Palestinian actualities

This review article explores the escalating racism and intensifying colonialism of the Israeli state and its circumscription of Palestinian lives and aspirations. Under such increasingly brutal circumstances, it asks what it means to be Palestinian today. How is the systematic reduction of human possibility, enacted over generations since the nakba, experienced by its victims? This is the question addressed by the three books reviewed here: Arthur Neslen, In Your Eyes a Sandstorm; Dina Matar, What it Means to Be Palestinian; and Ilan Pappé, The Forgotten Palestinians. The short answer is, it depends on their relationship to Israel: whether as second-class citizens in Israel; as occupied and now variously disengaged in the West Bank and Gaza (dominated, but no longer exploited, as cheap labour since Oslo); as semi-incorporated in an annexed East Jerusalem; or, finally, as completely excluded refugees exiled outside historic Palestine. Beginning with the experiences of Palestinians in Israel-Palestine, it then moves out to the Arab world, where, it concludes, not only most of the remainder of the Palestinian refugees reside, but also perhaps the most compelling answer to the riddle of the Palestinian question.