literature’s development into seven separate, though sometimes concurrent, periods. Coupled with the use of digital humanities tools, her project offers readers the opportunity to not only interact with a comprehensive overview of Palestinian local and global works but also consider the overlapping networks and trajectories that characterize and continue to shape this literature. This interview discusses the project’s inception, accomplishments, challenges, and impact.

Empathy in Post-Oslo Palestinian Literature: Reading between Identification and Recognition in Ala Hlehel’s Au Revoir Acre and Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance

Abstract This article considers Ala Hlehel’s Au Revoir Acre and Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance, two Arabic-language novels published in 2014 by Palestinian authors with Israeli citizenship. It argues that both texts thematize empathy, despite its familiar pitfalls, as central to their imaginings of an inclusive political future in Israel/Palestine in the post-Oslo era. In revivifying eighteenth-century Acre and the city’s triumphant defeat of Napoleon in 1799, Hlehel’s creatively embellished historical novel curates an effortless cascade of emotionally contagious intergroup identification in a space of historic Palestinian triumph. Conversely, in positing the sudden and inexplicable disappearance of all Palestinians from Historic Palestine, set against the backdrop of a troubled friendship and a searching soul, Azem’s speculative work offers a Fanonian critique of the politics of recognition and a concomitant turn to affect. Together, the texts constitute a future-oriented strand of contemporary Palestinian writing that counterintuitively thematizes intergroup empathy, drawing upon its symbolic currency to scaffold a pedagogical hermeneutics of decolonial overture.

Soraya Antonius’s Arab awakening: Palestinian identity, activism, and Anglophone literature

ABSTRACT While scholarship on Anglophone Palestinian literature has burgeoned in recent years, there has been no attempt to retrieve and assess the work of Soraya Antonius (1932–2017), author of two remarkable English-language novels depicting British-ruled Palestine from the 1910s to 1948, The Lord (1986) and Where the Jinn Consult (1987). Exploring and contextualising Antonius’s contribution to this literary corpus, this article examines the cultural, political and linguistic forces shaping her writings. It begins by tracing the fusion of Anglophile mimicry and anti-colonial resistance typical of her parents – George Antonius, author of The Arab Awakening (1938) and Katy Antonius, Mandatory Jerusalem’s leading socialite. While her parents funnelled their Levantine-cosmopolitan options into a distinctive Palestinian identity, the Nakba compelled their daughter to take the opposite trajectory, leaving Palestine to pursue cosmopolitan possibilities elsewhere. The article’s second section thus considers her work in 1960s and 1970s Beirut, first as a journalist and editor, committed to developing a critical discourse on Western Orientalism, and subsequently as an activist and spokesperson, advocating the Palestinian cause. Probing how these biographical and professional strands shaped her fiction, the final section demonstrates how the first novel’s Anglophile fascination with the coloniser’s mindset is replaced, in the second novel, with a decided focus on Palestinians’ perspectives. Echoing Albert Hourani’s critique of the ‘Politics of Notables’, Where the Jinn Consult thus offers a loving yet bitter account of her parents’ generation, complacent and ineffectual in the face of looming catastrophe.

Assessing the Level of Electrocardiographic Interpretation Competency among Emergency Nurses in Palestine.

The use of electrocardiograms (ECGs) is widespread among emergency room (ER) nurses for diagnosis and triage, making it crucial for them to have the appropriate level of competency in interpreting ECGs. This can lead to better healthcare and patient outcomes. This study aims to assess the competency level of emergency nurses in Palestine in interpreting normal ECG and certain cardiac arrhythmias, and to explore the association between socio-demographic characteristics and their ECG interpretation competency. The study used a cross-sectional descriptive design, and 196 ER nurses were conveniently recruited to fill out a self-administered questionnaire based on previous literature. The data collected were analyzed using SPSS with strict adherence to ethical considerations. The results showed that 70.9% of the nurses were males, 65.3% held a bachelor's degree in nursing, 46.9% had 1-5 years of experience, and 60.7% had received previous courses on ECG interpretation. The mean competency level of the ER nurses was satisfactory at 60.714%, but 38.8% had a poor level of competency. This was significantly higher among nurses with higher educational levels (p-value < 0.001), those who had taken previous ECG courses (p-value = 0.045) and life support (p-value < 0.05), and those who were exposed to more ECG interpretations per day (p-value = 0.001). There is a need to focus more on ECG competency levels in Palestinian literature and compare them between different departments. It is also essential to evaluate nurses' needs for continuous education.

Teaching Palestine

Abstract This article explores theories and methodologies for an activist teaching and reading of Palestinian literature, including Susan Abulhawa's novel Mornings in Jenin and Remi Kanazi's poetry. Based on student responses — empathy with individual Palestinian characters but not resistance to Israeli settler colonialism — the author suggests that empathetic identification, often perceived as a means of comprehending the other, instead blocks political and historical understandings. Building on Saidiya Hartman's and Lorenzo Veracini's arguments, the author posits the need for seeing the other through a Levinasian radical alterity (which he denied Palestinians), not through similarity. Moments when texts disturbed readerly identification were moments of activist potential.

Physically Exiled, Spiritually Returning: A Comparative Reading of Beckett’s Murphy and a Selection of Poems by Darwish

This article explores a selection of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry and Samuel Beckett’s Murphy (1938) as postcolonial texts which are rich with postcolonial undertones. Beckett and Darwish articulate a counter-discursive rhetoric that undermines any hierarchically installed oppressive structures. Although political classifications and restrictions limit many neutral inquiries of such texts and hinder objective scholarship on Irish and Palestinian literature, many academic studies on Irish and Palestinian forms of literature have emerged. Counteracting hubristic structures, this paper tackles works from Ireland and Palestine as predominantly imbued with postcolonial implications. The research brings these authors from far-flung parts of the world to address postcolonial manifestations in Ireland and Palestine. Despite their convergences and divergences, texts from both perspectives must be used to critique structures and forces of colonialism in order to further contextualize them within the postcolonial realm. Reading Beckett alongside Darwish helped to solidify the idea that colonialism employs the same discourse regardless of place or time. It also demonstrates that oppressed people tend to employ comparable dissent mechanisms. Much like the speakers of Darwish’s Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, Leaves of Olives, “Mural,” and “My Mother” are always caught up in subordinate power relations, the eponymous protagonist of Murphy is degraded as an inferior other; one who is disenfranchised and excluded both inside and outside Ireland. Both authors refute stereotypes and stigmatization and offer a dissenting paradigm blurring power-based divisions to the status quo that renders the Palestinians and Irish as inferior to others.

THE PALESTINIAN NAKBA AND ITS REFLECTION ON THE SHORT STORY "TILL WE RETURN" AS A MODEL

This study aimed to shed light on the Palestinian Nakba and its reflection on the short story. The short story is nothing but a reflection of human experiences that have become a reflection of the human and political suffering and experiences that the Palestinian refugee lived through after the Nakba, and gave birth to a state of despair in him after he lost his land, which is the source of his livelihood, and he became homeless inside and outside the country, sheltered by some tents provided by international organizations such as the Red Cross and UNRWA. These bad conditions cast a shadow over the Palestinian literature, so the writers devoted themselves to writing their novels and stories, describing the suffering of the Palestinian people in all aspects of their lives. This study also attempted to analyze the story of Until We Return and link it to historical and human events in addition to the spatial event.

Going West: Migrating Personae and Construction of the Self in Rabbinic Culture by Reuven Kiperwasser

Reviewed by: Going West: Migrating Personae and Construction of the Self in Rabbinic Culture by Reuven Kiperwasser Matthew Goldstone Reuven Kiperwasser. Going West: Migrating Personae and Construction of the Self in Rabbinic Culture. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2021. 237 pp. Reuven Kiperwasser’s Going West: Migrating Personae and Construction of the Self in Rabbinic Culture explores how narrators of the Yerushalmi and Bavli constructed regional identities through portrayals of rabbinic interactions with internal Others (i.e., rabbis from one location visiting or residing in another location). Grounded in both theoretical and literary methodologies, this work encourages readers to redirect their attention from rabbinic interactions with groups typically understood as outsiders in the eyes of the rabbis (e.g., minim) to the prevalent experiences of alterity among those within rabbinic circles. Kiperwasser presents a compelling case for understanding narratives about Babylonian and Palestinian rabbinic interactions as important sites for the negotiation of the respective storyteller’s geographic identity. Moreover, he highlights the greater significance of Babylonian visitors impacting Palestinian rabbinic identity than the role of Palestinian figures impacting Babylonian rabbinic identity. In conceptualizing travel narratives, Kiperwasser adopts the helpful framework of hospitality. This perspective allows him to reflect on the roles and [End Page 178] expectations of both host and guest as rabbinic characters uphold or deviate from these positions. In articulating the nature of hospitality, Kiperwasser draws upon certain Derridean theorizations, such as the interrupted self, that at times enhance his textual readings throughout the eight main chapters. Following an introduction that provides background and some methodological considerations, the first six chapters of the book focus on depictions within Palestinian literature (primarily the Yerushalmi) of Babylonians (most of whom are rabbis) coming to Palestine. The first chapter adopts a bird’s eye view of Palestinian perceptions of Babylonians. In addition, this chapter discusses the erection of geographic boundaries through the need for Palestinian rabbis to ask permission before leaving Palestine and explores the use of humor as a form of defense mechanism. The subsequent two chapters revolve around the ways lay and elite visitors from Babylonia impact the formation of Palestinian rabbinic selves. According to Kiperwasser, through mocking stereotypes about Babylonians and the reinforcement of hierarchies in which Babylonians remain inferior to their peers, Palestinian narrators construct their own identities in response to the presence of internal Others. Chapters 4 and 5 narrow in on a few specific rabbis, examine rabbinic openness to absorbing elements of their peers’ cultural particulars, and explore the ways in which Palestinian leaders might have felt reliant upon their Babylonian colleagues. Chapter 6, the last of the chapters that focus on Palestinian sources about Palestinian hosting of Babylonian figures, looks at the use of shared traditions in the Yerushalmi and Bavli, paving the way for an articulation of the differences between the Palestinian and Babylonian employment of hospitality narratives for the cultivation of regional rabbinic identities. The final two chapters revolve around Bavli narratives about Palestinians coming to Babylonia (chapter 7) and Babylonians going to Palestine (chapter 8). Within these stories, Kiperwasser observes the way in which the Bavli minimizes conflict between figures and transforms what appeared in Palestinian sources as an interacademy episode into an internal Babylonian story. The foci of these accounts lead Kiperwasser to conclude that the narrators of Bavli hospitality episodes were less drawn to utilizing such interactions as a basis for the construction of Babylonian rabbinic identities than were Palestinian authors. Kiperwasser consolidates his observations in the conclusion, which delineates three forms of rabbinic selves: the more empathetic self, torn between xenophobia and philoxenia; the xenophobic self, as captured by a passage in Song of Songs Rabbah; and the more benevolent Babylonian narrator who uses Palestinian figures to embellish his sense of self. These abstracted representations map the variety of sources onto a simplified framework for basic comparison, allowing Kiperwasser to posit core geographic differences in the rabbinic depiction and use of hospitality narratives. Bearing in mind that an author can never include everything relevant to a particular topic, there are two lacunae that stand out as areas that would have strengthened the work. First, although Kiperwasser devotes attention to a theoretical Derridean framework for thinking about hospitality, he...

Palestinian Literature in Hebrew Translation: Between Cultural Appropriation and Resistance Eyad Barghuthy's An Acre-Esque Tale as Case Study

This article focuses on the complex cultural and political dynamics of translation of Palestinian literature into Hebrew, from a Palestinian perspective. I focus specifically on translation of the literature of Palestinian Israeli citizens, and on a recent, unique model of translation praxis developed by the Maktub project, based in the Van Leer Institute of Jerusalem. The model, entailing dialogic and bi-national translation, aims to turn translation into an act of resistance, through which Palestinian presence ‘infiltrates’ Hebrew cultural consciousness. The article analyses the Hebrew translation of the novel Burdaqaneh (translated as ‘An Acre-esque Tale’) by the Palestinian author Eyad Barghuthy. Specifically, the article attempts to shed light on the process of translation, its aims and methods, and their overall cultural and political import.

Hannah Boast, Hydrofictions: Water, Power, and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature

Hannah Boast, Hydrofictions: Water, Power, and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020) 248pp., $105 (ebk), ISBN: 9781474443821.