The most recommended books about Palestinians

As a journalist I have often reported on the Palestinian refugees in my home country Lebanon. I visited the refugee camps and spoke to its residents, and every time I leave the place with stories of what they have behind when they had to flee the historic land of Palestine in 1948 and later in 1967. The old keys and deeds to their homes that had been passed on from one generation to another, stay witness to their conviction of their right to return. This book is about those people and their narratives. It is about Palestinians’ collective memory of loss, that has been kept alive mostly through the spoken word. This book is a narrative documenting those narratives. It captures the essence of what it means to be Palestinian. 

Joe Saccos’ work has had such an impression on me.

In 1991-1992, Sacco spent two months in the occupied territories, collecting stories for this masterpiece of journalism and comics. He was breaking new ground; Comics Journalism as a form did not really exist before this book.

On the ground, Sacco found that as a cartoonist, he could delve deeper into the experiences of the Palestinians he interviewed; all knew their identities were safe as the book would be drawn, with no identifying photos, no names. Their stories and pain pour forth. 

Looking back on this publication thirty years later, the situation has become far, far worse for Palestinians. This book is an excellent primer to understand the atrocities of the present and the context of their past.

A veritable tome documenting the entire history of Middle East peace negotiations between Israel and its neighbors, including Syria, by Dennis Ross, the envoy who was on the inside throughout. Important revelations and insights emerge from the pages of this in-depth narrative of these torturous negotiations. It debunks the myth that no solutions had been or can be found. But despite agreements on all sides, one party or the other usually walked away. Because of my work in Israel, Jordan, Oman, Syria, and the Emirates, I found this book to be particularly valuable. And, now that I’ve come to know Dennis Ross personally, I value his contributions even more. 

For the first eighteen years of Israel’s existence most Arabs in the country were ruled by a military administration. It was formally abolished only a year before the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 and the establishment of Israeli military rule in those territories. The story of that early military government is not well known, except by specialists. But with the publication of Shira Robinson’s book, based on declassified archival material, we now know the details of how Arab citizens of Israel were subordinated, exploited, and manipulated, under false rationales of security concerns, in order to bolster the political position of the dominant Labor Party, to advance Zionist goals of land acquisition and subsidization of Jewish settlement, and, as the title of the book suggests, to help present Israel as a “liberal” state while concealing its settler colonialist dynamics.

Timing can be everything. I love all of Colum McCann’s work, so it’s not surprising that he would top this list. But I happened to be reading this title, a fictionalized account of a true story, not long before Hamas stormed into Israel.

The story centers on the profound human pain this conflict creates. It offers hope and optimism in the stories of two fathers, one Israeli and one Palestinian, who create a close and enduring friendship amid horrifying losses— the violent deaths of their daughters. The narrative beautifully describes the trauma, tragedies, and transformations the men and their families experience, which fuels their commitment to creating a nonviolent movement for peace in the Middle East.

In addition to being a creative and gripping read, it offers historical context and interesting twists to an impossibly complex and ongoing geopolitical crisis. This book left me both heartbroken and hopeful.

This is a powerful and beautiful book that captures the strength and culture of the Palestinian people. Some books feel like they must exist, and this is one of them.

I feel like food is such a great theme because you can really tackle heavy or tough subjects with it. This book does a good job of not sugarcoating that heaviness but being real about it and presenting it by using a focus of the olive trees and what that means to Palestinians. It takes skill to do that.

I really appreciate this book and it should be in every home.

This is a slim volume that is playful, sweet, and natural in tone, although the setting, Gaza, is never associated with the playful, the sweet, and the whole regime that governs it is as far from being natural as is feasibly possible. 

I had not read a voice like Heba’s before, warm yet wise beyond her years and full of humor, intelligence, and originality. There is an excellent playlist that ranges from Nina Simone to Mashrou’ Leila, which covers aspects of her life, from fluffy slippers to political debates to the love of family and women. ‘Late capitalism is the bane of my life,’ Hayek writes, ‘sometimes it feels as though these algorithms have encrypted my very brain.’

As a teenager in Gaza, she uses Google Maps to explore cities she cannot access, but when homesick in exile later, in Europe or the US there is an equivalent way of… show more.

Silencing the Sea follows Palestinian poets' debates about their craft as they traverse multiple and competing realities of secularism and religion, expulsion and occupation, art, politics, immortality, death, fame, and obscurity. Khaled Furani eloquently leads his reader along ancient roads and across Israeli military checkpoints to join the poets' worlds and engage with the rhythms of their lifelong journeys in Islamic and Arabic history, language, and verse. This excursion offers newfound understandings of how today's secular age goes far beyond doctrine, to inhabit our very senses, imbuing all that we see, hear, feel, and utter.

Poetry, the traditional repository of Arab history, has become the preeminent medium of Palestinian memory in exile. In probing poets' writings, this work investigates how struggles over poetic form can host larger struggles over authority, knowledge, language, and freedom. It reveals a very intimate and venerated world, entwining art, intellect, and politics, narrating previously untold… show more.

What I love in Hiller’s writing is the no-glory honesty of growing up in settings of omniscient violence where the last wish of the protagonists is to be heroic. They are vulnerable young men trying to get by, to do the right thing, to find calm.

This book and its sister book, Shake Off, are some of the finest works of fiction set during political conflict and war that I have read. Hiller’s gracious enough as to refrain from indulging in the gratuitous or the showy, but these are finely crafted thrillers. They are both equally gripping, taking the reader through worlds rarely seen by English language readers.