Their World, Our Borders is an anthology of Palestinian resistance
Their Borders, Our World is an anthology of work commissioned by Palestine Festival of Literature.
Set up in 2008, the Festival is “committed to the creation of language and ideas for combating colonialism in the 21st century”.
The book’s subtitle, “Building New Solidarities with Palestine”, is both a demand for Palestinian voices to be heard and a call for solidarity, or “mutuality”, with those voices.
The book’s varied contributors all address the question of, “How do we confront the need to take inevitable and often difficult political stances?”
The anthology is strongest where a focus on a particular detail or event highlights the reality of what Palestinians are living through and its global implications.
The screams of one small child, the face of a devastated parent can bring it home to us in a way that perhaps the generalities of “genocide” or “war” cannot. This is where this book comes into its own.
A crucial part of this collection lies in how it is illustrated. Straight black lines combine and contrast with flowing curving designs.
The inside cover features artistic images of the map of Palestine and each essay is illustrated with evocative artwork and graphic design.
The volume starts with a poem by Jehan Bseiso, “Gaza Lovesong”, which evokes love and longing for one’s homeland. It’s a cry of pain from the diaspora but also a call to “set the siege on fire”.
Keller Easterling asks us to “Try to be in Palestine” and asks what sort of solidarity we can expect to build in the neoliberal age of imperialism.
She invokes “sumud”, meaning resilience or steadfastness, an important concept in Palestinian resistance.
Easterling writes about “mutuality”, in which indigenous peoples around the world can relate to each other and fight together.
She argues that “there is no singular enemy”, listing capitalism as one of a spectrum including fascism, racism and religious intolerance.
While I think capitalism is at the root of the horrors we face across the globe, I agree with her when she says “the places of contestation are everywhere”.
The book asks how should the oppressed deal with constant denials of agency and even the reality of their own experience.
Tareq Baconi recalls Franz Fanon’s ideas of how language can be used impose an identity on to the colonised—what Baconi calls “abjection”. But in creating networks of solidarity, we can rise above victimhood and fight back with creativity and revolutionary struggle.
An article on Palestinian football by Ellen van Neervan is one of the strongest contributions.
Neervan details how the Israeli national team can play at a stadium built on the ruins of the Palestinian village al-Maliha.
There’s so much more to this book—it is expansive and profound in relating Palestinian struggle to wider resistance. Reading it felt like an act of solidarity in itself.
The question of Palestine is a touchstone for the global struggle for liberation.
The book’s editor, Mahdi Sabbagh, calls for those who experience inequality in distinct ways to come together.
Sabbagh worries that the desire to find connections between different experiences such as poverty, oppression of different sorts can be “reductive”. But connections can only strengthen our struggles. While forms of oppression have their own characteristics and history, class solidarity is essential.
While theoretical differences may create different strategies, they should not stop a mass movement from growing.
They may even be an indication of the strength and breadth of such a movement.
I’m inspired by the Palestinians’ call to universalise their experience and globalise its fight for liberation.
Omar Robert Hamilton, director of the Palestine Festival of Literature, argues that Israel’s use of technology to repress Palestinians is being exported across the world alongside a dwindling democracy.
Hamilton’s contribution ends with a powerful call for an end to borders. Author Tareq Baconi says Gaza can be a beacon for struggle for the oppressed across the globe.
To build solidarity we have to discuss, argue and explain if we are to cut through the lies and build a movement that can fight for liberation for all.
