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Despite being been stuck living between COVID-19 and the Israeli occupation, Palestinians have come up with unique and creative solutions to the problems that they’ve faced because of the coronavirus. In this final episode of our COVID-19 series in Palestine, we’re showcasing Palestinians who responded to the coronavirus pandemic using innovation and creativity as a way to help their communities adapt to the crisis around them.

PA officials announced on Tuesday that they received assurances that Israel was “committed” to upholding its end of agreements with the Palestinians, and that the decision to resume coordination was made following “international talks” being conducted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. There is speculation that the impending change in U.S. administrations, along with the severe financial pressure the Palestinian Authority finds itself under, is what motivated Palestinian leadership to resume relations with Israel.

Israeli settlers squat in the evacuated settlement of Sa-Nur in the occupied West Bank (Photo: Twitter @EladHumi)

A group of Israeli settlers have squatted at the site of Sa-Nur, an illegal West Bank settlement that was evacuated in 2005, in an attempt to resettle the area. “This settlement has been empty for 15 years, and it’s against Israeli law for them to be here,” Tawfeeq Alawneh, the mayor of the nearby Palestinian village of Jaba’, told Mondoweiss. “But at the end of the day we know that the soldiers and the government will always protect and help the settlers.”

Palestine Writes flyer art by Malak Mattar

Susan Abulhawa says the Palestine Writes Literature Festival is a moment for Palestinian writers to demonstrate that “the power of culture is stronger than the culture of power.” Said Abulhawa, “As those with extraordinary political, economic and military force shrink the land beneath our feet, we will definitely expand our cultural and intellectual presence in the world.”

In Yishai Sarid’s novel, Israelis act out rituals of grief and mourning for the Holocaust and come away repulsed by their ancestors, the victims of a horrific genocide, and admiring of the Nazis in their “Hugo Boss” uniforms. “That’s what we should do to the Arabs,” one whispers. Yet US media have failed to grasp the novel’s moral about Palestinian dehumanization.

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