Poster by Juan Fuentes, 1980
Hello and welcome to this week’s dispatch. Scroll down for:
The New York launch of Land Keepers, an anthology of writing on ecological resistance in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.
A line-up of short plays from Palestine in London.
A webinar on the Palestinian prisoner movement.
The London launch of Here Where We Live Is Our Country, featuring a conversation between Molly Crabapple and Hazem Jamjoum.
Ahmad Nabil’s Hidden Companions as the Book of the Week.
Your weekly Media Roundup.
New York: Land Keepers Book Launch, 29 May
Land Keepers brings together voices from across Bilad al-Sham, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, tracing ongoing forms of ecological resistance across the Jabal al-Sheikh region, from South Lebanon to the occupied Jawlan and Galilee. Through essays, testimonies, research, and lived histories, the reader reflects on how communities remain rooted in land under ongoing Zionist settler colonialism, militarization, extraction, and ecological destruction imposed across the region.
Join the editors and contributors on Friday, May 29th, from 6:30–8:30 PM NYC time at The People's Forum for the release event for Land Keepers. The event will include a conversation between EcoRove’s Iyad Abou Gaida with contributors Mahdi Sabbagh, Hussein Chaabane, and Michelle Eid, moderated by Lara Arafeh of Majlis NYC. Tickets are available on a sliding scale to ensure everyone can afford to attend. If you have the means, please consider purchasing a supporter ticket to support this important work. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. All tickets will come with a special risograph print created exclusively for this release event!
London: Tomorrow Will Be A Palestinian Day - Short Plays from Palestine, 1-6 June
Bet’n Lev Theatre, the White Kite Collective and PalArt Collective are proud to have brought together an incredible line-up of brand new short plays from Palestine.
An evening of new short plays from writers including Hossam Madhoun, Ali Abu Yassin, Nahil Mohana, Dareen Tatour, Jehad Abu Daya, Mohammed Al Qudwa, Motasem Abu Hasan and Imad Wahba, highlighting the stunning variety and artistry of Palestinian playwrights. Also featuring an English language premiere of an extract from a play by legendary Palestinian writer Walid Daqqa.
Performed by an entirely Palestinian cast, the plays take us on a journey from Santa Claus holidaying in Gaza; through the struggle of undeliverable mail addressed to the houses at numbers ‘48, ‘67 and ‘23; via stories of beauty, loss, hope and dreams for the future.
Tomorrow Will Be a Palestinian Day is a clarion call; an unparalleled and unique opportunity to experience an evening of Palestinian theatre and artistry in the UK.
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Virtual: Death and Palestinian Prisoners, 4 June
Join the Journal of Palestine Studies on 4 June for a webinar on the mortal violence of the Israeli carceral system and the struggles of Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians, some of whom have been sentenced, while others remain in indefinite administrative detention. For decades, Israel has also withheld the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians that were either killed by Israeli forces or died in Israeli prisons. Israel has used death as a mode of control to deter Palestinian resistance.
Against the backdrop of the March 2026 Knesset Death Penalty Law, which provides a path to execute Palestinians accused of terrorism, this JPS webinar examines the ways in which the Israeli state punishes Palestinian prisoners with and in death. While Israeli forces have long been killing Palestinians extrajudicially, the bill marks a dangerous shift in the Israeli approach to capital punishment.
This webinar features three speakers: Smadar Ben-Natan, Muna Haddad, and Suhad Bishara. They build on recent JPS publications and years of experience and expertise. Ben-Natan argues that since October 7, 2023, it has become common in Israel to conflate Palestinian "terrorism" with Nazism, casting Hamas as an absolute enemy to legitimize the death penalty. Haddad examines Israel's long-standing violence against Palestinian corpses as a site of control, revealing how death offers no protection from settler-colonial domination, as evidenced in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Bishara, the legal director of Adalah in Haifa, addresses the ramifications of the death penalty law, including when and if it can be implemented, and what actions are being taken to challenge it.
This webinar will be held virtually on Thursday 4 June, 11am ET / 4pm GMT / 6pm Palestine. Find out more and register here.
London: Book Launch for Molly Crabapple’s Here Where We Live is Our Country, 27 May
We have a small number of tickets remaining for our book launch with Molly Crabapple at the Southbank Centre this coming Wednesday.
Molly will be joined by the brilliant Palestinian writer, translator, and editor Hazem Jamjoum. They’ll be discussing her new book Here Where We Live Is Our Country, and how these histories of anti-Zionist action might serve the Palestine solidarity movement today.
Be sure to snag your ticket for this urgent and unmissable event.
Book of the Week
The Old City of Jerusalem comes alive in Ahmad Nabil’s Hidden Companions, a testimonial and visual archive of Palestinian folklore, now translated into English.
A man wakes every day to find coins under his pillow, a young lonely girl strikes up a friendship with a spectral voice, a veiled woman changes form to delude ordinary senses, a petite girl in all black breaches a group of young girls returning from a wedding, a goat and her two kids draw an unsuspecting young man into a hidden room, a group of curious boys conjure the spirit of Marx. Jinns and ghouls, guardians and tricksters, wizards and possessors. In the Old City of Jerusalem, the Unseen beings are a natural element of everyday life.
With rich, vivid descriptions and in stunning illustrations, Ahmad Nabil weaves a literary account of paranormal stories: held, shared in whisper networks, relayed over conversations, and passed down as inheritance. This English translation by Fatema Alhashemi traces a captivating world largely unseen in popular narrative.
Hidden Companions is out this week. Order your copy from Radix Cooperative.
We just published Issue 006 of The Key last week, featuring original reporting on the censorship of Palestine in Hollywood, testimony from a doctor in Gaza, and a dispatch from the organizers of the strike at this year’s Venice Biennale.
These pieces will be free to read until Issue 007 of The Key publishes next week, so be sure to check them out
And take a look at our growing archive of literary and critical work - available to subscribers from $2 a month. Your support will help us commission new work on Palestine and keep it free for everyone upon release.
Media Roundup
‘Why Don’t You Just Die?’ – Nasser Abu Srour describes, in Luke Leafgren’s translation, how Israel’s torture, abuse, and starvation of Palestinian prisoners worsened after October 7: “Because the merest sound or gesture could be interpreted as a protest, we soon took to remaining silent as atrocities were committed within earshot or before our eyes. Survival became our only watchword. Every prisoner had to protect himself constantly, in whatever way possible. Forced to save ourselves as individuals, we lost our collective bonds.”
A New Path For Reporting On Palestine ft. Sara Yasin – Daniel Spielberger speaks to Sara Yasin about her decision to leave legacy media, the double standard of reporting on Palestine, and how The Key is providing a new path forward.
Israel Is Reviving a 58-Year-Old Government Order to Seize Vital Palestinian Properties in Jerusalem – Qassam Muaddi reports on a new legislative effort in Israel to unilaterally seize pieces of property that are directly adjacent to al-Aqsa Mosque, a troubling escalation in Israel’s ongoing attempt to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem.
Backed by North American Dollars, A Yeshiva Could Push Palestinians Out of Sheikh Jarrah – Charlotte Ritz-Jack reports on an 11-story yeshiva complex that is soon to be built in Sheikh Jarrah with funding from foundations and charities in North America.
Why Bring May Ziadeh into English? Why Now? – The collective translating May Ziadeh's Musings of a Young Woman into English considers the importance of her work for the present.
The Release of Global Sumud Flotilla Activists Must Deepen Pressure for Palestinian Prisoners – Raouf Farrah argues that the outrage over the unjust detention of the Global Sumud Flotilla activists over the past several weeks must also translate into political will for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Another Chance at Blocking Funding of Israeli Settlements – Roman Broszkowski reports on the introduction of legislation in the New York State Assembly to prohibit nonprofits from fundraising for Israeli settlements.
Makdisi Street x Tarwida Podcast: “They carried a memory in their head” with Dr. Salman Abu Sitta – A Makdisi Street / Tarwida crossover podcast featuring a conversation with Dr. Salman Abu Sitta about oral history and the colonial archive, the meaning of UN Resolution 194, the legal and practical feasibility of the right of return, the fight to preserve UNRWA, and why the question of Palestine is, at its core, a question of people being kept from going home.
The Hollow Half Maps the Distance Between Body and Home – N.S. Ahmed reviews Sarah Aziza’s memoir The Hollow Half: “In resisting erasure, the bodies of the living and the dead become both manifesto and elegy, a decolonial record and generational condemnation of the historical violence against the collective indigenous body of Palestine and a prolepsis of the burdens that lie ahead.”
The Gazafication of Lebanon – Ayoub Khan examines how Israel’s assault on southern Lebanon bears the hallmarks of its destruction of Gaza, with the same international complicity.
The Missing of Southern Lebanon: Families of Detainees Demand Answers – Dana Hourany reports on the rising number of people in southern Lebanon abducted and detained by Israel, and the steps that families are taking to track down their loved ones.
Destroy, Depopulate, Desolate: Israel’s Doctrine in South Lebanon – Layla Makdisi reports on the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, which officials have openly declared that they intend “to destroy swathes of territory in the South, rendering it uninhabitable, and then to remain in control of it.”
“The Occupation’s Conditions”: Trump’s Board of Peace Demands that Hamas Surrender to Netanyahu’s Gaza Agenda – Jeremy Scahill and Jawa Ahmad report on how the US and the Board of Peace have unilaterally rewritten the ceasefire agreement, “bulldozing” technicalities to effectively adopt Netanyahu’s terms for the future of Gaza.
Blocking the Bombs: How Far Will Democrats Go on Israel? – Tariq Kenney-Shawa speaks to Josh Ruebner and Ahmed Moor about what efforts in the US Congress to restrict US military support for Israel tell us about how Palestine has shifted the contours of the US-Israeli relationship.
Free Doctor Hussam Abu Safiya – An ode to Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya by Ken Chen: “You wade out the ruined ward where once you calmed / a mother shaking baby into world. You held out your palms / to catch that star, that fresh child who in recollection outcries / the drones wailing wild and the shouts of soldiers still unsatiated.”
Keep My Poems – A new poem by Yahya Ashour: “In my pursuit of tender lines, / I’ve become a butcher, / committing crimes against myself / for the sake of beauty.”
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OK now that really is it now. Look out for Issue 006 of The Key on Wednesday.
