Palestine

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Palestine

Excerpts from Palestine

Written and illustrated by Joe Sacco
Published originally as individual comics between 1993 and 1996
Republished as a collection by Fantagraphics Books in 2001

"Look, on your side there are some extremists, and on our side there are some extremists."

During the winter of 1991–92, Maltese-American comic artist Joe Sacco (1960–) traveled to the Middle East, where he spent several months in Israel and in the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank. (The Occupied Territories are portions of land bordering on Israel that are claimed by Palestinians but occupied and ruled by the Israeli army ever since the Six-Day War of 1967.) Sacco arrived near the end of the First Intifada, an Arabic word for "uprising." The First Intifada was a Palestinian effort to use street protests, strikes, and small-scale violence to draw international attention to the unjust ways they had been treated by their Israeli occupiers.

In January 1993 Sacco published his first comic book about his experience in the Middle East. He went on to publish a total of nine issues between 1993 and 1996, eventually combining them to create the graphic novel called Palestine. Through black-and-white illustrations, a strong plot, and plenty of dialogue from the dozens of characters who are included in the book, Sacco explored his arrival in the Occupied Territories, a visit to Israel, and the encounters he had with Palestinians, Arabs from other countries, Israelis, and Americans and Europeans traveling in the region. Along the way, Sacco offered a history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, bringing readers into the complicated world of Middle Eastern politics. In each new issue, Sacco focused more closely on the nature of the Palestinian experience, using a wide range of characters to tell different aspects of the story.

Palestine was unlike any other work published on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an ongoing battle between the Jewish country of Israel and the Arab Palestinians over the control of land and government of the territory once known as Palestine. Other works on the conflict have been the product of journalists, scholars, or people who wanted to persuade others of their position on the conflict. Sacco provided an entirely different approach. He let his characters speak, and they reported all sides of the story (though Sacco did have great sympathy for the Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories). According to the well-known Palestinian scholar Edward Said's writing in Palestine, readers see these stories "through the eyes and persona of a modest-looking ubiquitous [all knowing] crew-cut young American man who appears to have wandered into an unfamiliar, inhospitable world of military occupation, arbitrary [random] arrest ... torture ['moderate physical pressure'] and sheer brute force generously, if cruelly applied."

Sacco's work was immediately praised for its imaginative approach to understanding the complex conflict. An Utne Reader reviewer wrote that "Sacco uses the comic book format to its fullest extent, creating bold perspectives that any photojournalist would envy," and Entertainment Weekly wrote that "It figures that one of the first books to make sense of this mess would be a comic book." Sacco won the 1996 American Book Award for his work. In 2001, all nine volumes of the series were collected in the graphic novel Palestine.

In the excerpts below, Sacco offers his unique artistic perspective on the clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In the first excerpt, Sacco visits a village that he calls in Palestine a "veritable gold mine of Palestinian misery" to hear one family's story of how Israeli soldiers cut down their family's beloved olive trees. In the second excerpt, Sacco allows a Palestinian man to tell the story of his interrogation by Israeli soldiers.

Joe Sacco

Comic book artist Joe Sacco was born in 1960 on the island nation of Malta and lived in Australia as a child before settling permanently in the United States. He studied journalism at the University of Oregon. After graduating from college he worked in several journalistic jobs, but spent more of his time working on comic books. In addition to Palestine, Sacco has published another piece of comic book war journalism, Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia, 1992–1995 (2000), and a collection of his works called Notes from a Defeatist (2003).

In a January magazine interview with Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Sacco referred to himself as "Just a cartoonist, I mean, doing journalism in comics form." Critics have praised Sacco's ability to use an artist's attentiontophysicaldetailtohighlight specific elements of the stories he tells, yet they have also noted that his works provide a good understanding of the nature of the issues he covers. Sacco has said that his biggest hero was the British journalist and novelist George Orwell (1903–1950), who had a unique ability to insert himself into the nonfiction stories that he told without compromising his ability to describe events. Asked what his goals were in writing Palestine, Sacco told Tuhus-Dubrow that he hoped people would "just pay a little more attention to the news, or just understand a little more from reading the book what's going on, or get involved in activism, or get involved in reading, you know, really get involved in the subject itself."

Things to remember while reading excerpts from Joe Sacco's Palestine:

Joe Sacco has said that Palestine was written primarily for an American audience.
Palestinians are Arabs, usually Muslims, who claim historic roots to the region known as Palestine, which now makes up most of the nation of Israel.
Israel took control of the Occupied Territories following the Six-Day War of 1967, when it occupied lands previously held by Egypt and Jordan. The war forced many thousands of Palestinians to live in refugee camps in countries such as Jordan and Syria, or temporary shelters for people forced to relocate because of war. By the 2000s, many of these refugee camps had become permanent homes for Palestinians.
The narrator makes reference to Greek Orthodox Christmas. The Orthodox religion is a Christian religion that split from the Catholic church over issues of religious law. While the religions share many aspects, including holidays, each religion follows its own religious calendar which tells which days specific religious holidays are celebrated on. Hence, Greek Orthodox Christmas and Catholic Christmas might occur on different days depending on the year.
Olive trees are a symbol of Palestinian land ownership.
Hebrew is a language commonly spoken by Jews in Israel, though many also speak English. Arabic is a language commonly spoken by Palestinians.
A Molotov cocktail is a crude bomb made by filling a bottle with a flammable liquid and using a rag as a fuse or wick.
The Homestead Act was a nineteenth-century American law that gave pioneers the right to claim Western lands that appeared unoccupied, though they were often home to Native American tribes.

Excerpts from Palestine

What happened next ...

Near the conclusion of Palestine, Sacco depicts three Israeli soldiers questioning a thirteen-year-old Palestinian boy who is forced to stand in the rain. Sacco wonders what will happen to the Palestinians and Israelis, caught in a seemingly unending conflict, as a result of the violence and hatred that characterize their relationship. He wonders "what can happen to someone who thinks he has all the power ... [and] what becomes of someone when he believes himself to have none?"

In July 2001, when he wrote the preface to the collected edition of Palestine, Sacco was still unsure about the prospects for peace: "As I write these words, a second Intifada is taking place because, in short, Israeli occupation, and all the consequences of the domination of one people by another, has not ceased." Since 2001, some progress has been made between the Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians elected a new president, Mahmoud Abbas (1935–), early in 2005, and serious peace talks were renewed between the two sides. Perhaps even more importantly, Israel began to withdraw settlers from some parts of the Occupied Territories. Yet the questions raised by Palestine remain: how will the Palestinians and Israelis whose entire culture has been shaped by years and years of conflict learn to set aside their anger and hostility and live in peace?

Did you know ...

The Second, or al-Aqsa, Intifada began in 2000 and may have ended in 2005 with the election of Mahmoud Abbas to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, the governing body for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.
There were approximately 3.9 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories in 2005, as well as about 370,000 Jews and 50,000 Christians.

Consider the following ...

In the introduction to Palestine, Edward Said wrote, "Joe Sacco can ... transmit a great deal of information, the human context and historical events that have reduced Palestinians to their present sense of stagnating [unchanging] powerlessness." Point to several instances in Sacco's work where he uses visual images to convey information about people and events.
One of the things that makes art different from regular journalism is that it uses such artistic devices as metaphors, similes, and imagery to help the reader or viewer understand the story. Locate examples of these devices in Sacco's work and explain how they help to heighten the effect of the story.
Compare Sacco's work on Palestine with more standard historical or journalistic sources. What are the strengths and weaknesses of both types of work? Is one better at conveying the "truth" about a situation? Explain in detail.
Identify some of the important questions raised by Sacco's work. What are other sources that can be used to further explore these issues?

For More Information

Books

Sacco, Joe, with introduction by Edward Said. Palestine. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2001 (previously published in nine comic books, 1993–96).