PalFest Wraps Up With Personal Readings

PalFest wrapped up yesterday with a final event at the African Community Society in Jerusalem. I haven’t seen video or tweets about the event, but each participant was set to read “a passage that means something personal to them.”

The one wrap-up article I did find was from NYTimes correspondent Ethan Bronner, who talks about both PalFest and the International Writers Festival of Israel. Bronner seems to wish, in somewhat over-lyricized prose, that PalFest could become a part of the International Writers Festival of Israel, which also took place in the first days of May.

The controversial NYTimes correspondent claims that attendants of each festival were utterly oblivious to one another. But he goes on to insinuate that PalFest attendees could have been part of the Writers Festival of Israel, if not for the “boycott thinking” among Palestinians.

At least he gives PalFest organizer (and world-renowned writer) Ahdaf Souief a chance to respond:

“I feel that Palestinians are too often seen as an adjunct or reverse side of another coin,” she said. “Palestine is an entity in its own right and it deserves its own festival. If the day comes when Jerusalem is a shared capital, then we can reconsider.”