7 books to help you understand the Palestinian cause
People across the globe have been trying to amplify the Palestinian cause for decades.
However, with the ongoing crisis there is a need to vocalise the Palestinian voices, to help the world know more and feel connected to the cause.
One of the best ways to amplify these voices is through books, whether fiction or non-fiction.
Amwal Al-Ghad hand-picked these seven books that can help readers understand the situation in Palestine.
1. I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti
The book is an autobiography by the winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. It tells the story of the author who was exiled after the 1967 six-day war. He spent 30 years shuttling among the world’s different cities, until he makes it to Ramallah, the city of his youth. He finds himself unable to recognize the city in which he was born. The book tells what it is like to be deprived not only of a home, but also of “the habitual place and status of a person”
2. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé
The book is a non-fiction by an Israeli writer who talks about the establishment of the States of Israel and the heinous crimes that led to that establishment. The author also talks about how the Zionists destroyed 400 Palestinian villages and massacred their inhabitants. The book also debunks the myth that Palestinians lefts their homes of their own accord.
3. The Woman from Tantoura by Radwa Ashour
The novel follows Ruqayya, an old Palestinian woman, as she looks back on her life of exile, which started at the age of 13 with the 1948 Nakba. The book shows her strength, courage, pain, and survival.
4. Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani
The novel is one of the firs of Kanafani’s works and his most prominent. It tells the story of three Palestinian refugees who try to make their way to the Arabian Gulf. They make their way there in a trip of humiliation and pain in the back of a truck. The truck is driven by another Palestinian man, who was castrated by the Zionists during the 1948 Nakba.
5. Time of White Horses by Ibrahim Nasrallah
The novel is a family saga about three generations of a Palestinian family who never knew freedom. The novel follows the family as they go from one occupation to the other. Starting with the Ottoman occupation, to the British occupation, ending with the Israeli occupation.
6. Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd
Rifqa is a collection of poems written about Rifqa, El-Kurd’s late grandmother, who was exiled from her home in Haifa in 1948. It talks about how home takeovers and demolitions across historical Palestine are not reminiscent of 1948 Nakba. But they are a continuation of it.
7. Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
This is Alyan’s debut novel about a Palestinian young woman, Alia, who at the night of her wedding, her mother reads her future in a cup of coffee dregs. The mother sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children. She decides to keep her predictions to herself. However, little did she know they will soon all come to pass when the family is uprooted in the 1967 second Nakba.
You can shop these books through Amazon, or through your local bookstores.
