Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation: 1948 – 1968

Assassinated in Lebanon by Israel in 1972, Palestinian intellectual Ghassan Kanafani is mostly renowned for his anti-colonial resistance, political writings and works of literary fiction. Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation: 1948 – 1968 (Verso Books, 2026) brings another aspect of Kanafani’s work to an English-speaking public; a deep historical critique of Palestinian literature in the first two decades since Israel established its colonial presence on Palestinian land.

Drawing upon several Palestinian writers, their poetry, short stories and plays, Kanafani provides an analysis of cultural resistance in Palestinian literature, and shows that it is just as vital as armed struggle against colonial rule. In the foreword, Rashid Khalidi  notes that despite Kanafani’s distance from occupied Palestinian lands in 1948 as he was living in Beirut, the insights into the repression faced by Palestinians in Israel provide “one of the earliest portraits available of that part of Palestinian society, cut off as it was from the est of the Palestinian people.” Far from traitors, their experience and resistance from within Israel connected them to the rest of Palestinians displaced or still living in territories Israel had not yet colonised and occupied.

“Armed resistance is not merely skin-deep; it is the fruit of a tree with roots firmly planted in the ground … This type of resistance assumes its most original form in political and cultural action,” Kanafani writes in his introduction to the book. Noting that Palestinians already had a trajectory of armed and cultural resistance since the 1930s, Kanafani adds, “However, what distinguishes the resistance literature produced from 1948 to 1968 is the exceptionally cruel and violent circumstances that its authors experienced and challenged.”

Palestinians in Israel were considered a dangerous minority, hence the oppression on all aspects of Palestinian life enforced by Israel to annihilate social and cultural ties. Israeli intellectuals and officials promoted not only colonialism but also plans to alienate Palestinians from their cultural bonds. Other forms of oppression were related to inadequate education for Palestinians in Israel – Kanafani notes that in 1967, the number of Palestinian students in Israeli universities was 200, while 19,000 were Israelis. Education was further disrupted for Palestinians within the Israeli education system, with staff chosen for their aptitude in serving surveillance purposes. In 1967, Kanafani notes, hundreds of Palestinian intellectuals inside Israel were detained, and later released and placed under house arrest. As a result of this widespread persecution, Kanafani asserts, “The rapid emergence of a literature of resistance did not happen by accident.”

In tracing Palestinian resistance literature, Kanafani commences with Tawfiq Fayyad’s play, House of Madness, in which the isolation of the protagonist, Sami, is portrayed to the audience as a beacon of memory and determination to resist, despite bouts of confusion as a result of persecution.

Of the body of Palestinian resistance literature, Kanafani states, “Through its depth of vision, the literature of resistance in occupied Palestinian thus fights on more than one front.” As the book continues with analysis of other literary works by different Palestinian writers, Kanafani notes that the social and political aspects are intertwined, and that Palestinian literature recognised the importance of this amalgamation early on in terms of resistance and liberation.

From more common themes of love and societal observations, Palestinian writers developed more complex themes in their literature that encompassed both history and socio-political realities. This in turn also widened to not only discuss the political realities faced by Palestinians in Israel, but also to unequivocally bind land and people in the face of oppression, as seen in the words of Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim. Poetry, Kanafani also notes, was more suited than short stories for the rapidly evolving circumstances experienced by Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Palestinian resistance literature departs from “the axis of confronting Israeli occupation.” With this in mind, Kanfani gives other literary examples from Hanna Abu Hanna with lines such as: A people am I./ What if they jail one man?/ The entire people are in rebellion./If one poet is chained,/ the song will be sung by every poet.

From the depth of the Palestinian consciousness of, and commitment to, resistance, Kanfani notes that Palestinian poetry also embodies the international dimension as it lends its support to anti-colonial resistance movements globally. Darwish, for example, writes about Cuba, as well as Cuba and Algeria; the latter having been assisted by Cuba in its anti-colonial resistance: The flag of Cuba is one/ held high in the soul of a revolutionary/ in the Aures mountains of Algeria. Other Palestinian poets expressed support for various revolutionary figures and movements but, Kanafani notes, this expression for the international aspect of anti-colonial struggle “did not weaken its commitment to the immediate nature of the conflict.”

Besides such examples, the final chapter of the book, which is also the longest, reproduces various literary texts by Palestinian writers, bringing together the literary trajectory which Kanafani dissects and analyses within the historical context of the first two decades of Israeli colonialism and Palestinian resistance. Brief biographical details in the footnotes, as well as additional context that explain the historical and geographical dimensions relating to the anti-colonial resistance, add to the depth of this analysis and anthology.

Alongside other books by Kanafani which have been translated into English, this volume is a valuable contribution for bringing together, so succinctly and yet in tangible detail, that render the Palestinian literary trajectory a different experience by way of immersion rather than mere observation.