The Israel-Palestine 'conflict' through the lens of novelists

When US President Donald Trump called for Palestinians in Gaza to be "transferred" to Egypt, Jordan or other countries, it wasn't something new. The Nakba, or catastrophe, that befell Palestinians in 1948 upon Israel's creation marked the expulsion of many from their lands. But this was not just a one-off tragedy; it turned out to be an ongoing process—one that has been carried out under different pretexts: displacement, occupation, and siege.

Novelists have not only told stories that shed light on these crimes, but some have also eerily foreshadowed the future. For example, when Ghassan Kanafani wrote Returning to Haifa in 1969, he had no way of knowing that the scene of a Palestinian returning to find his homeland erased would be reenacted time and again by real-life Palestinians—in each instance with even greater cruelty.

The novel follows the story of Said and his wife, Safiyya, who return to their city only to discover that the infant son they were forced to leave behind during the Nakba had grown up to become a soldier in the Israeli army. It is a stinging portrayal of dual loss: that of land and also belonging.

Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury sought to explore the loss of identity further in his novel Gate of the Sun, which follows Younis—a fedayeen fighter who secretly crosses the border to visit his wife, Nahila, attempting to construct a parallel sense of time amidst the ruin. Yet he discovers that storytelling is the only thing in his control, and through it, he builds a fragile bridge between past and present.

A battle for survival

From Kanafani and Khoury to Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses and Sahar Khalifeh's Bab Al-Saha, novelists continuously seek to decipher a fractured memory—an identity battling for survival in the midst of repeated exile. These novels raise existential questions for Palestinians and readers alike: Will telling the tragic stories of Palestinians eventually help bring them back to their stolen homeland? Or are Palestinians destined to keep shouting into the abyss?

If for nothing else, storytelling is an act of resistance to Palestinians who wish to reclaim their voice, even if realpolitik doesn't afford them happy endings.

On the flip side, novels written by Israelis reflect deep-seated angst about their country's occupation of the Palestinians, and a gnawing fear of annihilation dominates the psyche of their characters. For example, in To the End of the Land by David Grossman, the character Ora realises that despite Israel’s military might and technological superiority, it remains a fragile entity, always teetering on the edge.

Fear seems woven into Israel’s national fabric, propelling it towards ever-increasing violence and repression, as if power is wielded not only for survival but to suppress self-doubt over its legitimacy as a state.

Exposing contradictions

This angst sheds light on a fundamental paradox of the Zionist project: how can a state be built upon the negation of another people and still expect to exist peacefully among those it has displaced? This contradiction creeps into Israeli novels, where, on the one hand, writers often try to impose their own historical narrative, and on the other, expose the fragility of the Jewish state.

Israeli novelists—plagued by perpetual doubt and caught between fear and power—are constantly trying to defend their existence. Michael Chabon’s novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, offers a particularly striking perspective. It delves into the very core of Zionist ideology and imagines a world in which the state of Israel was established as a Jewish settlement in Alaska—not Palestine. Through this premise, Chabon situates Zionism within its political framework, portraying it not as a historical inevitability but as a deliberate choice made at a specific moment—one that led to a conflict with no end in sight. The novel raises an existential question: is the problem rooted in the land itself or the project as a whole?

For his part, Palestinian writer Rabai al-Madhoun examines the intricate relationship between Palestinians and Israelis—not merely as adversaries, but as victims of a reality shaped by political projects—in his novel, Destinies: Concerto of the Holocaust and the Nakba. He challenges dominant narratives and poses difficult questions: can Israel ever become a state for all its citizens? Can Zionism distance itself from the centrality of a Jewish state and morph into a more inclusive and humane project, or does this fly in the face of the essence of Zionism?

History has shown that Israel prefers displacement and ethnic cleansing over any form of coexistence because it is an ideology more focused on exclusion than on state-building.

In al-Madhoun's other novel, The Lady from Tel Aviv, a Palestinian is seated next to an Israeli actress on a plane. Their conversation reveals how the average Israeli is privileged just by the simple fact that they can travel, live a normal life and can ignore the "conflict" if they choose. Palestinians have no such luxury, as they are forced to face the harsh reality of life under occupation and displacement.

Eyeing the future

But are Palestinians doomed to pass down the generational trauma associated with such occupation and displacement? Susan Abulhawa unpacks this tricky question in her novel Mornings in Jenin, which follows four generations of Palestinians enduring the horrors of occupation and exile while the modern world remains largely indifferent to their suffering.

In their search for belonging, the characters' individual and collective identities collide at the point of fracture. The novel urges readers to reflect not only on past pain but also look towards the future, opening doors for hope and change for the next generations.

It is a powerful statement on how Palestinians are born into a struggle they did not choose and a wound that has never healed. Meanwhile, the world sees their struggle as a pesky nuisance rather than a crime demanding redress.

This perspective intersects with the views of Edward Said, who consistently argued that the West has never regarded Palestinians as victims but rather as a political problem. The world could have sympathised with Palestinian refugees as it has with countless other displaced populations throughout history. Instead, it chose to see them through the Zionist lens, as nameless Arabs who supposedly left the land of their own accord and have no legitimate historical claim to it.

This denial, which began in 1948, persists to this day, as major powers continue to justify the displacement and killing of Palestinians under the pretext of "self-defence"—as if Palestinian existence itself were a threat that must be eliminated.

A scathing critique

However, Jean Genet put Palestinian resistance in its proper context. In his novel, Prisoner of Love, written after spending time with Palestinian fighters in Lebanon, Genet tells the story of their struggle not only to reclaim lost land but to reclaim their right to be seen in a world that insists on erasing them.

The novel's lesson is universal and could be applied to any injustice. It also serves as a scathing critique of a world that has lost its moral compass.

Literature, as a force of revelation and deconstruction, repeatedly proves that all political projects remain fragile when tested by time, no matter how entrenched they may seem. In Judas, Israeli novelist Amos Oz dismantles the myth of Zionism’s eternal permanence, suggesting that, like any political venture, it is merely a project—one that can collapse just as quickly as it was created.

He not only questions the future of the Israeli state, but also exposes the internal contradictions that Israelis themselves grapple with. How can people who perceive themselves as victims of history build their state upon the suffering of others? How can Israel enjoy security if it seeks the erasure of another people?

In the end, as long as the Palestinians keep telling their stories, they cannot be erased. And Israeli writers battling their contradictions will eventually have to face them head-on. In this sense, post-Nakba literature isn't just about recounting the past, but about reclaiming a future free from occupation and exile.