Independence | Nakba
Independence | Nakba, the final book in Fazal Sheikh’s Erasure Trilogy, contains sixty-five portrait diptychs, pairing people from both sides of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, tracing the generations back from 2013 to the pivotal year of 1948. For Israelis, May 14, 1948, marked the founding of independent State of Israel. For Palestinians, it is commemorated each year as “Al Nakba”, or “the Catastrophe”, in memory of the enforced mass exodus of at least 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the 1948 Israeli war, the loss of their homeland and the displacement of their people.