more-inIsrael and Palestine have been in the news recently, and to contextualise the news there is no better recourse than literature. For years the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, whose novels include In the Eye of the Sun and the Booker-nominated The Map of Love, has been organising a literature festival in Palestine. But Soueif has from the beginning made the learning experience two-way at the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest). PalFest determined that they should not have to bear arduous hassles, and it is the PalFest participants who go from venue to venue and experience first-hand how difficult movement is in the occupied territories. A wall — not to separate Palestinians from Israelis, but to separate Palestinians from themselves, and from any view of the horizon.

Source: The Hindu February 11, 2018 18:45 UTC