SAREE MAKDISI, makdisi@humnet.ucla.edu, @sareemakdisi
Makdisi’s books include Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. He is professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. His pieces include “Apartheid” for Critical Inquiry. He recently wrote the piece “The Nakba Is Now” for The Nation.

He said: “Israel is not dropping bombs. But it is still besieging Gaza; still smothering Palestinian life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; still repressing its second-class Palestinian citizens; still violently barring the refugees’ right of return. This racial violence must also end.

“Israeli police on both sides of the 1947-67 line are raiding Palestinian homes and dragging people off to dungeons. The line distinguishing ‘Israel’ from ‘the occupied territories’ is meaningless: the same racial violence grips both sides of the line.

“A ceasefire in Palestine means we’re back to the slow suffocation of apartheid and brutal military occupation. As Dickens said in a different context, it’s like being drowned by drops, stung to death by single bees. Slow violence, everyday occupation, is still violence.”