Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation

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The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has been one of the worlds most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises for over four decades. In this oral history collection, men and women from Palestineincluding a fisherman, a settlement administrator, and a marathon runnerdescribe in their own words how their lives have been shaped by the historic crisis. Other narrators include:

ABEER, a young journalist from Gaza City who launched her career by covering bombing raids on the Gaza Strip.

IBTISAM, the director of a multi-faith childrens center in the West Bank whose dream of starting a similar center in Gaza has so far been hindered by border closures.

GHASSAN, an Arab-Christian physics professor and activist from Bethlehem who co-founded the International Solidarity Movement. For more than six decades, Israel and Palestine have been the global focal point of intractable conflict, one that has led to one of the worlds most widely reported yet least understood human rights crises. In their own words, men and women from West Bank and Gaza describe how their lives have been shaped by the conflict. Here are stories that humanize the oft-ignored violations of human rights that occur daily in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Reviews

The voices of these ordinary individuals, so similar to those Palestinians I encounter regularly in the territories, speak here with unsettling eloquence. They are heartrending stories. David Shulman for The New York Review of Books A stunning, essential, and heartbreaking book that puts a profoundly human face on the suffering of the Palestinian people. This should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the Middle East, which is to say: everyone. George Saunders, author of The Tenth of December and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Palestine Speaks demonstrates that nothing is more eloquent than the voices of those who endure and try valiantly to survive. Nothing is more important for us than to listen to them carefully, to grasp their suffering, to learn from their testimonies about them and about ourselves, and to use this understanding to bring their tragedy to an end. Noam Chomsky, author and professor at MIT

Author Bio

Mateo Hoke studied journalism at the University of Colorado-Boulder and The University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Cate Malek is a freelance writer and teacher in Bethlehem. She previously worked as a reporter, receiving multiple Colorado Press Association awards.