On the afternoon of Friday, July 19th, Mahmoud Muna – widely known as “the bookseller of Jerusalem” – sat in his East Jerusalem bookshop watching a judge from the International Court of Justice in The Hague on a computer screen. In an advisory opinion the court was declaring the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories unlawful. Muna smiled.
The ruling was “important”, said Muna. It had given Palestinians like him “a little bit of hope”.
“It kind of reinstates that this world is not exactly a jungle, and there is rule of law. And there are international systems. And there are people who can see things for what it is. And it’s not all based on American power and lobby groups.” Despite that, he continued, “it is an advisory opinion. And it might just sit on the shelf collecting dust.”
Things are “stressful” in East Jerusalem, which has a majority Arab population, Muna says. “Of course, the Israeli oppression has increased since October, the level of oppression against any one who wanted to say his opinion.” Last January Israeli online magazine +972 said hundreds of Palestinians had been “arrested or interrogated, usually on the basis of social media activity” since the Hamas-led attack of October 7th last.
Muna’s family operate three bookshops under the Educational Bookshop name. Two sell English-language books and one sells Arabic books. They carry close to 1,600 titles, Muna says, ranging from literature and art to history and politics.
“We are six brothers and one sister and my parents, who actually started the bookshop. Every night at dinner this is our board meeting so we discuss books, new books and new writing.”
The Educational Bookshop was named after the Palestine Educational Bookshop, which was run by the family of famed Palestinian intellectual and writer Edward Said, before it closed at the time of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Muna’s father opened his shop in the same spot in the 1980s, though he had to drop “Palestine” from the moniker as by then it was illegal to include it in shop names.
Muna, who is now 41, grew up there. He studied in the UK before returning to Jerusalem where he added a cultural programme to the family business. Holding events in the occupied West Bank, for example, is important, he says, as Israeli mobility controls mean “not everyone can come to Jerusalem”.
Writing is a “representation of the Palestinian struggle”, he says. “A Palestinian poem is a demonstration. A Palestinian artist is a journalistic piece about the story. Every exploration of art and culture by Palestinians is a form of resistance.”
When Palestinians and their humanity are challenged, “one of the things that they can revert to is their writers and their art and their music and their food and their dance, and their performing art and theatre, and so on”, which Muna says emphasises their “rooted place in history”.
A book that Muna has been working on since January, Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture, is due to be sent to the printer days after we meet. It will be published by Saqi Books in October, and includes vignettes of artists, acrobats, doctors, students, shopkeepers and teachers in Gaza.
When the Israeli assault on Gaza began the book project “was basic instinct for me”, he says. “As a bookseller, [I asked] what can I do at that time?” In one way, he said, “it’s awful to say that I wrote a book, it’s really awful when people are dying”. But at the same time he wants to give Gazans a platform and tell their stories when so much in their lives is being destroyed.
Even in East Jerusalem, “financially, politically, it’s getting really, really very difficult. And emotionally I think it’s the most difficult part”. He predicts mass future trauma related to the ongoing war even outside Gaza, where close to 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. “Knowing that we knew about this, we saw it, we witnessed it, we lived it day by day. And we stood aside watching. That feeling is very disturbing.”
In his shops he caters to various clienteles. Foreigners are keen to learn about the conflict whereas “Palestinians hardly want to read books about them[selves] because they know the story”. Instead, he says, they like books about gender, masculinity and sexuality; other foreign policy; self-development; or historical fiction from around the world.
More recently the number of Israelis visiting his shops is also increasing, he adds: “Israelis who are willing to read the other narratives.”