The integrality of conceiving of Palestinian history through space is intrinsic to how [Tawfiq] Canaan recenters narrations of Palestinian place and peoplehood, countering a dominant historical discourse that systematically privileges the arrival, perspective, and sovereignty of the colonial body, its geopolitical formations, and its epistemic traditions. –Amanda Batarseh
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We are pleased to share the third issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies for 2023, which was released in late September. The issue features an article by Amanda Batarseh that examines the work of Palestinian physician and ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan. The author argues that by contesting orientalist constructions of Palestine, Canaan recenters Indigenous Palestinian place-based knowledge as both the subject and method of his study. This article, along with a review essay of the English translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature by Kaleem Hawa, is free to all readers, along with our Letter from the Editors.
Also included in this issue is an open-access article by Sai Englert in which he examines the historical and contemporary ways in which Israel’s largest trade union, the Histadrut, has marginalized Palestinian and migrant workers in the construction industry. The issue also features three essays: an analysis of Israeli policies during the COVID-19 period through the lens of necropolitics by Yasmeen Abu Fraiha; another that examines normalization between the UAE and Israel under the Abraham Accords by Tariq Dana; and lastly, one that looks into the building housing the Israeli Ministry of Interior in Wadi al-Joz and the precarious bureaucratic waiting that Palestinians experience there by Thayer Hastings. Also featured is an interview by Amahl Bishara with Nidal Al-Azza and Rula Nasr-Mazzawi in which they discuss their work bringing together Palestinian youth, including refugees and internally displaced people, to share their experiences of displacement on either side of the Green Line and beyond; an obituary by Isabella Hammad in honor of the writer and champion of Arabic literary culture, Salma Khadra Jayyusi; and a combined book review by M. Muhannad Ayyash of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization beyond Partition, edited by Leila H. Farsakh, and The Endurance of Palestinian Political Factions: An Everyday Perspective from Nahr el-Bared Camp by Perla Issa.
The full table of contents can be found here.
Happy Reading!
