Annual Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize

We are proud to extent the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize to Britain for the year 2023-24. The Prize aims to provide a space for youth to re-engage the Palestinian narrative and explore the complexity of our identity in the ‘shataat’ (exile).

2023-24 prize Theme:

Narratives Beyond Time: Legacies of Palestinian Resistance

Timelessness denotes the possession of an unchanging quality regardless of the passage of time. Legacy denotes the passing on or inheritance of something across time and generations. In light of the disjointedness of our inter-generational story and our constantly changing conditions, for us as Palestinians these two words can seem to have little to offer us in describing our stories that are characterised by constant change: a series of expulsions and upheavals and a lifestyle marked by constantly starting anew, acclimating to constantly changing living conditions and political contexts.

The Nakba dislocated the Palestinian collective from the land, the material connection binding that collective. The Palestinian exodus from Kuwait was another fragmentation and dispossession of a Palestinian collective. Black September marked a shift in the Palestinian consciousness in Jordan, instilling fear and coercing assimilation into the Jordanian identity. The current wave of normalisation initiatives in Gulf states, exacerbating an already somewhat precarious living condition for many Palestinians, marks an increase in fear and precarity if they dare voice their convictions. The growing surveillance infrastructure across Britain, Europe, and Occupied Turtle Island targeting Palestinians has generated a culture overwhelmingly characterised by fear and paranoia. This is not to mention the constantly evolving modes of aggression and suppression enacted by the Zionist entity within Palestine, working to disrupt the fabric of a Palestinian collective even amongst those still on the land.

What this passage of time reveals - with what it contains of multitudes of disjointed experiences - is that these constant seismic shifts in politics carry within them a violence that opposes our dignified existence, waves that disintegrate what we build turning what we possess into nothing. What is timeless about our narrative, then? What binds past and present if today looks nothing like yesterday and tomorrow will definitely not look like today?

What has transcended time and all these changes has been our embroilment in a constant state of resistance. To not perpetuate a narrative of history that feeds the notion of an undefeatable enemy, it is important that we see our current condition as not only the result of an accumulation of tragedies inflicted upon us, but also a result of an accumulation of acts and moments of resistance. Before the infliction of every tragedy was resistance to it, a refusal to perceive the impending tragedy as a given. After the infliction of every tragedy came resistance to effect justice. Resistance is the timeless quality binding our disjointed experiences and it is the legacy that passes on. Our current condition is the net value of tragedy and resistance.

As Palestinian youth, in the present moment we find ourselves inhabiting a very different world than the world(s) our parents and grandparents grew up in. Even we as youth belonging to the same generation live very different lives as dictated by our varying geographical locations, class backgrounds, migration patterns, etc. Despite that, we are all the result of past and present acts of collective and individual Palestinian resistance.

Applications are open from 19th October - 22nd December 2023

Guiding Questions

• What do you see is the relation between tragedy and resistance?

• Do you see resistance as a legacy amongst Palestinians?

• How do you understand the connection between past and present?

• What modes of resistance - past or present, big or small - have inspired you the most?

• How can we envision ourselves resisting in our particular context as youth in Britain?

• Is there a shared framework for us resisting Zionism in exile?

The Judges

Applications will be reviewed by:

• Dr. Loubna Qutami

• Selma Dabbagh

• Sarona Bedwan