Prominent American writer: Political power is in Israel's favor, but justice will prevail

American writer Nathan Thrall expressed his pessimism about the Palestinian cause in the near future, explaining that for 7 decades he has only seen an expansion of the Israeli occupation and an expansion in the territories, in contrast to a contraction and shrinkage on the Palestinian side. He expected this to continue, perhaps faster and worse, "but justice will prevail in the end." The writer, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2024, added in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that despite the emergence of large sympathy movements in various countries of the world towards the Palestinian cause, "we must not exaggerate in assessing the situation, because in terms of real political power, everything is in Israel's interest now, so if we are optimistic about fundamental change, it is optimism in the long term." Nathan Thrall, an American writer based in Jerusalem, who was hosted by Georgetown University in Qatar, received the award for his groundbreaking work, “A Day in the Life of Abed Salameh,” which tells the tragic story of a school bus accident in Jerusalem carrying Palestinian children, and the many political actions and decisions that affect daily life in Palestine. The international bestseller, translated into more than 20 languages, has received critical acclaim, been selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and included among the best books of the year by 18 publications. Nathan stressed that through this book, he tried to tell history through the eyes of the characters or their family stories, so there were no separate sections in the book where he provides a history lesson to the reader, but rather everything through the memories and stories of the individual characters as seen from their point of view, so the reader will understand the political side. 

A true story

What inspired you to write this novel "A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of the Jerusalem Tragedy"?

The first thing that inspired me was that I was deeply affected by this true story about a bus accident that had a group of Palestinian kindergarten children on board in the greater Jerusalem area. I saw something very symbolic in this story, as the bus burned for more than 30 minutes before the first Israeli fire truck arrived at the scene. The Palestinians present were trying hard to put out the fire without having the necessary means to do so.

At the same time, the parents were unable to reach their children, unable to cross the checkpoints to look for them in the hospitals to which they were transferred, so I saw in this story something very symbolic and moving. This story allowed me to combine two of my main goals in the first book: the first was to reach people on an emotional level to convey the tragedy of life in Palestine, and the second was to describe the apartheid system. By telling what happened in those 24 hours after the incident, this story can only be told by explaining the system of racist domination that the parents had to navigate.

For me, this story was a way of describing everyday life under occupation, and carefully focusing on something that happens all over the world, like a car accident, but showing what it means to have this ordinary thing happen in a very extraordinary place.

So, is Abed Salama a real person? And how did I choose this character?

Yes, the story is real. This incident happened on February 16, 2012. At first, I decided to write about this incident without meeting Abed. I tried to reach out to everyone who had a direct or indirect connection to the incident: parents, teachers, witnesses, doctors, lawyers, emergency services workers. Early in my research and interviews, a close family friend told me that she had a distant relative who was the father of one of the children on the bus. That friend put me in touch with a less distant relative, who put me in touch with Abed. A day or two later, I was in his living room talking to him and the moment he started telling his story, my eyes filled with tears and I knew this was a story that needed to be told.

We should not exaggerate

The Arab public sees that Europe and America only support Israel, do you think there are movements in Europe that support Palestinian rights? And is this movement increasing?

Yes, I see that and I think this is a very important phenomenon. We are witnessing a clear change, we saw the crowds in London and New York, there is a strong and growing movement in support of Palestinian rights, but we should not exaggerate the situation. In terms of real political power, everything is in Israel's favor now, so if we are optimistic about fundamental change, it is optimism in the long term. These young people in their twenties, those participating in the protests in the universities, may not gain real political influence until after maybe 20 years, so I think this is very important, but we should also not exaggerate the portrayal of the current balance of power, which is completely in Israel's favor.

In Gaza, Sudan and other countries, we have millions of stories like Abed Salama, how can literature deal with all these stories?

I think what literature does is it takes a situation that is full of millions of tragedies, like in Palestine, where people tend to talk in abstractions or think abstractly, so today, when people talk about Gaza, they talk in numbers, 46,000, 47,000, 48,000, and the idea of literature is not to deny the numbers, the numbers are important and we should pay attention to them, but the goal is to really understand what each of these 46,000 cases means, each one of them is definitely a separate story.

I have dedicated my life to working on the Palestinian issue and I worked for 10 years in a leading international organization, the International Crisis Group, and my job was to talk to diplomats and journalists and analysts in think tanks, and I realized that this was a complete waste of time, because when you talk to an elite audience, this audience is only ready to make very small and incremental changes.

But in a situation like Palestine, you need to turn the world upside down, where you need a completely different understanding of what is happening and what needs to be changed, it is not just a matter of making small incremental changes, so this approach was wrong for me. If I really want to see change in Palestine, I have to work at the level of understanding of ordinary people, and this is done through narrative, through storytelling, not trying to convince a high-level politician through analysis, the book focuses on the tragedy of Jerusalem.

Palestinian Shrinkage

How do you balance the personal narrative with the major political issues?

That was the biggest challenge for me in this book, I wanted this book to achieve both, to combine the political and the personal, and the way I decided to ensure that I would only tell history through the eyes of the characters or the stories of their families. So, there were no separate sections in the book where I would give the reader a history lesson, but everything, only through the memories and stories of the individual characters as seen from their point of view and so the reader would understand the political side.

Do you think the book had an impact on the political situation in Jerusalem?

There is such a profound injustice that I don’t think the Palestinians will ever be free in my lifetime, and all I can hope for is to make a mark, to make a small step in the right direction, and so I think this book can do that, and it can change the hearts and minds of those who read it.

What do you see for the future of Jerusalem under these political circumstances?

If we look at what has happened over the past decades in Palestine, we see a continuous process of Israeli expansion and Palestinian contraction into smaller and smaller areas, and this process is accelerating now more than it was in the past, in the year since October 7, Israel has confiscated more Palestinian land in the West Bank than it did in the previous two decades. So if you ask me what I expect for the future, I expect more of the same, but worse, so even if I have a very long-term optimism that justice will prevail, it may not be something that I will live to see, and I have no faith that there will be Palestinian independence, I am really pessimistic.

Source: Al Jazeera