PUBLIC CONVERSATION | PALESTINE: REPAIR & RETURN - Stories of Food and Seeds of Resistance

Under military occupation, Palestinian farmers face intensifying and catastrophic challenges across the territory. The Israeli military assault has weaponised hunger hunger, systematically targeted food and water infrastructure, destroyed farmland and contaminated soils in Gaza. In the West Bank, land confiscations, settler attacks and restrictions on movement and trade have all accelerated at an unprecedented rate. This session discusses Palestine’s embattled food and farming heritage, and considers food sovereignty as a popular form of Palestinian self-determination.

PALESTINE REPAIR & RETURN: Through the networks created around our events we aim to connect practitioners and activists in the UK and world-wide with reparative and creative projects in Palestine, supporting the people working on those projects, and alongside these personal collaborations to facilitate access to funds resources to help them advance and develop.

SPEAKERS:

Lina Isma’il is a Palestinian food sovereignty activist and co-founder of the Palestinian Agroecological Forum from Ramallah. Lina supervised studies on Food Sovereignty in Palestine, and the documentary ‘Untold Revolution: Food Sovereignty in Palestine’. She is also a co-author of the guidebook ‘Conscious Choices: A Guidebook to Ethical Shopping in Palestine’.

George McAllister is part of the scholar-activist collective AgroecologyNow! As a political agroecologist, she specialises in food and farming in conflict-affected and disaster-prone environments. In recent years, she’s been part of a team from Gaza and the UK doing action research with 300 women farmers on Gaza’s foodways to strengthen food sovereignty at the urban and territorial levels.

Jamal Al Rozzi, Co-Director Theatre for Everybody (Gaza) CEO Palestinian Rehabilitatin Society

Hossam Madhoun, Co-Director of Theatre for Everybody (Gaza) Child Protection Programme Manager

Jonathan Chadwick, Director Az Theatre

Ruth Lass, Actor and Activist