Palestine by Joe Sacco is an intimate, raw and passionate look at the ‘original’ Middle-East conflict. This graphic novel presents Joe Sacco’s (non-fictional) interviews with Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem. The bar is set extremely high when it comes to graphic books and the Middle East: one thinks of Joe Sacco's Palestine' Guy Delise

The nine-issue comics series won a l996 American Book Award. It is now published for the first time in one volume, befitting its status as one of the great classics of graphic non-fiction. Ammar is a slightly overweight Palestinian man with a weak chin and a scruffy beard. He lives in the Nuseirat refugee camp and does not have a job. He acts as one of Sacco’s translators. The discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ceased being about facts many years ago. It’s taken on a religious fervor of intolerance and bias. Upon returning to the United States he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combines the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling to explore this complex, emotionally weighty situation. He captures the heart of the Palestinian experience in image after unforgettable image, with great insight and remarkable humour. Moreover, what effect had this incident had on the collective memory of Rafah, now once again in brutal conflict with the Israeli army?

Sacco is in the company of two female Israeli tourists who question him about his one-sided journey into history. They encourage him to visit Tel Aviv, which he does. However, this trip only cements his desire to provide a counternarrative centered on the Palestinians’ experiences, accounts, and oral history. Characters Meanwhile, life in present-day Gaza grinds on. We see Sacco and his room-mate, Abed, listening to mortar fire, braving the curfew (the book is set before the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza) and witnessing the demolition of homes. The book is haunted by a ghostly presence called Khaled, a man wanted by the Israelis. Always on the move, he has not had a proper night's sleep for several years. In Sacco's drawings, Khaled's features – his hawkish nose and long chin – cast impossibly long shadows over the rest of his face, leaving the reader unnervingly unsure whether he is to be feared or pitied. Will he one day return to Gaza for a third time? Or perhaps he could look at the conflict from Sderot or some other town on the Israeli side. "It depends on what I feel in my gut. There are lots of places in the world where things are pretty bad. When I read about them, though, I have to wait for the story to work on me. With Bosnia, it took a full year for that to happen. But I do feel Palestinians have been misrepresented in the America media over a long time; we've internalised all sorts of things about them.

We in the States are always told that we have to support the Israelis. Remember what the Jews have endured with the Holocaust! Why didn't we stop Hitler (there are always those that insist we had the chance)?? We need to make it up to the Jews! They need to have their own homeland as reparation for their terrible suffering! But Footnotes is also a darker, less humorous book than Palestine; Sacco calls it "sombre". It's not only that the old men and women he interviews are describing such painful events. Footnotes is punctuated by a sense of history repeating itself or, perhaps, of history failing ever to stop, not even for the merest breather. As someone in Gaza tells Sacco: "Events are continuous."

A story told in comic strips

I liked it though. It has a simplicity that reminds me of MAD Magazine and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. It’s bold, gritty and real. There are no beautiful people here, just people. Vaillant, John. 1998. "War 'toons. Joe Sacco: front-line correspondence, with pens and brushes." Men's Journal (November): 58 A landmark of journalism and the art form of comics. Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s, this is a major work of political and historical nonfiction. To me, drawing myself signals to the reader that I’m a filter between the information, the people and them.They know that I’m a presence, and that they’re seeing things through my eyes. It sort of takes away the illusion that a journalist is a fly on the wall, all seeing and all knowing. There are a lot of agendas along the road, and it’s a way of letting the reader in on that.”

Sacco teams up with a Palestinian man named Sameh who lets Sacco stay with him. Sameh organizes more interviews for Sacco. Sameh's job is put in jeopardy because he helps Sacco, but Sameh persists. Sacco witnesses more depravity and suffering in the world's worst refugee camp, Jabalia, which has the highest population density in the world. Sacco interviews young boys, some paralyzed because of fighting, who work for rebellion and learns their families support them. And that is what Palestine by Joe Stacco is. A snapshot of the history and pain of the Palestinian people at a point in time. In an era of ‘fake news’, one-sided reporting and news as infotainment – Palestine is an honest and raw peak into a never ending conflict. With a special edition of the comic book released in November, Al Jazeera speaks to Sacco about his experiences, methodology, and the 15 years since the comic book’s first release. I’m deeply saddened by what’s going on there … the same is true for Bosnia. I was appalled by what was going on and went to see what I could do. I was compelled to go and do these stories, as this was the only form of solidarity that I could offer from within me. Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith (eds.), Icons of the American Comic Book, Vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2013, p. 638Oregon Book Awards Finalists & Fellowship Recipients". January 6, 2014. Archived from the original on February 18, 2014 . Retrieved May 12, 2014. Ghassan, a Palestinian man in his thirties and a father, is accused of belonging to an illegal organization, detained without evidence, and tortured over the course of more than two weeks. Sacco conveys basic Israeli torture tactics through the Ghassan episode. For the average Westerner, the hooding of a detainee, stress positions, sleep deprivation … obviously all Americans know that goes on now, but those sorts of things go on in cells all over the world. There may be truth in certain situations for both descriptions, but Palestinians are also people going to school, who have families, have lives, invite you into their home, and think about their food." The kindly old lady and Holocaust survivor travelled to Israel and found what she was looking for. Joe travelled to the same place and found something completely different. A Smorgasbord of Anger, Pain and Poverty

I feel like I should say something intelligent about the art, since this is after all a graphic novel, but I'm still finding my sea legs, as it were, on the books with pix. So here's a try: Sacco has an incredibly chaotic style, which really helped to create an immersive feeling. That said, though, there's practically just as much text as pictures, and at times I wondered why he chose to tell this story as a graphic novel, rather than just straight prose. There were plenty of illustrations that were particularly affecting, and times when the images did enhance the story it was paired with, but for the most part I think this could have been text-only without losing a whole lot. The Israeli jails are set up in such a way that its Palestinian prisoners are intentionally dehumanized. This was quite a powerful panel in the novel. A former inhabitant of one of the jails points out how the prisoners are not given proper eating utensils, bathrooms, showers or basically any other living necessity therby forcing the Palestinians to live like animals just to survive their prison term. Couple that reality with the fact that the Israeli soldiers in charge of guarding the jails (military service is compulsory in Israel)are often young impressionable kids witnessing large groups of Palestinians together for the first time and the whole prison set up takes on a very sordid and manipulative overtone of nationalist proportions. Eagle Awards". www.hahnlibrary.net. Archived from the original on February 15, 2022 . Retrieved May 20, 2021.Strong words… Isn’t that one sided? Shouldn’t Joe have spent time in Israel to get the ‘other side’ of the story? I wrote to Edward Said, and said that I would be honoured if he could do it, understanding that he was unwell at the time and in fact, didn’t expect him to say yes. When he did, I was overwhelmed. Sacco uses the comic book format to its fullest extent, creating bold perspectives that any photojournalist would envy." Utne Reader