This presentation focuses on a new book project entitled, Imprisoned: Voices and Images from Confinement Landscapes in Palestine.  A work in progress, Imprisoned is a detailed investigation into a vanishing Palestinian landscape that is disappearing under the onslaught of an expanding landscape of colonization and settlement imposed on the land by the State of Israel.  As the Palestinian landscape disappears under the footprint of Israeli colonization and settlement, the geographical spaces remaining for Palestinians in which to reside, work, and circulate contract leaving behind what the book argues are “confinement landscapes.” Enlisting a thickly descriptive ethnography, alongside photographic images taken by the author, this presentation reveals the lived experience of three individuals confronted by confinement in three different Palestinian locales, framed by broader theoretical issues of settler colonialism and the interplay of landscapes and power.

SPEAKERS

Gary Fields is a Professor in the Department of Communication and an affiliate in the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego.  Formally trained in historical geography, he is the author of Enclosure:  Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror (2017, University of California Press), and “Lockdown:  Gaza Through a Camera Lens and Historical Mirror” (2020, Journal of Palestine Studies). 

Nadia Abu El-Haj is Ann Whitney Olin Professor in the Departments of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies.

ABOUT HOSTILE HOMELANDS
Under Narendra Modi, India has changed dramatically. As the world attempts to grapple with its trajectory towards authoritarianism and a 'Hindu Rashtra' (Hindu State), little attention has been paid to the linkages between Modi's India and the governments from which it has drawn inspiration, as well as military and technical support.

India once called Zionism racism, but, as Azad Essa argues, the state of Israel has increasingly become a cornerstone of India's foreign policy. Looking to replicate the 'ethnic state' in the image of Israel in policy and practice, the annexation of Kashmir increasingly resembles Israel's settler-colonial project of the occupied West Bank. The ideological and political linkages between the two states are alarming; their brands of ethnonationalism deeply intertwined.

Hostile Homelands puts India's relationship with Israel in its historical context, looking at the origins of Zionism and Hindutva; India's changing position on Palestine; and the countries' growing military-industrial relationship from the 1990s. Lucid and persuasive, Essa demonstrates that the India-Israel alliance spells significant consequences for democracy, the rule of law and justice worldwide.

SPEAKERS
Azad Essa is an award-winning journalist and author based between Johannesburg and New York City. He is currently a senior reporter for Middle East Eye covering American foreign policy, Islamophobia and race in the US. He is the author of The Moslems are Coming and Zuma's Bastard and has written for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and the Guardian.

Manan Ahmed is a historian of South Asia and the littoral western Indian Ocean world from 1000-1800 CE. His areas of specialization include intellectual history in South and Southeast Asia; critical philosophy of history, colonial and anti-colonial thought. He is interested in how modern and pre-modern historical narratives create understandings of places, communities, and intellectual genealogies for their readers.

Join the Center for Palestine Studies for an online conversation with Raja Shehadeh and Rashid Khalidi about Shehadeh’s new memoir, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I.

Aziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.

A vocal and fearless opponent, Aziz resists under the British mandatory period, then under Jordan, and, finally, under Israel. As a young man, Raja fails to recognize his father’s courage and, in turn, his father does not appreciate Raja’s own efforts in campaigning for Palestinian human rights. When Aziz is murdered in 1985, it changes Raja irrevocably.

This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in the Ramallah refugee camp. He is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights, and the Middle East.

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.

We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Penguin Random House, 2023) is available for purchase here.