Unwritten Lives

It has been 78 years since one of the most catastrophic events in modern times: the violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The Nakba, or the great catastrophe, is commemorated annually on 15 May. At Nakba 78, there is no ceasefire, no peace, no justice. There is only genocide, continued Israeli military occupation, and increasing conflagration across the region. In addition to the original Palestinian dispossession of 1948, Nakba commemorations also highlight the continued displacement, loss, and statelessness experienced by millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), in Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East, and in the global Palestinian diaspora around the world today.

Ishtiyaq Shukri first travelled to the occupied West Bank in 2005. For twenty years, Palestine has remained a recurring theme in his writing. His work forms part of the vast catalogue of Israeli atrocities, appalling and unchallenged violations of international law, which over decades, have culminated in the genocide currently unfolding in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and the systematic erasure by Israel of Palestinians from the across the OPT.

For Nakba 78, we are republishing his 2005 travel journal, Palestine Journey, along with "...And 1 Can of Sardines", an extract from his novel, I See You, accompanied for the first time by photos from Shukri's personal archive from the time.

The Labour MP, Catherine West, has challenged the leadership of Keir Starmer. West, my local MP in the north London constituency of Hornsey and Friern Barnet, has much to answer for the genocide in Gaza.

In October 2025, after confirmation of Israel’s inclusion in the 61st International Art Exhibition, the Art Not Genocide Alliance began circulating the below letter among participants and workers of the Venice Biennale.

ANGA’s call responds to the appeal issued by Palestinian civil society to challenge the normalisation of Israeli apartheid and occupation within international cultural platforms. In this context, the Venice Biennale cannot be exempt from scrutiny.

The following letter calls on the leadership of the Venice Biennale to exclude Israel from the 2026 exhibition. It has been signed by 236 artists, curators and art workers involved in this year’s Biennale and formally delivered to the President and Board of the Venice Biennale.

Nobel laureate says he previously considered himself a supporter of Israel, but ‘the campaign of annihilation in Gaza has changed all that’

"Whenever I hear a Western pundit or politician go on about 'democracy,' I say to myself, 'Oh hell, give it a rest. Nobody’s buying that crap anymore.' I think that people serious about Palestine and decolonization more broadly react skeptically to the term because we understand it to be the vocabulary of our own dispossession."

Join the Centre for the Study of Race, Class and Empire for the public lecture by Professor Steven Salaita, renowned Palestinian intellectual, scholar and novelist on Wednesday, 8 April 2026, 5.45-8pm.

Dear Home Secretary, We are writing to you with the utmost urgency regarding the reported upcoming performance by Kanye West at Wireless Festival in Finsbury Park.

Leaving this world in an age of lies and cruelty, my last message is simple: don’t give up on truth. Carlos Hernández de Miguel was a Spanish journalist and writer. He died on 3 February 2026.

It has been 20 years since the UK’s first same-sex civil unions took place on 19 December 2005. Adnan Ali and Eric Stobbaerts were one of the first gay couples in London to form a civil partnership on that historic day. They are both busy men with global lives. Unwritten Lives was glad to catch up with them in London, where the couple spoke with Ishtiyaq Shukri.

Sami al-Saei has defied social stigma to speak out about what a report calls a ‘grave pattern’ of sexual violence in Israeli prisons