A friend from Gaza – now living in Europe after three attempts to leave the Strip – tells me how he only entered the territory of Israel, where his ancestral home lies, once in his life.
He was a child, on a bus going to visit his uncle in indefinite political incarceration in an Israeli prison. All the windows of the vehicle were blacked out so that its Palestinian passengers could see nothing of their journey; just the prison facility at their destination, and the open-air prison of Gaza they had travelled from.
The anecdote seems to capture all the mechanisms of erasure, displacement, coercion and collective punishment that have come to characterize the system of apartheid now enacted against Palestinians by Israel. But Palestine has many other faces. Palestinian culture endured for centuries before Israel’s foundation and under occupation, and has evolved in diverse forms of daily life, resistance and political consciousness.
Alongside the violent tools of Israeli domination, it is these myriad Palestinian experiences that this issue aims to reflect. Through voices from Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and the Palestinian diaspora, we consider how land, culture, geopolitics and the rising tide of Israeli extremism are shaping Palestinian lives and their continued struggle for justice.
Also in this edition, Richard Matoušek writes on how housing activists in São Paulo are taking back empty buildings, Amy Hall reports from Kenya on a landmark reparations case for Indigenous people and Subi Shah reflects with much-loved author Michael Rosen.
Zoe Holman for the New Internationalist co-operative.
www.newint.org
A new far-right Israeli government’s meddling with the supreme court has Jewish citizens up in arms. But the shredded freedoms of the Palestinian people under Israel’s thumb are still off the table. Zoe Holman looks at how the so-called ‘peace process’ has allowed Israel to deepen its colonial project and regime of control over Palestinian lives.
Palestinian land is both a source of sustenance and symbol of resistance. Issam Adwan tells how agriculture is under attack by occupation.
Andrew Feinstein argues that the strategy that helped end South Africa’s apartheid must also be mobilized against Israel.
As Israel turns the screws on the strip’s population, Aziz Hamdi Al-Masry writes from Gaza about how armed factions tread a fine line to avoid an outright assault.
Three decades on from the Oslo Accords, a growing number of voices from all sides are declaring the death of the two-state model. Zoe Holman talks to author and researcher Cherine Hussein about what the landmark agreement meant for Palestinians – and what solutions remain.
Frances Leach examines how culture has become another battlefront in occupied Jerusalem.
Activists in Brazil are taking on the housing crisis through mass-occupations. Richard Matoušek reports from São Paulo on how the formidable movement is building popular power to provide secure homes.
Decades of deadly border policies have transformed the Mediterranean into a watery grave – an inevitable outcome of project ‘Fortress Europe’. In 2002 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown took on the racism behind the anti-refugee sentiment.
One year on from a landmark court ruling, the Ogiek of the Mau Forest are still waiting for reparations and collective land rights. Amy Hall reports from Kenya on a case that has the potential to change the lives of Indigenous people in East Africa and beyond.
The newly elected leader of Italy’s main opposition Italian Democratic Party (PD).
Report on the effectiveness of sanctions on Syria by Matt Broomfield.
Graeme Green reports on the Ukrainian parents who have been separated from their children during the Ukraine conflict.
Stephanie Boyd experiences new life amid grief on a night voyage in the Peruvian Amazon.
Sail away. Report on the humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean by Ben Cowles.
Marta Vidal speaks with the Palestinian militant about the role of violence in the struggle for a better world.
Highlighting the work of artists and photographers from the Majority World.
Electric cars: climate saviours or eco-villains? Words – Danny Chivers.
Ethical and political dilemmas abound these days. This month: Workplace culture.
The west stopped exporting second-hand clothing? Alice McCool imagines a world where countries are not left wearing the West’s cast-offs.
Highlights from the 2023 Toronto Festival by Richard Swift and Heather Macdonald.
The Drinker of Horizons; Macunaíma; Out of Sri Lanka; Black Oot Here.
The former Children’s Laureate writer. Words by Subi Shah.