The destruction of Gaza remains mysteriously invisible even as it unfolds in front of a global audience, write Hamit Bozarslan, Anne-Lorraine Boujon and Joel Habrecht in the foreword to their new journal. Esprittitled “Palestine: A Future Rebuilt.”
At the heart of the crisis is a political logic: “The death of others is presented as the only solution”fostering a “race to the deep” driven by regional and international actors. But the possibility of a different future beyond war remains. As the contributors to this issue have shown, realizing this future will require “a series of re-appropriations and a desire for solidarity.”
The signatories of Paris calls for two-state solution declared ‘Our history is full of pain, but our future is not yet written. ” To build a desirable future, he writes, it is necessary to recognize this common history of suffering and “free ourselves from the theological and political frameworks shared by the warmakers.” Esprit.
Against erasure
The writing of Palestinian history is inseparable from the struggle against erasure, writes Jihane Sfeir. A central challenge is how to create historical narratives when archives are “dispersed, confiscated, or destroyed” and when access to the past itself becomes a question of power.
The formation of the Palestinian national narrative began during the late Ottoman Empire and Mandate period, particularly during the Great Revolt of 1936–1939, when intellectuals and journalists contributed to the emergence of “Palestinian” as a collective political identity and “power of unity.” However, after 1948, historical writing was reconfigured through displacement, and the Nakba became “Year Zero,” which “significantly changed the framework for understanding the past.”
Since then, the Palestinian experience of “displacement, expulsion, and erasure of the social world” has made historiography not just an academic endeavour, but a “means of combating erasure.” The plundering of libraries, documents, and cultural institutions is part of a broader effort to impose “narratives of the colonial past,” with archives themselves becoming sites of struggle.
Preserving testimonies and photographs is an act of resistance aimed at “keeping alive the very possibility of Palestinian history,” Sfeil writes. Palestine is “not just an occupied territory.” It also exists in fragmentary collections of archives scattered around the world.
have a narrative
Nicholas Vadimov documentary a quiet encore, Inspired by the belief that survivors must speak for those who no longer have a voice, this work features nine Gazans exiled in South Africa who talk about their lost homes and memories of Gaza.
The film is structured around a repeating pattern in which each person draws a floor plan of an old house and uses a map of Gaza drawn on the ground to explain what happened to them and their families. The house appears as a central symbol, consistent with its importance in Palestinian culture. “A home is a family. A home is a family.” It’s more than just four walls and a roof. ”
Through paintings, stories, and shared memories, survivors reconstruct a Gaza that, although physically destroyed, lives on in memory as a basis for hope, “an epistemological and existential anchor, not just an emotional response.” Their testimony is also an act of resistance.
Hanen Halala explained that her participation stems from her responsibility to “challenge and counter misrepresentations and widespread disinformation.” Despite enormous loss, the film argues for perseverance, community, and the possibility of hope. As Halala says, “To have legitimate rights is to own a story, and therefore also to own the possibilities of the future.”
stand together
Standing Together is a grassroots movement that unites Jewish and Palestinian Israelis against war, occupation, and racism. Born out of protests in 2011 and formally founded during the Intifada in 2015, the movement was built around the ideal that “we do not live by the sword, but stand together.” Rather than accepting conflict as inevitable, Itamar Abuneri and Amal Ghawi say they seek to create a political community based on equality, solidarity and common struggle.
Since October 2023, the genocide in Gaza has made the pursuit of a just peace more urgent than ever. “Standing Together” rejects the idea that Israelis and Palestinians form “two irreconcilable camps.” Instead, it identifies the real divide between “warmongers on one side and the people on the other.” That vision is embodied in practical efforts, from joint demonstrations to humanitarian convoys delivering aid to Gaza and a protective presence campaign in the West Bank.
The model of “one homeland and two shared nations” is understood as a first step towards a longer-term reconciliation process. As Avneri and Ghawi emphasize, hope does not precede action, but is created through collective struggle; “where there is struggle, there is hope.”
discussion forum
The intertwined national aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians have been shaped by strong expectations of statehood and historical justice, writes Hamit Bozarslan. For many Jews, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 fulfilled centuries-old hopes of return and marked a decisive break with the diaspora experience, especially after the Holocaust. However, in the form of the Nakba, “the fulfillment of Israel’s expectations was to the detriment of the Palestinian people” and initiated a parallel Palestinian expectation of the creation of an independent state.
Reconciling these two aspirations will require both Palestinians and Israelis to “think differently and come up with new ways of living and acting.” Although the situation seems hopeless, it is important to remember that while the present is determined, or overdetermined, by the past, the future is not a predetermined destiny.
Bozarslan looks to the past for inspiration, drawing on progressive Zionist currents and Austro-Marxist models of shared sovereignty to explore alternative futures. Despite the bleak political climate, “opening up a public forum for Israelis and Palestinians” is an important step toward a new political imagination that can move beyond domination, occupation, and mutual negation.
Review by Cadenza Academic Translation
Published in cooperation with cairn international version
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
