Portside

Although a fragile ceasefire was called in Lebanon was called earlier this week, the civilian death toll in Palestine and Lebanon continues to rise daily, with millions displaced and living in dire conditions. In the Gaza Strip in particular, Israel’s Western allies have done nothing to stop the violence. More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed – at the very least – and Israel’s blockade has caused a humanitarian disaster unprecedented in the 21st century. Yet, this had failed to provoke the widespread outrage one might have expected from the leaders of the world’s major powers. In Lebanon, since the outbreak of open conflict between Israel and Hezbollah on 23 September, the majority of casualties have been civilians, with the death toll now approaching 1,900, according to AFP and the Lebanese Ministry of Health. Fearing that no boundary will be off limits, the Lebanese are now asking themselves a grim question: will they suffer the same fate as Gaza?

Two intellectuals, one from Palestine and the other from Lebanon, share the experience of their countries being bombarded by Israel. Karim Kattan, 35, is a Palestinian writer from Bethlehem. He holds a PhD in comparative literature and currently lives in France. He has published two novels, along with numerous articles in French and English literary journals. Yara El Khoury is a Lebanese historian, a lecturer at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, and an associate researcher at the Centre for Modern Arab Studies (CEMAM).

In this joint interview for Equal Times, they share their views on two countries devastated by war and the largely absent outrage in the West.

Karim Kattan, the war in Gaza feels ever-present, yet, despite the humanitarian nightmare unfolding, it has been met with overwhelming silence and passivity. People are talking about Gaza, but are we talking about it the right way?

Karim Kattan: First and foremost, I want to clarify that my focus is primarily on the French context, as I live in France. The war has been going on for over a year, and I continue to see a clear disregard for the Palestinian experience. There has been no real collective outrage, especially among writers. I naively believed that writers—men and women alike—might be moved to protest the destruction of libraries and the massacre of fellow writers in Gaza. Yet even in this area, which should have resonated with them, there has been no outcry. In my view, this is largely due to the constant suspicion cast on the work of Palestinian journalists, who are the only ones covering this war.

Are we witnessing the dehumanisation of Palestinians in Gaza?

KK: Dehumanisation implies that, at some point, we were granted humanity but lost it through some nefarious process. In reality, after a year of systematic destruction in Gaza, I’ve come to realise that we have never truly regarded the Palestinians as human beings – ‘we’ meaning Westerners. I didn’t use the term before the war in Gaza but my perspective has shifted.

Yara El Khoury: We are confronted with deeply entrenched and conflicting memories between the West (including Israel) and the Middle East. We don’t view history through the same lens. Palestinians have indeed been dehumanised. What’s worse, there are many in Israel who deny the very existence of Palestinian history, as if this people never existed in the first place. The events of 7 October have been interpreted anachronistically. They have been referred to as the first pogrom of the 21st century, even though the context is vastly different from the conditions that Jews faced in Tsarist Russia. Western media are amplifying the narrative of an ‘existential’ battle that the Israeli army is supposedly fighting, when, in fact, since its founding in 1948, Israel has won every battle it has fought. Israel is in a position of conquest, yet we are being made to believe it is on the defensive. I don’t think this serves the Israelis themselves, and it certainly won’t move forward the dialogue that, sooner or later, will need to take place.

Have Palestinians been forgotten by the version of history told in the West?

YK: Yes. To this day, the West remains convinced that Palestine was empty and impoverished before the creation of Israel, and that it was the Jewish settlers who performed miracles by transforming arid land into gardens. This is a distorted view. The prosperity that made Lebanon the ‘Switzerland of the Middle East’ in the 1950s and 1960s was, in part, due to the Palestinians who settled there after being expelled from their towns during the Nakba [the mass expulsions that took place during the 1948 war, which lead to the creation of the state of Israel, editor’s note]. Where did these Palestinians, with capital and education, who became key figures in the vibrant economic, cultural, and intellectual life of pre-war Beirut [Lebanese Civil Wars: 1975–1990], come from? They couldn’t have come from a desert...

Yara El Khoury, do you think the West is indifferent to the fate of the Lebanese people as well?

YK: Lebanon is viewed differently from Palestine; its sovereignty is recognised, and it enjoys significant sympathy in the West. As a result, incursions by the Israeli army tend to provoke more outrage than those in Gaza and the West Bank. It must also be acknowledged that the Lebanese themselves (and I count myself among them) never believed they could suffer the same fate as Gaza. It seemed insane, unthinkable. Today, many believe they are caught in a war that is not their own, fighting for a just cause – the Palestinian cause – but one for which they have already paid a very heavy price over the last 50 years. There is a feeling that history has abandoned them, a sense of loss and disillusionment. For a long time, they waited for Israel to withdraw from southern Lebanon, which it did in 2000. They waited for the Syrian army to leave, which happened in 2005. So why is it that we’re still at war?

Karim Kattan, for some, the story begins on the 7th of October. But wasn’t the violence against Palestinians ongoing and widespread, even before that massacre?

KK: The refusal to acknowledge Palestinian suffering is not new, but it has become glaring over the past year. There is a clear reluctance to view what’s happening in Israel-Palestine within a material, historical, and political context. Many journalists have failed in their duty to provide critical analysis and context. I am constantly asked why the voices of Palestinians are being repressed. But the real question should be directed at Europeans: why do the established media shut down almost any consideration of the Palestinian issue? I am all the more astonished because I naively believed in the possibility of dialogue. I didn’t use to say this, but the truth is there is censorship in France. This is worrying for us, but even more so for the French people.

The credibility of Palestinian journalists has been called into question, and they are sometimes associated with Hamas. How do you explain such suspicions?

KK: There is a colonial mindset that underpins much of French thought, one that gives rise to a deep skepticism of Arab perspectives. When reporting on the number of Palestinians killed by Israel, Western media constantly repeat phrases like “according to the Ministry of Health, which is administered by Hamas, a terrorist group,” in a supposed attempt at neutrality. But what they fail to mention is crucial: this information cannot be verified by other media outlets because Israel prohibits journalists from entering Gaza. In this context, and because Palestinians in Gaza are not being heard, my voice – coming from Paris – has found greater resonance in the media. As a writer, I tend to focus on the long view, on contradictions and hesitations. I exist in a discursive space that is not always aligned with the media narrative, but I still feel compelled to speak out about what’s happening. It’s a double-edged sword, though, because I’m expected to speak on everything. I find myself rediscovering roles I never anticipated: political scientist, historian, international law expert. Palestinians are expected to possess a wide range of expertise in order to offer a valid perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Yara El Khoury, is the representation of the Israeli narrative in the public sphere just as problematic for the Lebanese?

YK: There are lines that cannot be crossed in Western countries, an established consensus that must be respected, and a vision of history that must be upheld – otherwise, the entire intellectual and moral edifice would collapse. This is deeply problematic and stifles critical thought. But what I want to say to Karim Kattan is that, fortunately, he is able to speak out, even if it seems insignificant to him. For a long time, the problem for the Arab world was that its voice was silenced. But since 7 October, especially in the English-speaking world, we’ve heard voices from the Arab world speaking out loud and clear. The Arab world has regained a voice that was taken from it for so long. And that gives me hope.

KK: That’s true. There’s a huge difference between the French-speaking world and the English-speaking world when it comes to the discourse on Gaza. Many Palestinians are English speakers, which is probably the main reason. But in my opinion, Palestinians also face another challenge. Many intellectuals produce exceptional work, but we are fragmented. A Palestinian in Gaza, a Palestinian in the West Bank, a Palestinian from 1948 [Descendants of Palestinians who remained after the creation of the State of Israel and now hold Israeli passports], an internally displaced refugee [Palestinian refugees within occupied Palestinian territory], and an externally displaced refugee [Palestinian refugees outside of the Palestinian territories, the majority of whom reside in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria] each have different resources and realities. These varying realities lead to a fragmentation of thought.

The war in Gaza has been ongoing for over a year, as it has been in Lebanon, where it escalated on 23 September. Every day, dozens of people are killed by the Israeli army, amid growing indifference. Are the Palestinians and the Lebanese running out of time?

YK: Yes. If the war continues at this pace, there will be nothing left in Gaza, southern Lebanon or the southern suburbs of Beirut. Even if the fighting in Lebanon were to stop tomorrow, the problems caused by the war are catastrophic. Across the region, we have paved the way for a hundred years of future conflict. As for Lebanon, it seems lost, and the outlook is extremely bleak.

KK: Israeli society is entering an era of extreme uncertainty, not only for those around it, but also for itself. The future terrifies me. The catastrophe in Gaza is irreversible. Even if a ceasefire were to be declared today, Gaza would remain uninhabitable. What will become of the generation of Palestinians whose lives have been shattered? Leaving aside the wounded, which Europeans seem to regard as incidental, what about the Palestinian children who have missed a year of schooling? Entire future generations have been wiped out. This will shape Palestinian society in a profoundly negative way for a long time to come. The outlook is dire.

This article has been translated from French.

Inès Gil is a French freelance journalist currently based in Lebanon, after having worked in Israel and the Palestinian territories for two years. In August 2017, she travelled to Mosul to cover the developments in Iraq in the aftermath of the war against the so-called Islamic State. More recently, she covered the Beirut port explosion (August 2020) and the war over Nagorno-Karabakh (October 2020).

Equal Times is a trilingual (English, French and Spanish) global news and opinion website focusing on labour, human rights, culture, development, the environment, politics and the economy from a social justice perspective.