Lebanese writer Elias Khoury accuses Israel of stealing his novel

Lebanese writer and novelist, Elias Khoury, yesterday accused the Israeli theatre festival, Merkaz Habama, of stealing his novel Yalu and turn it into a play without his permission.

In a post on Facebook, Khoury said in that no one has asked his permission to quote his novel for the theatre or to show it at the festival in Jerusalem, stressing that he strictly boycotts all institutions associated with the occupying state.

He said that the festival is funded by the Jerusalem Fund where the Mayor of occupied Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, serves as an honorary president.

The art’s testimony, on the painful 50th anniversary of the occupation of Jerusalem, must be a cry against the occupation and against the settlements and against the projects of Judaizing Jerusalem and erasing its Palestinian-Arab character and subjecting its people to oppression 

he said.

Khoury stressed that he categorically refuses to allow his novel, which revolves around the Lebanese civil war, to be quoted or shown in occupied Jerusalem, and that he did not relinquish any of his rights to it.