reviews

60d

#books #reviews
"Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation: 1948 – 1968
Assassinated in Lebanon by Israel in 1972, Palestinian intellectual Ghassan Kanafani is mostly renowned for his anti-colonial resistance, political writings and works of literary fiction. Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation: 1948 – 1968 (Verso Books, 2026) brings another aspect of Kanafani’s work to an English-speaking public; a deep historical critique of Palestinian literature in the first two decades since Israel established its colonial presence on Palestinian land.

1/2

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260801-palestinian-resistance-literature-under-occupation-1948-1968/

#palestine

Drawing upon several Palestinian writers, their poetry, short stories and plays, Kanafani provides an analysis of cultural resistance in Palestinian literature, and shows that it is just as vital as armed struggle against colonial rule. In the foreword, Rashid Khalidi notes that despite Kanafani’s distance from occupied Palestinian lands in 1948 as he was living in Beirut, the insights into the repression faced by Palestinians in Israel provide “one of the earliest portraits available of that part of Palestinian society, cut off as it was from the est of the Palestinian people.” Far from traitors, their experience and resistance from within Israel connected them to the rest of Palestinians displaced or still living in territories Israel had not yet colonised and occupied.

“Armed resistance is not merely skin-deep; it is the fruit of a tree with roots firmly planted in the ground … This type of resistance assumes its most original form in political and cultural action,” Kanafani writes in his introduction to the book. Noting that Palestinians already had a trajectory of armed and cultural resistance since the 1930s, Kanafani adds, “However, what distinguishes the resistance literature produced from 1948 to 1968 is the exceptionally cruel and violent circumstances that its authors experienced and challenged.”

2 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original