Palestinian refugees in Gaza have lived in camps for five generations, experiencing hardship and uncertainty. In the absence of official histories, oral narratives handed down from generation to generation bear witness to life in Palestine before and after the 1948 Nakba--the catastrophe of dispossession. These narratives maintain traditions, keep alive names of destroyed villages, and record stories of the fight for dignity and freedom. The Women's Voices from Gaza Series honours women's unique and underrepresented perspectives on the social, material, and political realities of Palestinian life. In A White Lie, the first volume in this series, Madeeha Hafez Albatta chronicles her life in Gaza and beyond. Among her remarkable achievements was establishing some of the first schools for refugee children in Gaza.
Madeeha Hafez Albatta (1924-2011), born in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, became a teacher while in her teens and a principal in her mid-twenties, the youngest in Gazan history. She was among the pioneers to rally the Palestinian community to guarantee the right to education for thousands of refugee children arriving in Gaza after the destruction of their homeland in 1948. The events of her life took her and her family across mandatory Palestine to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Canada.
Barbara Bill lived and worked in Gaza for six years and currently resides in New South Wales, Australia.
Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor of political science at the University of Alberta, a columnist for the Middle East Eye, and the editor of Apartheid in Palestine (UAlberta Press).
Salman Abu Sitta is the founder and president of the Palestine Land Society, London, dedicated to the documentation of Palestine's land and people. He is the author of six books on Palestine and over 300 papers and articles on Palestinian refugees, the Right of Return, and the history of al Nakba and human rights.
"[A White Lie] should urge academics to consider whose voices they include and how they include them when writing about and theorising Palestine. It demonstrates the power of centring female voices and detailed histories to understand intersections between temporality, place, and gender and the material, social, and political realities of Palestinian life." Olivia Mason, Gender, Place & Culture [Full review at https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1971899] -- 20210830
