” “Oh no ! Not Latina!” I said to myself when I learned the theme ofAraborama. “Not ! Lestine!” I screamed alone in front of my screen” : the spicy anecdote tenderly recounted by Sabyl Ghoussoub, a writer of Lebanese origin, clearly expresses the passions that the evocation of this flammable territory conveys.
Halfway between the mook and the book, the volume entitled What Palestine brings to the world was published in March, before Hamas’s attacks on Israel and the ensuing war. Third delivery of the “Araborama” collection – which brings together intellectuals, writers, artists and illustrators to explore present realities, plurality and the history of the “Arab world” – it accompanies the exhibition of the same name which is currently being held at the Institute of the Arab World, in Paris , and is essential for understanding the issues of the current conflict.
“Source of poetry”
Supported by enlightening cartography and numerous articles written by the best specialists (Jean-Pierre Filiu, Henry Laurens, Elias Sanbar, Bertrand Badie, Camille Mansour, Leïla Shahid, etc.), the work is accompanied by an iconography which shows the great vitality of the Arab-Palestinian artistic scene, showing another face than that of the tensions which oppose Palestine and Israel.
Because if words such as “fragmentation”, “confiscation”, “splintering”, “dependence” or “erasure” come back in a heady way to describe the Palestinian experience, the latter is also “source of poetry, ferment of solidarity, inspiration for battles”notes the journalist from World Christophe Ayad, in the introduction.
The Palestinian experience is above all a certain relationship to the land, underlines political science researcher Leila Seurat: “The Nakba, the great catastrophe of 1948, produced among Palestinians a very special feeling of belonging to the land. Far from being digested, the dazzling expulsion aroused a feeling of presence in absence, like a phantom limb which, although torn off, continues to cause pain. »
A pain that radiates throughout all Arab countries, with Palestine, the cradle of monotheism, occupying a privileged place in their imagination, note academics Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid and Chérine Chams El-Dine. And to show that if Arab governments often only moderately support the Palestinian cause, public opinion in the twenty-two Arab countries is very supportive.
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