The 1967 war brought all of historic Palestine under Israeli control and deepened collective disillusionment. It led to a new wave of Palestinian refugees and exiles.
Following the ‘Great Defeat’, the concept of resistance literature as coined by Kanafani (see 1948 al-Nakbah) gained renewed force, aligning with the rise of the Palestinian Revolution and becoming a defining mode of literary expression (reference). The intellectual disillusionment that followed the war led to concepts such as iltizām (see 1953 Iltizām) fading from the literary discourse.
Much of Palestinian literature was produced in exile, particularly in Beirut, where also the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was located, but also in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and the US (reference).
- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Munīf (1933 – 2004, Jordan / Saudi Arabia) – al-Ashjār wa Ightiyāl Marzūq (‘The trees and Marzūq’s assasination’, 1973). This novel treats the issue of continuous Arab defeats, particularly 1967, from the perspective of the insider. It opens with two strangers meeting on a train in an unnamed Arab country. The first, Ilyās, is an ordinary man working different jobs as a hired labour. He represents the destruction of the rural community. The other traveller, an intellectual by the name Manṣūr, fought Israel during the Palestinian Nakbah of 1948 (see 1948 al-Nakbah) after which he studied in Europe. Manṣūr questions the legitimacy of the Arab regimes, making himself a target for interrogation and eventually forcing him into exile (reference) (G: Dysfunctional Governance: Corruption).
- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Munīf (1933 – 2004, Jordan / Saudi Arabia) and Jabrā Ibrāhīm Jabrā (1920 – 1994, Palestine) – ʿĀlim bi-la Kharaʾit (1982, English trans. A World Without Maps, 1983). The main character of this co-authored novel is in the process of writing a novel and discusses this process at length. Politics and the personal intertwine as the period of Arab defeat in the 1970s is reflected in the narrator’s intense search for the truth surrounding the death of his long-time lover, who he might have murdered himself. The title of the novel refers to a world of uncertainty (reference) (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Writing).
- Hānī al-Rāhib (1939 – 2000, Syria) – Alf Laylah wa-Laylatān (‘One Thousand and Two Nights’, 1977). This novel portrays the Arab defeat in 1967 and uncovers its causes as being cultural, rather than military and economic (reference). In the novel, the characters of One Thousand and One Nights are continuously referred to and are compared with the Syrian setting post-1967, both by the author and the protagonists themselves, and throughout the story jinns, magic places, etc., are mentioned as means of sudden transformation (reference) (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales: A Thousand and One Nights).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Refqa Abu-Remaileh, 2023. “Literature under Triple Occupation Post-Nakba,” A Country of Words: Mapping Memory, Resistance, and Exile in Palestinian Literary History, https://countryofwords.supdigital.org/periods/literature-under-triple-occupation-post-nakba/Ṣabry Hafiẓ. 2006. “An Arabian Master.” New Left Review 37: 39-66, p. 41-3
- Bashir Abu-Manneh. 2015. “Tonalities of Defeat and Palestinian Modernism.” Minnesota Review 85: 56-79 p. 69
- Mahmoud Saeed. 2000. “Remembering Hani al-Rahib: Death Ends Novelist’s Portrayal of Arab World in Crisis.” Al Jadid, 6(31) www.aljadid.com/content/remembering-hani-al-rahib-death-ends-novelists-portrayal-arab-world-crisis (last accessed 28 September 2022)
- Richard van Leeuwen. 2018. The Thousand and One Nights and Twentieth-Century Fiction. Intertextual Readings. Brill: Leiden, Boston. p. 676