Between Confrontation and Erasure: Palestinians and the Lebanese Entity

The genocide to which our people in Gaza are subjected to and the continuous killings and assaults by the Israeli occupation and its settlers in the West Bank have been met with the resounding absence of significant popular support in countries of the Palestinian diaspora. It is Palestinians and those in solidarity with them who bear the consequences of the systemic and incessant political weakening of Palestinians over the decades, as well as the open and shameless normalization of Arab regimes with the zionist entity. In light of the above, we find ourselves at a pivotal point in our struggle and in dire need of drawing a temporal, spatial, and linguistic line with the history and present of our struggle, in Palestine and the world.

Taking this as a point of departure, we devote this special issue to examining an aspect that has long been pushed to the margins of the Arab and international solidarity discourse: the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. We revisit this history from the standpoint of the Palestinian reality – material and imagined – by analyzing its contradictory relationship with the institutional and military structure that shapes the Lebanese state. We examine the Palestinian presence as a motive and agitator for self-criticism amongst the new civil society in Lebanon, while remaining cognizant of its progressive components and the liberal attacks against it. This issue is therefore an attempt at formulating a collective and structural analysis that would liberate us from individualistic or reductionist readings of this continued history.

We will neither address the Palestinian presence in Lebanon from a demographic standpoint, nor from the lens of sectarian tensions that govern the logic of the Lebanese entity. Rather, we consider our historical account of the Palestinian reality in Lebanon to express a revolutionary political line, an inherent hostility towards the fascist nation-state project, and an alignment with the broader struggle against colonialism. We will also refrain from viewing this presence through a global humanitarian lens, which attempts to strip the Palestinians in Lebanon of their political identity, reducing the struggle to questions of livelihood and survival.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• The history of the Palestinian-Lebanese political organization in Lebanon
• Institutional and legal tools of oppression against Palestinians’ bodies and those who share civil and legal spaces with them
• Queer, feminist, Palestinian critiques of national liberation movements within the Lebanese society
• NGOs and grassroots initiatives in the Lebanese-Palestinian community: noteworthy timelines (2006, 2011, 2015, 2019, 2021, October 2023)
• The Lebanese uprising of 2019 and Palestinian action: crystallizing a new Palestinian-Lebanese identity
• Lebanon as a Palestinian battlefield today: the Lebanese state as a tool for disarming the Palestinian liberation struggle and an arena for enabling the genocide of the Palestinian people
• Urban architectures of civil repression against Palestinians
• The question of funding and the construction of a queer emancipatory political discourse
• Palestinians on the margins of queer and feminist spaces 

We accept submissions on a rolling basis. For a publication in May 2024, the deadline for submission is April 7, 2024. After that date, we will continue to accept submissions for later publication.

We encourage submissions in Arabic, and can also accept texts in English, French, and Spanish. This dossier prioritizes Palestinian and Arab contributions, and allocates financial compensation for contributions.

To submit, please send your contribution to submit@kohljournal.press as a .doc or .docx file, with “Dossier Palestine” as the subject of your e-mail.

If accepted for inclusion, please note that your paper will be translated to a second language by our team.