An-Najah National University 

Faculty of Graduate Studies 
 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TURN IN THE CONCEPT OF RETURN 

IN BOAZ GAON'S 'HA-SHIVA LE-HAIFA', 

AND SUSAN ABULHAWA'S MORNINGS IN 

JENIN AS AN ADAPTATION OF KANAFANI'S 

RETURNING TO HAIFA 
 

 

 

 

 

 

By 

Takreem Mohammad Abdallah  
 

 

 
 

 

Supervisor 

Dr. Ahmad Qabaha 
 

 
 

This Thesis is Submitted in Partial of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of 

Comparative Literature, Faculty of Graduate Studies, An-Najah National 

University, Nablus, Palestine. 

2025 



ii 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

THE TURN IN THE CONCEPT OF RETURN 

IN BOAZ GAON'S 'HA-SHIVA LE-HAIFA', 

AND SUSAN ABULHAWA'S MORNINGS IN 

JENIN AS AN ADAPTATION OF KANAFANI'S 

RETURNING TO HAIFA 
 

 

By 

Takreem Mohammad Abdallah  
 

 

This Thesis was defended successfully on 28/02/2025 and approved by: 

 

 



iii 

Dedication 

I wish to dedicate this work to my husband, who supported me endlessly and passionately 

through this long journey of writing my thesis. Therefore, thank you Ahmad for 

everything.  

 

  



iv 

Acknowledgments 

First and foremost, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my research supervisor, Dr. 

Ahmad Qabaha. Without his patience, dedicated guidance, and support in all stages 

throughout the process, this work would never have been accomplished. Also, I could not 

have had this great accomplishment without the knowledge and the fundamental feedback 

provided by my defense committee Prof. Abdelkareem Daraghmeh as an internal 

examiner and Dr. Yousef Abu Amryah as an external examiner.  

I also wish to thank my friends, colleagues, and everyone who supported me throughout 

my journey to achieving my MA degree.  

 

 

  



v 

Declaration 

I, the undersigned, declare that I submitted the thesis entitled: 

THE TURN IN THE CONCEPT OF RETURN 

IN BOAZ GAON'S 'HA-SHIVA LE-HAIFA', 

AND SUSAN ABULHAWA'S MORNINGS IN 

JENIN AS AN ADAPTATION OF KANAFANI'S 

RETURNING TO HAIFA 
 

I declare that the work provided in this thesis, unless otherwise referenced, is the 

researcher’s own work, and has not been submitted elsewhere for any other degree or 

qualification. 

Student's Name Takreem Mohammad Abdallah  

Signature: 
 

Date: 28/02/2025 

 

 

 

 

  



vi 

Table of Contents 

 

Dedication .................................................................................................................... iii 

Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................ iv 

Declaration .................................................................................................................... v 

Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... vi 

Abstract ....................................................................................................................... vii 

Chapter One: Introduction and Literature Review .......................................................... 1 

1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 

1.2 Literature Review .................................................................................................... 8 

1.2.1 Homecoming ........................................................................................................ 8 

1.2.2 Memory .............................................................................................................. 10 

1.2.3 Trauma ............................................................................................................... 11 

1.3 Significance of the Study ....................................................................................... 13 

1.4 Objective of the study ............................................................................................ 14 

1.5 Questions of the Study ........................................................................................... 14 

1.6 Theoretical Framework .......................................................................................... 15 

Chapter Two: Israeli narrative; Boaz Gaon's Ha-Shiva Le-Haifa ................................. 17 

2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 17 

2.2 The Representation of Home and Homecoming in Ha-shive Le-Haifa and Returning 

to Haifa .................................................................................................................. 19 

2.3 Memory mirroring in Ha-Hshiva Le Haifa ............................................................. 24 

2.4 Trauma and Exploitation of the Holocaust in Ha-shive Le-Haifa; A justified cause and 

profitable effect ....................................................................................................... 28 

2.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 32 

Chapter Three: Palestinian Narrative; Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin ................ 33 

3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 33 

3.2 The Representation of Homecoming in Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin .................. 37 

3.3 Modes of Displacement and Memory in Mornings in Jenin ................................... 42 

3.4 The Palestinian generational Trauma ..................................................................... 45 

3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 47 

Chapter Four: Thesis Conclusion ................................................................................. 49 

References ................................................................................................................... 51 

 ب  ........................................................................................................................... الملخص 

 



vii 

THE TURN IN THE CONCEPT OF RETURN IN BOAZ GAON'S 'HA-

SHIVA LE-HAIFA', AND SUSAN ABULHAWA'S MORNINGS IN JENIN 

AS AN ADAPTATION OF KANAFANI'S RETURNING TO HAIFA 
By 

Takreem Mohammad Abdallah 

Supervisor 

Dr. Ahmad Qabaha 

Abstract 

This thesis compares Kanafani’s novella Returning to Haifa (1969) with its Israeli 

adaptation; Gaon's Ha-Shiva Le-Haifa (2014) as well as Abulhawa's adaptation Mornings 

in Jenin (2006). Drawing on Hutcheon's adaptation and Lacan's Imaginary, Symbolic, and 

Real, this thesis explores the turn in the concept of return for the uprooted Said, Safiyya, 

Amal, and other minor characters. These fictional characters, the researcher argues, 

transcend the (unconscious) imaginary concept of return, and emerge to the (conscious) 

real return through their homecoming. That is, they shift psychologically from dreaming 

of reclaiming the stolen land of Palestine to ultimately understanding what it takes to 

achieve a perceptible one. This thesis argues that a refugee’s homecoming after years of 

displacement is a moment of transcendence and emotional connection to the land. 

Therefore, the researcher demonstrates the significance of homecoming concerning the 

fictional character’s trauma and memory of pre-occupied Palestine. Moreover, this thesis 

examines Kanafani and Abulhawa’s narratives, which strive to document the Palestinian 

cause and struggle under the Israeli occupation—something Gaon's Israeli narrative 

seems to overlook or suppress. Finally, this thesis shows that Gaon’s adaptation perhaps 

undermines and replaces the Palestinian return. However, Abulhawa’s novel realistically 

stimulates the Palestinian authentic history and the desire to return. Hence, Kanafani’s 

Returning to Haifa tackles the question and the consequence of return.        

Keywords: Adaptation; Trauma; Memory; Homecoming; Palestine; Diaspora  

 



1 

Chapter One 

Introduction and Literature Review 

1.1 Introduction 

In the twenty-first century, the 1948 Nakba remains a historical cataclysm since it 

declared [Palestine] as a vanishing state and another [Israel] as a forming state in its place  

(Barghouti, 2009, p. 175). Turki (1972), an exiled Palestinian writer who witnessed the 

Nakba, articulates it as “the alienation of [Palestinians] as a result of their dispossession 

by Israeli forces in the 1948 Nakba” (p. 61). After 76 years of uprootedness, suppression, 

and political (western)  neglect of the Palestinian right to return to their homeland, the 

Nakba still carries meanings of uncertainty for the Palestinians' future. This invokes the 

“physical and psychic fragmentations” (Qabaha, 2018, p. 194) of the dispossessions of 

the past and the marginalization of the present. The displacement of Palestinians remains 

a central issue since Palestine is the only colonized country in the so-called post-colonial 

era. Hence, critics, theorists, and writers have intensively debated and analyzed this issue. 

For instance, Edward Said's (1999) Out of Place articulates the psychological and 

political impacts of the Palestinian's return raising issues of nationalism, hybridity, and 

imperialism. However, Ghassan Kanafani's works- Men in the Sun (1963), Umm Saad 

(1969), and Returning to Haifa (1969) emphasize the significance of patriotism and 

national identity in the reconfiguration of Palestine. 

This study compares Kanafani's Returning to Haifa to its two adaptations: Boaz Gaon’s 

(2014) "Ha Shiva-Le Haifa", and Susan Abulhawa's (2006) Mornings in Jenin. Kanafani's 

(1969) Returning to Haifa describes the Palestinian experience of pain, sacrifice, 

oppression, resilience, and a desire to return home. Hence, this study explores the 

representation of the Palestinian return in each adaptation and its effect on the Palestinian 

struggle for independence in Gaon & Abulhawa’s literary works. This thesis examines 

the shift in the representation of the Palestinian return compared to Kanafani’s original 

novel, concentrating on Gaon's play “Ha-Hshiva le Haifa”, and Abulhawa's novel 

Mornings in Jenin. The researcher compares three key concepts the presence of trauma, 

the use of memory (whether collective or individual), and the sense of homecoming. This 

study aims to reveal how each adaptation, formed by its peculiar background, represents 



2 

the Palestinian return and its configuration. In addition, it examines the stages of return 

that Said and Amal undergo to achieve a physical return in each adaptation. Both 

adaptations examine the themes of homecoming, memory, and trauma distinctly. Gaon 

stresses the impossibility of return and that homecoming for Said is a reminder of the 

inevitable existence of the Israeli state. However, in Abulhawa’s narrative, the process of 

homecoming becomes an act of resistance, embedded in the acceptance of death and 

eventually it leads to a metaphorical transcendence. Moreover, In Gaon’s play, memories 

tackle the connection to the past, whereas, in Abulhawa’s novel, they function as a tool 

of resistance, belonging, and identity formation. Therefore, when Gaon’s play merely 

represents the Palestinian trauma, Abulhawa submerges her readers with its national and 

generational impact.  

Initially, Kanafani's Returning to Haifa acclaims constant yearning for the past, Palestine, 

which is forever imagined as unchanged. It tackles the Palestinian cause and embodies 

the principle of return by depicting two similar versions of  Returning to Haifa: one set in 

1967, and the other envisions a future return (Almarhabi, 2020, p. 1). Hence, the notion 

of return after the 1948 catastrophe has been strongly preserved in the Palestinian novella 

by presenting an authentic portrayal of the Palestinian’s memory, trauma, and refugee 

life. Perhaps the novella title asserts a metaphorical continuity of return across time and 

space and reinforces the fundamental connection between the Palestinians and their and. 

Returning to Haifa functions as a decolonizing narrative that empowers Palestinians to 

reclaim their stolen heritage (Fanon, 2008, p. 34). Therefore, Harlow (1986) states that 

Kanafani (1969) “never fired a gun. His weapon was a ballpoint pen and newspaper arena 

pages. And he hurt the enemy more than a column of commandos” (p. 9). His writing 

resulted in his assassination along with his nephew of a car bomb in 1972.  

Returning to Haifa is written brilliantly to challenge the colonial representation of 

Palestinians. The reason for this “imperial” imagery is the globally organized campaigns 

and media that simultaneously dehumanize the Palestinians and humanize the Israelis. 

These campaigns confront the Zionist predominant narrative that has “denied not only 

Palestinian humanity but also their very existence as a people with a history” (Mattin, 

2010, para.9). The Zionists claim that "God had chosen them to live in Palestine, so they 

had to negate the existence of the native inhabitants of this land" (Qabaha, 2018, p. 179). 



3 

Therefore, the uprooted Palestinians live in a state of ambivalence that keeps them 

fluctuating from memories and nostalgia of their past and homeland into their troubled 

identities in refugee camps and in exile.  

To elaborate on the Palestinians' collective dream of return, the researcher must clarify 

the collective dispossession that occurred in 1948. According to Barghouti (2009) “The 

Palestinian is forbidden to enter his own country by land, sea, or air, even in a coffin. It 

is not a matter of romantic attachment to a place but of eternal exclusion from it (p.80-

81) since 1948 Nakba and until today. For example, Moor states, “Edward Said’s 

immediate family were unable to return [to Palestine] when it became Israel, in 1948” 

(2013, p. 22). However, in 2001, Said was able to visit his house after encountering a 

serious questioning and several checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers. The Zionist 

Israelis proclaim the land and deny access to it to all Palestinian refugees and exiles 

“During the process of negotiations, Israel refused to accept that Palestinian refugees 

could return to the original cities from where they were exactly uprooted in the 1948 

Nakba, like Haifa and Acre” (Tovy, 2003, pp. 39-50) because the ‘land of Israel’ is 

promised to the Jews. The Palestinians do not have “the power to return to their country 

whenever they desire and decide” (Barghouti, 2009, pp. 80-81). For the Palestinians,  

forced displacement made their return to their homeland a foundational pillar in their 

national narrative  

In the 1960s, Kanafani (1969) introduced varied forms of resistance, and he believed that 

"art and literature were part and parcel of his political activism and resistance to the 

usurpation of his homeland; each had a role to play" (Coffin, 1996, p. 98) to refute the 

Israeli propaganda of a land without people to a people without a land. Turki (1972) 

asserts "that a whole nation found itself suddenly in exile and its two million people 

affected by defeat, hunger, and humiliation, repudiated by men, despised by host 

countries and forgotten by the world” (p.16). Thousands of people were pushed to refugee 

camps and left frozen in time waiting for justice. However, the whole discourse of waiting 

is deconstructed by time, and it is replaced by constructing a national narrative around 

resistance.  



4 

Kanafani was a revolutionist and was a member of the Liberation Movement. In his 

novella, Returning to Haifa, he asserts that force is the only way to return, “Naturally we 

did not come to tell you to get out of here. That would take a war” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 

164). He stresses that force should be faced with force; that the outrageous atrocities in 

1948 must not be faced by waiting but should be corrected by resistance.   

Returning to Haifa is an open-ended and captivating narrative that has inspired readers, 

critics, and other writers for decades. Undoubtedly, it has received a share of critical 

readings and several adaptations. Here is a text that appeals not only to the Palestinian 

and wider community but also interests a more diverse university-educated community, 

including many Western Jews. It also received attention from the theater. 

The Israeli playwright, Gaon wrote a Hebrew adaptation of Returning to Haifa in 2014, 

and he chose this year for the following reasons: in 2014, the Israeli army launched 

(Operation Protective Edge) on Gaza which intensified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, So 

perhaps this conflict has coincided with the significance of the Israeli- Palestinian relation 

at that time. Moreover, in 2010 the Israeli theater increased interest in Palestinian 

literature like: Araon’s Wresting Jerusalem (2014) in which he articulates a varied 

understanding of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In addition, Goan chose a play form of 

adaptation because theater gives the audience a more immersive and vivid experience that 

helps in humanizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gaon (2014) stated, “I wanted to 

create a dialogue between the Israeli and Palestinian narratives, to humanize both sides 

and allow the audience to confront the complexities of our shared history” (Gaon, [Ha 

Shiva le Haifa]. Haaretz, 2011).Nonetheless, Gaon’s play was staged once in Al Carmi 

theater, but it was banned in Haifa.  Kaye (2008) in The Jerusalem Post articulates Gaon’s 

Play is “skittish about taking a stand—any stand” (para.1), but it heightened a taut, 

sensitive drama that goes straight for the jugular of the audience. Gaon’s adaptation has 

elicited varied reactions among the Israeli audience. For example, some Israeli protesters 

have accused the performance of the play of being antisemitic. Wolman (2011) explains 

that Efrat Avraham, one of the protesters, states: “I love theater, but more than that, I love 

the Israeli side…If the play based on Ghassan Kanafani's novel is done at the Cameri 

which is funded from my money and that of Israelis who are fighting for their lives here, 

I protest and will boycott the Cameri.” (Gaon, 2014, p. 1). Moreover, for some viewers, 



5 

the play is hilarious, and they laughed at Said’s improvision when he said, “And you also 

are destroying our homes!” (Wecker, 2011, para.4). Ultimately, Gaon’s adaptation was 

either mocked or criticized by the Israeli audience and infrequently accepted. 

Gaon & Abulhawa are diasporic figures and have experienced uprootedness. Gaon is 

originally from Bulgaria, and he was born in Bat Yam in ‘Israel’ in 1971. His Parents 

immigrated to Palestine in 1940 due to the growing antisemitism in Europe. However, 

Abulhawa was born in Kuwait in 1972 to Palestinian parents who were forced to flee 

Palestine in 1948 Nakba. Then, Abulhawa immigrated to America as a teenager to seek a 

better life after the 1967 Naksa because of the increase in Palestinian displacement.  

Abulhawa diaspora is the result of the Jewish immigration and Israeli occupation of 

Palestine. In other words, perhaps Gaon’s rootedness in Palestine led to Abulhawa’s 

uprootedness. Therefore, Abulhawa states “I left my career in medical research to become 

a storyteller because someone stole my story and retold the truth of me as a lie” 

(Abulhawa, 2017, p. 59). Moreover, Abulhawa as a contemporary Arab American writer 

in the twenty-first century established a humanitarian narrative style, that guarantees to 

convey a “sense of trust where the reader could grasp the consequences of cultural, 

ideological, racial, economical, and political Israeli aggressive boundaries upon the 

Palestinians with some degree of understanding and acceptance” (Soud, 2015). In 

addition, Liran (2022) interviewed Gaon with The Human Founder Broadcast, and he 

referred to the “act of writing is a powerful thing, and it allows you express your feeling 

and your experience” (20:37) of perhaps exile and diaspora. Since Gaon was aware of his 

family roots and history of deposition, he might have reflected in his play, on Miram and 

Ephram and their horrific experience in Europe. Both author's experience of exile in some 

way or another have influenced their writings and reshaped their experience of home, 

memory, trauma, and eventually return.   

Gaon’s work is an example of how the adaptation “can be an act of re-vision in itself, 

which is achieved most often by offering a revised point of view from the original”  

(Sanders, 2006). Gaon’s adaption uses non-linear storytelling to replace information with 

totally different ones to suit the Israeli audiences. This liberty bolsters the traumatic 

provenance of the Polish family. Where Kanafani’s Miriam loses a brother in the 

Holocaust, Gaocaren’s loses a son; this levels the discourse on which the bereaved 



6 

mothers Miriam and Safiyya encounter each other. Notably, Gaon’s adaptation among 

others departed from the original text by adjusting the Israeli experience of loss, trauma, 

and sacrifice to the Palestinians. This adapted narrative is exactly what the Israeli 

audience needs. 

Moreover, the Palestinians' right to return to their homeland has been overridden by the 

international world when it is compared to the Jewish Holocaust. Ironically decentralizing 

the former and centralizing "the right for a national Israeli Jewish existence or the right of 

the State of Israel to exist"  (Peled & Rouhana, 2004, p. 4) in place of Palestine. This 

study assesses the variations between the two literary works which serve Gaon's purpose 

of shifting the focus from the Palestinian discourse of return to the ‘Israeli narrative of 

return’. For instance, in Kanafani's novella, Khaldon becomes Dove, while in Gaon's play, 

Khaldon dies. His death symbolizes the discontinuity of the Palestinian narrative and 

increases their sense of uprootedness. Miriam and Ephraim lost their son and their home 

in Poland during the Holocaust. Said and Safiyya abandoned their baby Khaldon in the 

grim circumstances that compelled them to leave their home in Haifa in 1948  (Diamant, 

2008, p. 2). Also, in the Palestinian novella, the Jewish family was given the house and 

the boy, but in the Israeli play, the baby was the reason the Jews had taken the house 

asserting the significance of Dov. Moreover, Safiyya and Said entered the house, while 

in Gaon’s narrative, they were prevented from entering the house, alluding to the denial 

of the Palestinian return by preventing them from entering the house. Khaldon or Dove is 

a key figure in both literary pieces, so his death, life, and actions are fundamentally 

symbolic. Therefore, Gaon utilizes Khaldon to centralize Israeli existence.   

Simultaneously, Kanafani (1969) refers in his novella to the Israeli holocaust highlighting 

the Jews’ utilization of pain and trauma to justify their invasion of Palestine. However, 

Gaon emphasizes how he was affected by Kanafani’s depiction of the Holocaust and the 

Jewish diaspora. He comments:       

I went to read the novella, and I was shattered,” Gaon (2011) says. “It hit me in 

the stomach. The way Kanafani (1969) portrayed the Jewish refugee from the 

Holocaust, was very, very brave and exceptional of him. I was completely blown 

away by it and, immediately, I wanted to do an adaptation of it for the theater 

(Gaon, 2011, p. 3). 



7 

Gaon's statement exemplifies the rapid shift between Kanafani's narrative and Gaon's 

biased interpretation. Sheetrit (2010), an Israeli writer, articulates that Gaon's adapted 

play "clarifies how the Hebrew texts re-form and alter the ‘original’ Palestinian text" 

(p.1), indicating that language itself becomes a tool to construct an Israeli version and 

narrative. Sheetrit (2010) adds language raised by Kanafani’s text and its Hebrew 

adaptation stresses the role of voice and direct speech. It reveals such issues as being at 

the crux of the intertextual discourse engendered by the rewritings of this novella ( p.13). 

Thus, the adaptation of Kanafani's text establishes a turn or a shift in the Palestinian 

perception of return. However, Perlman, On the other hand, believes that adaption creates 

a space for “The term ‘shared society,’ which has been adopted in recent years as a signal 

support integration and active citizenship, in the context of the Jewish and Palestinian 

relationship in Israel” (Perlman, amp, & Peter, 2022, p. 305) referring to fiction as perhaps 

the only space for co-existence. However, reality echoes the voices of the martyred 

mothers and imprisoned sons.  

Moreover, Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin emerged as an adaptation of Kanafani’s 

Returning to Haifa. Abulhawa states “The seed for my novel came from Ghassan 

Kanafani’s short story about a Palestinian boy who was raised by the Jewish family that 

found him in the home they took over in 1948” (Abulhawa, 2011, p. 327). Mornings in 

Jenin examines return and its transformative impact on the Abulhaj family as a 

microcosm for the larger Palestinian society. They re-live and re-call the image of the 

imagined home, the one they have left behind due to the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948. 

Abulhawa's novel was published in 2006 under the title Scar of David, but soon after that, 

it was changed to Mornings in Jenin. This shift in the title perhaps indicates the move 

from individualism to collectiveness, that the symbolic scar isn't David's only but often 

the traumatized and displaced Palestinians. The novel paves its after Abulhawa visits the 

Jenin refugee camp in the immediate aftermath of the massacre that took place in April 

2002. This visit has deeply affected Abulhawa and enhanced her by writing the human 

story of the Palestinian people who are living under the Israeli occupation. 

Narrating the Palestinian's story has required a creative adaptation process. Abulhawa 

introduced the text to some “additions, expansions, accretions, and interpolations” 

(Sanders, 2006, p. 172) that offer her complete freedom to creatively adapt the original 



8 

text while being faithful to the original text. The discourse of the displaced Palestinians 

has been emotionally rather painfully presented. For example, in both narratives pain is 

associated with the loss and sacrifice that Said, Safiyya, Amal, and Abulhaj's family 

experienced. Fleeing from their homeland in Haifa and the village of Ein-Hood to become 

homeless, dispossessed, and refugees in their own country. Leading to the concept of 

return being associated by Kanafani and Abulhawa with resistance and temporal arrival. 

For instance, Said and Safiyya visit Haifa as a medium of remembering the past and 

reassuring the need to resist to return. Similarly, the grandfather of Amal, in Abulhawa's 

novel, died while trying to go back to Ein-hood village as a metaphor for the everlasting 

resistance that is inherited from one generation to another. 

Obviously as discussed above, Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa with all its aesthetic, 

historical details and human dimensions is still an inspiring work for various critical 

readings and adaptations from diverse scholars, critics, and writers. These adaptations as 

argued, involve changes in the genre as well as the themes to “enable it to survive in a 

new environment” (Cahir, 2006, p. 97). Consequently, these previous examples of 

adaptations successfully fit in the Israeli new environment and the Arab one as well. 

1.2 Literature Review 

In this section, the researcher discusses three main themes: trauma, memory, and the 

psychological effect of homecoming. It shows how this study varies to build on other 

critical studies on the concept of return and the Palestinian catastrophe. In addition, it 

examines how these themes are represented and intertwine with the idea of return in each 

adaptation. Trauma, as a concept, navigates the displacement of the Palestinians since the 

1948 Nakba. After displacement, the memories of the homeland were kept alive in the 

minds of the first generation who experienced Nakba and then it transmitted to the second, 

the third, and so on. Return on the other hand invokes remembrance and the desire to 

achieve it, by the homecoming.  

1.2.1 Homecoming  

 Returning to the occupied homeland is an emotional encounter for most displaced 

Palestinians, refugees, and exiled Palestinians. Re-arriving, which means visiting the 

1948 occupied territories, after being exiled for a long time is a moment that involves 



9 

confusion, a constant sense of loss in time and place, and a struggle that comes from being 

ribbed out between the past and the present. 

Kanafani builds Returning to Haifa on the visit Said and Safiyya make. Therefore, the 

vile reality in occupied Haifa along with the haunting image of a tragic homeland 

intensified Said's sense of loss, rendering him psychologically perplexed and out of place  

(Awan, Gölgeci, Makhmadshoev, & Mishra, 2022). Said's perplexity is distinctively 

explored in this study by employing Lacan’s dialogical approach of imaginary, symbolic, 

and real where refugees face their dynamic positions in achieving return which is 

influenced by questions of roots and belonging. 

In Abulhawa's adaptation, the presence of homecoming encapsulates an emotional 

longing to reclaim the occupied land. Viewing Amal and Said's homecoming is not 

merely a physical journey but a spiritual and emotional quest for dignity and freedom. 

Moreover, their sacrifices and losses are catastrophic and embedded with suffering and 

struggle (Bernard, 2018). However, according to Edward Said the “Palestinians were not 

only the opponents or victims of Zionism, they also represented an alternative … not 

about colonizing and dispossessing people but about liberating them” (Said, 1979, p. 7). 

Therefore, the idea of homecoming is not only a reminder of disposition but it can be the 

first step toward liberation. Or, a moment of transcendence to achieve return which Amal 

and Said encounter as displaced Palestinians. 

 However, in the Israeli adaptation, the idea of homecoming proposes a challenge for the 

Palestinian return. Gaon articulates that Said's re-arrival to Haifa intensifies his feeling of 

uprootedness and “grief well up inside him. For one minute he was tempted to turn back” 

(Gaon, 2011, p. 1) due to facing the emotional turmoil of the harsh reality of displacement. 

Gaon (2014) acknowledges that “Safiyya and Said’s old house.” (p.3) Is now “Miriam 

and Froike’s new one” (p.3). Yet, he elucidates that “April twenty-fifth, 1948. You have 

been reborn.” (2014, p.2) referring to Goshen, the Israeli protagonist who suffered the awe 

of the Holocaust. The Historian Iian Pappe reports, that Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett 

called the Nakba a small injustice caused by a terrible one (1992, p.268) referring to the 

Holocaust. Indicating that the latter justifies the former. However, the emotional upheaval 

of homecoming and confronting the fragmentation of the past reminds the Palestinians of 



10 

their Nakba as an outrageous injustice that led to the displacement of a whole nation. 

Homecoming can be viewed as a moment of resistance and a reminder of the Palestinian 

stolen heritage. 

1.2.2 Memory  

For the displaced Palestinians, memory is a key to remembrance, preserving the 

Palestinian narrative, resisting, and finally bridging generations into a collective rather 

interwoven history. Memory is a transmitted discourse; that is the memories of the first 

displaced generation diffuse as stories among the second and third generations in exile 

and refugee camps. Moreover, it dissolves forgetfulness into a vacuum.     

Amal, Said, and other minor characters embody the Palestinian refugees. In Abulhawa's 

Mornings in Jenin, refugees' poignant discourse maintains a generational and collective 

memory impact. For example, Amal, the protagonist, is the third generation born in the 

refugee camps as her father and grandfather before her. She keeps “the petitions of 

memory pulled her back, and still back, to a home she had never known” (Abulhawa, 

2010, p. xiii) as a relentless pursuit to find the way back home. However, in Gaon's “Ha-

Shiva Le Haifa”, Said and Safiyya's memory of Haifa was a torment by an influential 

force guiding them through their journey of displacement. In the Israeli play, Safiyya says 

“The house might have been destroyed. A synagogue built on its place, or a fish 

restaurant, with chairs outside… We’ve come for nothing” (Gaon, 2011, p. 1) leading 

them back and forth to Haifa while facing the complexities of loss and belonging to 

connect the present with the fractured past through memories. 

Hamdi (2023) navigates how the Palestinian memory becomes highly urgent to preserve 

the Palestinian narrative against forgetfulness (para.13). Therefore, the memory of the 

Nakba elucidates the significance of remembrance in the profound presence of 

displacement. Memory stands as an invincible anchor for the Palestinians in exile, 

diaspora, refugee camps, and the original citizens in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. 

Because all Palestinians are either uprooted, imprisoned, exiled, or under a siege dream 

of a free Palestine. On the collective memory Wadi (2017), an independent, researcher, 

and blogger specializing in the struggle for memory in Chile and Palestine, highlights 

“Return would also end the multitude of exiles experienced by Palestinians when the 



11 

imaginary unites with true decolonization” (p.18) and this unity is the key to establish a 

Palestinian state from Wadi's perspective. Simultaneously, Kanafani's Returning to Haifa 

confirms the shift from an individual, emotional, and personal memory of occupied 

Palestine “I'm looking for the true Palestine, it's the Palestine than more than memories, 

more than peacock feathers, more than a son, more than scars written by bullets on the 

stairs” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 186) to transcend into a collective, rational, and national 

understanding of return.  

1.2.3 Trauma  

Since the Nakba is the cause of the collective Palestinian trauma, its importance lies in 

studying the relation between this trauma and the concept of return in Kanafani's 

Returning to Haifa and its adaptations. The 1948 Nakba left the Palestinians uprooted and 

changed the face of geography and history in the Middle East in which a new state was 

born and another left displaced and shattered.  

In 1948 the Israelites walked on water to the promised-land. The Palestinians 

walked on water to drown. Shot and counter-shot. Shot and counter-shot. The 

Jewish people rejoin fiction; the Palestinian people, documentary (Godard, 

2004, p. 15). 

The Palestinian collective tragedy is solid in a cruel historical documentary while the 

Jews proclaim Palestine based on religious fiction and political agenda. The realm of such 

trauma chasses the Palestinians for generations. Abulhawa (2010) tackles the constant 

looming pain and loss in Amal's life as her grandfather “Yehya who tallied forty 

generations of living, now stolen. Forty generations of childbirth and funerals, weddings 

and dance, Prayer and scraped knees” (p. 35) are preserved in the uprooted memories. 

Their life is “all carried away by the notion of entitlement of other people, who settle in 

the vacancy and proclaim it all” (Abulhawa, 2010, p. 35). The pain of shattered lives, and 

broken families, “outlines how traumatic experiences can produce an inner displacement 

and reorganization of one’s mental life that leads to a focus on traumatic complexes” 

(Luci, 2024, p. 1) that Amal, her father, and Grandfather undergo as refugees with pain 

and nostalgia to, Palestine, the occupied land.  



12 

Kanafani (1969) takes the readers into profound individual traumas of the Palestinians 

like those “three Arab soldiers who fought alone for two days on the hill near Augusta 

Victoria Hospital, and the men who took off their army uniforms and fought in the streets 

of Jerusalem” (p. 150) to highlight their pain entwined with their relentless well to resist. 

In other words, each trauma is a trigger to fight for justice and return. Nevertheless, 

Kanafani navigates individualism into a collective suffering in which “every Palestinian 

is going to pay a price. I know many who have paid with their sons. I know now that I, 

too, paid with a son” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 187). Abulhawa's adaptation depicts this pain 

and struggles similarly. In particular, the connection to the land, and “how adaptation can 

engage experiences of exile and dispossession” (Yaqub, 2018, p. 273) into scenes of 

evoking interpretation and creative transformation. Abulhawa navigates the Palestinian 

firm faith in sacrifice either individually or collectively to achieve return and restore their 

right to exist in their homeland Palestine.   

Gaon upholds a sense of irony in the Palestinian crisis and returns through his fictional 

adaptation of Returning to Haifa. For instance, the Palestinians' pain after collective 

displacement is associated with sarcasm in Gaon's adaptation “Said: They already took 

our heart out twenty years ago, in 1948 –Safiyya: You’ve come here to look for a heart, 

Said” (Gaon, 2011, p. 1). This quotation clarifies the decentralization of Said's regret and 

shifts the focus to Safiyya's sarcasm of Said's emotional attachment to the occupied Haifa. 

According to Derrida (1988), the shift of the lectionary act, in this case pain, from one 

context to another can help in producing a different interpretation “The written sign can 

break its real context and can be read in a different context regardless of what the writer 

intended” (p. 167) this supports Gaon's use of adaptation to produce an Israeli discourse 

through mockery and sarcasm. Gaon utilizes the holocaust impliedly “Old not because of 

age. Because of what happened. Over there” (Gaon, 2011, p. 2) as a justification to take 

over Palestine “So we’ll take the wallpaper off, Ephraim. We’ll scrape the walls until we 

reach the bones of the house” (Gaon, 2011, p. 5). According to Finkelstein, the Jewish 

collective trauma or the Holocaust was uniquely evil. However terrible, the suffering of 

others simply does not compare (p.37). 

Similarly, the pain of the Palestinians is a result of the Israeli denial of their rights  

(Norridge, 2011, p. 209) to have a homeland. In addition to the continuity of violating 



13 

and occupying more land in Palestine. Libman, in an important analysis tackling the 

“post-traumatic closure to the moral agonies of the 1948 war, thus sentencing that trauma 

to a compulsive repetition” (p. 124-133) by stealing more lands for illegal settlers. 

Bernard (2018) adds “returning the history of the Palestinian defeat to the margins of the 

narrative only to have it resurface each time a little more reduced but still not quite 

extinguished” (p.111) due to the national and psychological trauma of the displaced, the 

repetitive notion of seeking return. 

1.3 Significance of the Study 

This study is timely and significant because it explores one of the most permanent 

conflicts of our time, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Moreover, the process of adaptation 

in both works articulates how memory, identity, trauma, and homecoming are reshaped 

in both narratives. For example, Abulhawa’s adaptation is also a call to recognize the 

substantial principles of justice, human rights, and dignity for the Palestinians. However, 

Gaon’s adaptation dilutes Kanafani’s narrative of resistance. For instance, Gaon 

dismisses Said’s right to return to their homeland, which is nowadays recognized by 

varied Western nations and well-known intellectuals. Haim Bresheeth, the Jewish 

professor, filmmaker, and the author of the (1997) Introduction to the Holocaust book, 

comments on the current genocide in Gaza and the Palestinian right to return “What we 

want the end of the Zionist project and a new Palestine where Jews, Muslims, and 

Christians can live like they did in Al-Andalus like they did in Palestine” (Bresheeth, 

2024) before 1948. Hence, Kanafani navigates the essentiality of creating a Palestinian 

narrative that challenges the predominant political narrative and preserves the Palestinian 

memory, trauma, and homecoming. Many writers and activists play a crucial role in 

shaping a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Moreover, the Palestinian right of return is a matter of historical restitution and a 

contemporary humanitarian concern. Today more than 5 million Palestinians are scattered 

across several countries, living in refugee camps in insecure conditions while facing the 

hardships of life and the discrimination in the host countries. Therefore, the significance 

of maintaining a Palestinian narrative of resistance in varied adaptation is highly urgent.  

  



14 

1.4 Objective of the study 

This study is focused on achieving the following objectives: it reads varied adaptations 

with diverse backgrounds to highlight the timely representation of the Palestinian struggle 

to return to their homeland. It explores the theory of imaginary home for exilic and 

diasporic characters. It argues that homecoming for refugees, exilic, and diasporic 

persona is a moment of transcendence from the imaginary home to the real geography 

manned by the Israeli government in the occupied land. The form of literal adaptation in 

the Palestinian context “rethinks spatial relations and political organization, revealing the 

hidden functionalities within ostensibly dysfunctional spaces” (Hynek & Ter-Ghazaryan, 

2025, p. 1). At first, the researcher examines the representation of the Palestinian Nakba 

and the use of internal sarcasm by Said and Safiyya in the Israeli adaptation “Ha-Hshiva 

Le-Haifa” by Boaz Gaon. Then, the researcher studies the exemplification of return in the 

Palestinian discourse Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa. Highlighting the daily 

struggle and trauma Amal, the third generational refugee and the protagonist in 

Abulhawa's novel undergoes as a Palestinian. Moreover, this study explores the 

significance of memory, inherited stories of life before the 1948 catastrophe, and 

homecoming to tackle the right to resist and achieve a return. It also shows how Said, and 

Faris Lubdeh as uprooted Palestinians are traumatized by the Nakba, their memories are 

the key to remembrance and their homecoming is a moment of transcendence to resist 

and achieve a return. It concludes that return is a fundamental right for the Palestinian 

nation both collectively and individually, yet every adaptation can convey a varied 

message.  

1.5 Questions of the Study 

This study is expected to answer the following questions: How can trauma affect the 

timely representation of the concept of return that is varied within each adaptation? Why 

is the idea of homecoming or revisiting the occupied land for Said and Amal considered 

a moment of transcendence? Are the memories of the stolen land for Said and Amal a key 

of resistance or a medium to create a realistic perception of return? 

  



15 

1.6 Theoretical Framework 

The theoretical framework examines themes of home, return, imagined geographies, 

emotional attachment, exilic narratives, diaspora, memory, and trauma in Abulhawa and 

Gaon’s adaptations following Hutcheon's theory of adaptation and Lacan’s theory of 

imaginary, symbolic, and real. Initially, the concept of return implies a national and 

political understanding as it is portrayed in the media worldwide. However, Abulhawa 

and Gaon’s works suggest a fictional and humanitarian representation of the Palestinian-

Israeli conflict. The tribulation of displaced people takes a new frame that is different 

from what they have experienced in their homeland or undergone along the way. The 

Nakba is a complicated tragedy that occurred and is situated within interrelated 

circumstances which considerably contribute to understanding the holistic situation 

within which the uprooted experiences as individuals take place (de Haas, 2011;, 

(O’Reilly & Benson, 2015, pp. 420-427). Therefore, the protagonists' suffering and 

unyielding determination to return to their homeland are inseparable from the overall 

national and political contexts. A fact that imposes a demanding challenge for the 

researcher to examine the psychological, political, and national aspects behind the 

protagonists’ inevitable patriotic actions to proclaim their homeland. 

The Palestinian return has emerged as a national concept due to the ruthless displacement 

of the Palestinians from their land in 1948. After that, this trauma has lived in the memory 

of every Palestinian and it transmitted across generations to build awareness and unfold 

the reality of 1948. Moreover, to wipe forgetfulness from the Palestinian's collective 

memory as a mode of resistance. For some Palestinians, as Kanafani highlights in his 

novella, homecoming, is another way to resist as he presents in Returning to Haifa. Said's 

re-arrival to Haifa is the core of the novel most events and the resolution are built upon. 

The idea of going back or revisiting the stolen house less to say the land is a radical idea 

that reflects a real collective thinking between 1948 and 1967. For the Palestinians across 

generations, return is a national rather than a humanitarian right that they are willing to 

tear out from their colonizers. Therefore, revisiting one's land and home is a reminder of 

their stolen heritage. In Kanafani's novella return is a cause and ideology of upbringing, 

not a blood relation. In the end, this thesis aims to unfold how each adaptation draws the 

Palestinians' struggle and the right to return. 



16 

This study utilizes adaption to study the meaning of return in Kanafani’s Returning to 

Haifa and its Israeli adaptation Ha-Shiva Le-Haifa (which means Returning to Haifa) by 

Boaz Gaon. The sameness of the title regardless of the change of the content emphasizes 

the Israeli right to return which identifies adaptation as a notion of betrayal to the source 

text according to (Horton & Magretta, 1981, p. 1). Nonetheless, Robert Ray (2001) 

stresses that adaptation is a tool to reify the notion of the text with a sense of hostility to 

its translation (p. 45). For example, Sheetrit's (2010) “Call Me Dov/Khaldun/Ze'ev/Badīr” 

article signifies that Hebrew text can re-form and alter the ‘original’, and Kanafani’s 

novella, in turn, can be read as ‘inviting’ such responses.  In addition, Ray (2001) claims 

adaptation “can sponsor the obsessive refrain of the newly adapted literary pieces that 

literary classics failed to live up to their source” (p.45). Therefore, Gaon’s play  according 

to Ray’s terms is a renewal of Kanafani’s original work. In other words, adaption shifts 

the center to the Israeli narrative and brings it to light. However, adaptation as an approach 

according to Siobhan O’Flynn is Central, and it is an extension of the source text without 

shifting its center (2006). Yet, the Palestinian narrative is deluded by another, and a whole 

new system emerges. The Israeli narrative did not adapt Kanafani’s narrative but 

deconstructed it by avoiding the Palestinian struggle and replacing it with the Jew’s trauma.         

To address these arguments, this study utilizes a comparative approach in analyzing each 

adaptation with Kanafani's Returning to Haifa. Drawing primarily on postmodern 

theories such as Hutcheon's adaptation theory and Lacan's the real, imaginary, and 

symbolic in cross-cultural psychology.  

 

 

 

 

  



17 

Chapter Two 

Israeli narrative; Boaz Gaon's Ha-Shiva Le-Haifa 

2.1 Introduction 

Building on Hutcheon's adaptation theory in which adaptation is an art that is driven from 

other arts, and stories are born from other stories (Hutcheon, 2006, p. 2), this chapter 

explores the representation of the Palestinian return in Gaon’s “ Ha-Shiva Le Haifa” as 

an Israeli adaptation of the Palestinian narrative Returning to Haifa by Kanafani. It argues 

that the Israeli narrative of the Palestinian Nakba is structurally regulated, controlled, and 

caused by the Imperial- Zionists to justify the establishment of the state of Israel and the 

impossibility of the Palestinian return. Kanafani's Returning to Haifa has been wildly 

acclaimed and it tackles the Palestinian cause and their question of return. The notion of 

return after the 1948 catastrophe has been strongly preserved in the Palestinian novella. 

They are presenting a realistic image of the Palestinian trauma and loss. Moreover, the 

title of the novella shows the constant yearning of the Palestinians to return and it is a 

fundamental reminder of their righteousness over the land. Therefore, the Palestinians, 

who have been uprooted by force, according to Kanafani “force” is the only way to return 

as seems to suggest. 

Ironically the meaning of return has been deconstructed in Boaz Gaon's play which shifts 

the center from the atrocities against the Palestinians in 1948 to the Israeli-justified 

Holocaust that led to the Israeli dominance over Palestine. Although, Gaon’s adaptation 

maintains that a text “cannot exist as a hermetic or self-sufficient whole, and so does not 

function as a closed system” (Still & Worton, 1991, p. 1). Intertextuality reforms it as 

rather the product of the intersection of a whole corpus of texts which may be broadly 

defined as culture (Kristeva, 1980, p. 1). Gaon’s adaptation navigates the Israeli literature 

that does not exist in isolation but is closely connected to the collective discourse of Israeli 

society. It is a literal exemplification of a cultural, historical Israeli collective discourse 

in which the literary text and the culture are inseparably knit together to fabricate a 

tapestry (Raj, 2015, p. 78). Hence, Gaon’s Play reflects the Israeli narrative of history and 

culture after 1948. Therefore, Gaon leads the audience to observe the Israeli narrative of 

the Palestinian Nakba and the Israeli immigration to Palestine to establish the Israeli state 



18 

in the Promised Land. Ironically, Gaon refers to the Palestinian existence in the occupied 

territories before 1948, yet he highlights the suffering of the Jews and the unjust 

oppression they endured in Europe. Moreover, Gaon stresses Zionism as a radical reason 

for the Jews to immigrate to Israel. Therefore,‘ Ha- Shive Le Haifa’ as an Israeli modern 

adaptation is a medium that reflects immigration, displacement, and return of Palestinians 

from an Israeli perspective.   

However, while examining the Israeli adaptation of the novella, the main focus of the 

Palestinian suffering and their conceptual right of return has been replaced by the Israeli's 

trauma of the holocaust and their justified right over Palestine. Through assessing the 

variations between the two literary works, they are used to serve Gaon's purpose of 

shifting the focus from the Palestinian discourse of return and establishing an Israeli 

narrative of return. For instance, in Kanafani's novella, Khaldon becomes Dove, while in 

Gaon's play, Khaldon dies. His death stands for the discontinuity of the Palestinian 

narrative and increases their sense of uprootedness. Also, in the Palestinian novella, the 

Jewish family was given the house and the boy so Safiyya and Said entered the house 

while in the Israeli narrative, the baby was the reason the Jews had taken the house while 

Said and Safiyya were prevented from entering the house. This shows the Israeli absolute 

denial of the Palestinian return by preventing them from entering the house. Also, through 

the child, the Israeli couple gains dominance over the discourse of return and the right to 

exist in Palestine. Khaldon or Dove is a key figure in both literary pieces, so his death, 

life, and actions are fundamentally symbolic. Therefore, Gaon utilizes Khaldon to 

centralize the Israeli existence. Moreover, Gaon's play states the Palestinian defeat with 

an absolute negation of the idea of return, while Kanafani's novella stresses the idea of 

fighting back. Kanafani also presents the theme of sacrifice concerning fatherhood while 

Gaon's play presents Said as a gay and castrated figure.  

The Israeli narrative utilizes those variations to create a valid justification for their 

inhumane deeds in the 1948 catastrophe. Moreover, Gaon points out how the state of 

Israel, while being established, permeates Zionism as an elite ideology for the whites and 

the superiors. “Continues to urge the official) Listen, my wife… in Poland, she was big 

Zionist. She was in Hashomer HaTzair” (Gaon, 2014, p. 2) which is a secular-Jewish, 

socialist youth movement that promotes social equality for the Jews internationally. 



19 

Zionists are the utopian believers in  the  sovereignty of the Jewish people and their right 

to create nationhood in Palestine where “Only hooligans get a house. Shlimazels stay in 

tent” (Gaon, 2014, p. 4) because the Shlimazels are the Eastern, middle-class, and 

misfortune Jew, unlike the ruthless, vandal and powerful hooligan-Jews. Although Gaon 

introduces Zionism and social class in Israel, he navigates to obtain the audience’s 

empathy toward the suffering of the Jewish nation.     

Therefore, the concept of the Palestinian’s return is central in Kanafani’s novella and 

controversial in Gaon's play. The Palestinian quest for return in Kanafani’s work, 

according to Bhatia (2013), “focuses on the yearning to return, in both space and time, to 

what was once was, and forever imagined unchained; the clash of that vision with hopes 

to return” (para.3). Return is associated with the past, yet it is a futuristic action. However, 

the negation of the right of return for the Palestinians in Gaon’s play is present in 

Safiyya’s words “What was in this house will never return. What they took from us, they 

will not be giving back” (Gaon, 2011, p. 6) the adverb (never) indicates the impossibility 

or return which reflects a contextual-collective Israeli discourse of negating the 

Palestinians right to return to their original homes that was forcibly taken in 1948 by the 

Israeli occupation.   

2.2 The Representation of Home and Homecoming in Ha-shive Le-Haifa and 

Returning to Haifa 

 In our modern time, the notion of return, home longing, and homecoming have emerged 

due to the rise of forced displacement because of political corruption or colonial 

occupation. For example, navigating the historical and political background of the 

Palestinian-Israeli conflict in which the idea of " Return- to what was lost when the state 

of Israel was first created on the geographic area of historic Palestine- is a compelling 

issue"(Majaj, 2001, p.113). This issue has intensified the number of refugees and exiled 

worldwide in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The exiled constant longing 

for their homeland is shaped by a centripetal mobility that expresses their desire to return 

home (Qabaha, 2018, p. 10). Despite Bisharat’s (1997) claim that in modern days the 

right and the idea of the refugee's return has become insignificant and replaced by a coined 

political collective identity (p.2) among the torn Palestinian nationality. However, return 

for Palestinian refugees is not negotiable and an inevitable right in the face of unjust 



20 

Israeli occupation. For example, I am a third-generation refugee, who was born and raised 

in Balata Camp for fifteen years of my life, and inherited the national symbolic key of 

my family house in Jaffa. I witnessed the second ‘Intifada’ uprising in 2000 and lost my 

Uncle as a martyr in the first ‘Intifada’ in 1987. I grew up hearing stories from my 

Grandmother, dreaming of the orange fields and the olive trees my Grandfather owned. I 

watered the seed of return in my head throughout my life because for most refugees return 

isn’t a question nor a sequence, but it’s the outcome no matter how long it takes. In the 

late 19s, some refugees were able to go visit their homelands and my grandmother was 

one of them, I said and I quote “Oh! My dear child! I saw our villa on the hill, its walls 

sad and its roof dim and I could not help but cry and I said Oh! God ‘ Saqala Wehna 

rajeen’ hopefully we return soon”(2015). Therefore, homecoming for some refugees is a 

reminder of the necessity of returning from real life to fiction or vice versa. 

Homecoming is essential, yet it can transform the lives of uprooted characters like Said 

and Safiyya in Returning to Haifa by Kanafani. Its importance lies in their actual re-

connection with their sense of dispossession that creates “a shift in Palestinian national 

sentiment, transforming from ties rooted in a love of country to more politically apt 

sentiments of modern nationalism” (Khalidi, 2020, p. 42). This moment of arriving in 

Haifa, after twenty years of displacement in refugee camps, for both characters is read as 

a moment of transition between the imagined and the real home and self, a moment of 

realization of the absent past and utter present “When he reached the edge of Haifa, Said 

had the sensation that something was binding his tongue, compelling him to keep silent, 

and he felt grief well up inside of him…began to pile up and fill his entire being” 

(Kanafani, 1969, p. 149). Kanafani portrays Said’s melancholy as a moment of 

reconfiguration of an imagined geography; hence Haifa before 1948. In my study, return 

is imagined, significant, and realized because home associates harmony and peace 

(Olwig, 1998, p. 229) for Said and Safiyya.  

Moreover, In Gaon’s perspective, home is where you feel safe in a host foreign country 

and it means escaping your place of origin if you are facing oppression and injustice “Old 

not because of age. Because of what happened. Over there” (Gaon, 2011, p. 2). ‘There’ 

refers to Poland and the oppression of Jews. The Jews chose to migrate to Palestine 

because they were promised nationhood and land in Palestine in 1948. Symbolically, 



21 

Gaon navigates an emotional narrative demonstrating their occupation to Haifa as being 

born again “Haifa, 1948. An overturned living room. A Jewish Agency official carrying 

a file filled with documents… Congratulations. April twenty-fifth, 1948. You have been 

reborn” (Gaon, 2011, p. 2) this quotation clarifies the association between conquering 

Haifa, claiming its houses, and highlighting a vital moment in the establishment of the 

Israeli by marking the birth of a new national identity amidst the clutter of war. However, 

Kanafani relates the concept of home to the sacrifice and suffering endured under 

occupying power. Marking the immense steadfastness and unwavering resilience of 

Palestinian freedom fighters, young men and women, children, old farmers (Haj), and 

peaceful Palestinian civilians in the face of all kinds of injustice against their ethnicity. 

Kanafani illustrates the brutal effect of the Israeli occupation on both the individual and 

communal levels. Therefore, being born a Palestinian is enough to make you a target 

according to (Kanafani, 1969, p. 150) 

the way the soldiers plundered belongings and furniture, the curfew,… the three 

Arab soldiers who fought alone for two days on the hill near Augusta Victoria 

Hospital, and the men who took off their army uniforms and fought in the streets 

of Jerusalem, and the peasant who was killed the minute they saw him near the 

largest hotel in Ramallah.   

For the Palestinians, losses are made into sacrifices, then transformed into a sturdy 

political force “It seems to me every Palestinian is going to pay a price... I know now that 

I, too, paid with a son, in a strange way” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 187). This transformation of 

tragedy into a form of political and emotional fortitude highlights the resilience and 

unyielding spirit within the Palestinian struggle.  

The Palestinian refugees are essential in the Palestinian national struggle because most 

violent clashes against the Israeli army have taken place in refugee camps and other poor 

neighborhoods  (Strum, 1990, p. 65). For example, during the outrageous war in the Gaza 

Strip, the Israeli army has marched a  siege on Jenin camp, ‘Noor Shams’ camp in 

Tulkarem, and Balta camp in Nablus with continuous military attacks on civilians. They 

invaded the camps and targeted a number of the freedom fighters within days. They have 

demolished houses within the refugee camps and cut electricity for days. This constant 

oppression against the Palestinian refugees is inhumane. The refugees are also significant 



22 

symbols in the political rhetoric which celebrate willing martyrs as a medium for 

resistance and marks the right to return as an irrefutable factor across time and place.   

According to Gren (2002), there seem to be three kinds of significant place and time “a 

remembered and imagined lost place/time, a lived present-day place/time, and a future 

imagined and reconquered place\time” (p.7). For Palestinian refugees’ space and time 

overlap when the imagined, that is the lost land in 1948, the Real, which is the refugee 

camp, and the symbolic, that is the original villages after return. In psychology, the 

Lacanian terminology of the imaginary, symbolic, and real is “an act of the mind which 

attaches meaning, significations, to the things targeted by the conscious” (Godelier, 2020, 

p. 9). For instance, Said’s consciousness of the concept of home transforms from the 

imagined sentimental to the real occupied home when he faces his son who is 

metaphorically symbolic. Khaldun or Dov represents Said’s literal loss and symbolic 

shame for becoming an Israeli soldier. Lacan (1986) suggests, that the imaginary is a 

“state with no clear distinction between the subject and the object” (p.157) which is Haifa, 

his house, and his son Dov. It was evident through the novella that Said relates his action 

to the previous significant objects. As if Said is unconsciously saying who am I without 

Haifa, without my house, without my loss, and a cause because a “man is a cause” 

(Kanafani, 1969, p. 181). As for ‘the real’ according to Sarup (1992) is “the domain of 

the inexpressible… where the subject meets with death” (p.43) which is metaphorically 

the death of oppressed Said and the born of the revolutionist supporter Said. This 

psychological cycle transforms Said's perception of the concept of home, homecoming, 

return, and resistance.  

Therefore, “the durability of literature is inherent as it constitutes the very texture of its 

discourse, its literariness” (Dominguez, Saussy, & Villanueva, 2014, p. 136). The 

message is open to various interpretations across time and space. For example, Kanafani’s 

Returning to Haifa encapsulates the Palestinians' struggle under Israeli occupation from 

1948 until 1969. However, its discourse applies to today’s war on Gaza and the West 

Bank where many Palestinian parents lost their children and homes due to the war like 

Said.  



23 

These three images of home appear clearly in Kanafani’s work and are abbreviated 

comely in the story of Faris Lubda. For Faris home was “a picture of his brother Badr was 

still hanging” who was “that first to carry a weapon on the first week of December 1947” 

(Kanafani, 1969, p. 175) and was martyred while defending his village. Seeing his 

brother’s picture still there as he imagined, but now both his house and the picture are 

connected to the new Arab inhabitant of the house who came to the house, and “the picture 

was the first thing I saw. Maybe I rented the house because of it” (p.176). Highlighting 

“I found consolation in it, a companion that spoke to me, to remind me of things I could 

be proud of (p.176) that is never leaving Haifa and fighting for its freedom. Badr’s picture 

is a symbolism to Haifa “if you wanted to reclaim him, you'd have to reclaim the house, 

Jaffa, us” (p.177) and now Faris is “carrying arms.”(p.178). Faris Lubda’s journey home 

is a moment of transformation from the emotional imaginary home to the symbolic by 

facing the real. For example, Badr’s picture (the imaginary) reminds Faris of resistance 

(the symbolic) through his visit to his home and acknowledging the reality (the real).   

However, in Gaon’s play the Palestinian return is impossible to achieve “What was in this 

house will never return” (Gaon, 2011, p. 6) indicates the presence of Israel as a dominant 

power. Although Gaon (2014) refers in his play to the past presence of Palestinians in 

Haifa “Every day on way to market… I see whole houses like this. Sometimes I see pots 

on stove… plates on table… but no one lives in them! Why not me?” (p.2). Shifting the 

focus of the audience from the displacement of Palestinians to sympathizing with 

Ephraim’s right to own a house in Haifa as a Jewish settler who escaped the horror of the 

Holocaust in Poland. Gaon (2014) tackles Khaldun as a medium for home. For instance, 

Said & Safiyya’s visit to Haifa in the search for their lost son Khaldun is the imaginary; 

“I did that. With my own hands. And I put in a few screws – just to be on the safe side… 

so that Khaldun wouldn’t fall out, remember?” (Kanafani, 1969, p .6) to indicate the 

emotional past when Said and Khaldun were a father and a son. According to Turner 

(1967), the Palestinian’s loss leads to liminality that indicates a transition to a new stage. 

In the Palestinian narrative, the repetitive loss creates a discourse of sacrifice and 

resilience. For instance, the liminal status of the refugees implies a transformative power 

due to the constant oppression by the Israeli soldiers. For the Palestinian refugees losses 



24 

are imagined to be transformed into gains; like Martyrdom is considered a Palestinian 

national and secular identity.  

The concept of homecoming and home is known to lay at the heart of every uprooted 

Palestinian in the occupied territories, and exile. Therefore, the moment of homecoming 

can be viewed as a moment of emotional connection or disconnection, a moment of 

realization, acceptance, or denial. For Said, in Kanafani’s narrative, Home is associated 

with sacrifices, and homecoming is a moment of paradoxical reaction and a 

transformation from the imagined home to the real one. Kanafani takes Said to face the 

unforgotten past and shifts to acknowledge the brutal present. However, Gaon’s 

representation of home and its storyline differs in details and labels. For instance, Said's 

visit to his home in Haifa ends with some sense of troubled sense of departure and defeat. 

The audience sees Gaon guide Said to accept the presence of the Israeli state as a liberal 

power in the face of primitive Palestinians who are willing to kill their sons in the name 

of freedom. The transformative impact of Gaon’s storyline has shaped and reshaped the 

Palestinian national discourse as well as their right to return to their homeland.  

2.3 Memory mirroring in Ha-Hshiva Le Haifa 

Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa is a sophisticated novella whose controversial discourse 

tackles the unresolved memories of its characters (El-Hussari, 2019, p. 9). For instance, 

Said and Safiyya mirror their memories of Haifa before the Israeli occupation in 1948 on 

the occupied Haifa in 1969; that is twenty years after forced departure. To find themselves 

face to face with an Israeli state, a brutal reality that forces itself to exist, and a shattered 

identity of who they are and what they remember. According to Rouhana & Sabbagh-

Khoury, the “use commemoration as part of a process of remembering their past in order 

to gain acknowledgment and recognition of their identity and to increase their political 

power in an existing political order” (p.17). They refer to the act of remembering or 

memory, in the Palestinian discourse, as a reflection of identity; that is connecting 

memory to nationalism.   

Therefore, Said’s memory of the 1948 catastrophe and the right to return is fundamentally 

significant in the novella. Because when his homeland is occupied, his baby (Khaldon) is 

taken and renamed, his neighbors are displaced, and his house is expropriated by the 



25 

Israeli Jews, then his memory is a national continuity and a tool of resistance. For 

example, to transfer these memories across generations; that is from Said to Khalid assets 

in recalling the atrocities of the Israelis against the Palestinian nation. To elaborate, 

Agnew (2005) believes the “shadows of the past and the resilience of those in diaspora 

keeps the community dynamic, and now the younger generation is craving out new spaces 

identity” (p.167). Therefore, Said’s memory of Haifa and Nakba perpetuates Khalid’s 

present memories of his unseen homeland.  

Kanafani (1969) begins Said’s journey back to Haifa by portraying his memories of his 

homeland “Then suddenly came the sound of the sea, exactly the way it used to be. The 

memory did not return to him little by little. Instead, it rained down inside his head” (P. 

149) at the moment of arrival to Haifa. Kanafani, immediately, shifts Said’s focus from 

memories to the present “This is Haifa, then, twenty years later” (p.150) where Haifa is a 

colonial site that transcends the physicality of geography to create a new collective fluid 

memory. Dramatizing the clash between Said’s external struggle with Miriam Koshen, 

the Israeli Jew occupying his house, and his internal struggle with his memories. This 

struggle is the inevitable outcome of displacement and exile (El-Hussari, 2019, p. 10). 

For example, Said knows the topography of Haifa by heart, so he makes it to their own 

house easily “Suddenly, the house loomed up, the very house he had first lived in, then 

kept alive in his memory for so long” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 161). Curti (2008) suggests that 

“memories of place can be internally and externally created by individuals and social 

groups through absences, fears, and desires that not only haunt them but react to, often 

resulting in the creation of new emotional geographies and thus – new memories” 

(para.11). For Said, the journey to Haifa and the visit to the house recover a hazy past 

unfold abruptly. Hence, Said internal struggle was resolved by facing the reality of the 

external struggle and by realizing that; although memories are significant for resistance, 

a Palestinian should seek “ Palestine that’s more than memories” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 186) 

to establish a future Palestine.  

Said’s resolution navigates the Palestinian collective memory as highly significant since 

it is the only thing left to them after the Israelis occupied their land and made them 

homeless refugees for generations. Litvak, the Jewish Harvard professor of history, 

highlights that although memory is necessary for every nation, memory is particularly 



26 

appropriate for the Palestinians as a semi-diasporic people still engaged in a struggle for 

statehood (Litvak, 2009, p. 29), but the change is not complete yet. Recovering the 

memories of the “stolen” Haifa, Said rejects to admit defeat by acknowledging the need 

for actual resistance to return. On his way back to Ramallah, Said’s character seems to 

change and he realizes the upcoming rounds of facing the Israeli occupation of his 

homeland must be on the battlefield. 

Kanafani’s allegorical journey of Returning to Haifa records the bruised 

memory of the Palestinian refugees and reveals a desire to recreate a protean 

memory for this traumatized people to transform them from a state of victimhood 

to that of resistance (El-Hussari, 2019, p. 1). 

Therefore, he foresees that these rounds need the Palestinian younger generation like his 

second son, Khaled. “I wish Khaled had joined the fedayeen [freedom fighters] by now” 

(Kanafani, 1969, p. 188). Realizing the urgent need for a discourse of fight, Said’s 

character develops from being a person clinging to his memory “for you and me, it’s only 

a search for something buried beneath the dust of memories” (p. 187) to be a wise thinker 

who observes the present to rebuild the future.  

As for the Israeli adaptation, Gaon incorporates some changes into his play to fit within 

the Israeli culture. Linda Hutcheon (2012) highlights “Neither the product nor the process 

of adaptation exists in a vacuum: they all have a context—a time and a place, a society, 

and a culture” (p.15) referring to the changes in the adapted text as an indispensable form 

of the process. In this section, Gaon represents the term “memory” controversially. He 

refers to the word memory in two scenes in his Play. He interpolates the impossibility of 

the Palestinian's return by referring to their departure as a metaphorical death. In the 

discursive scene, Ephraim refuses to change the items of the house because he believes:  

We have a responsibility. To preserve the memory of the people who lived 

here, in this house. So that it does not die. Does not stop breathing. So that if 

it wakes up in the night, there’ll be someone to stroke it… to sing it a lullaby 

and drive away bad dreams (Gaon, 2011, pp. 5-6).  

The personalization of the house as baby Khaldun is an indication of rooting the rootless, 

in which Ephraim is not merely stealing the house, but fitting within its memory as an 



27 

indigenous owner of the house. In this quotation, Ephraim reforms the Palestinian 

narrative in Kanafani’s novella to support a certain agenda “With change come 

corresponding modifications in the political valence and even the meaning of stories” 

(Hutcheon, 2012, p. 15). For example, Gaon doesn’t deny the previous presence of 

Palestinians, but he denies their right to the land and nationhood. Hence, with this shift in 

the narrative, Ephraim stole not the house and Khaldun but claimed the memories and 

history behind the house in the Israeli adaptation.  

In the second scene, Gaon navigates the power relationship between the Palestinians and 

the Israelis when it comes to memory. Normally, the Palestinian memorial narrative is a 

practice of documentation of the destruction of place, and the suffering of the Palestinian 

people both historically and nationally. However, in Gaon’s narrative, the dominant party 

hands “the documents. There’s even a stamp, with a Jewish menorah” (Gaon, 2014, p. 4) 

usually uses formal historical documents “to validate successive deformation, 

manipulation, and appropriation of the memory of the dominated” (Nora, 1989, p. 16). 

For example, Miriam in this scene is addressing the absence for twenty years, Said & 

Safiyya 

I thought you’d want to be alone. With the house. With your memories and the 

time that’s passed… We did not change very much, as you can see. It was 

important to Froike to preserve the… the… the original (Gaon, 2014, p. 11). 

On the contrary of the superior colonized uses memory to validate historical narratives, 

so as national history (Pappe, 2006). This attribution uncovers two conflicting narratives. 

One is the dominant resisting, narrating, and never waiving, and the other dominant is 

manipulating so as reforming due to disproportion in power relations. However, the 

Palestinians’ memories will be fueled into a national asset where “the present is 

interpreted through the lens of the unforgotten past” (Nora, 1989, p. 20). Therefore, even 

if historical memories of the stolen land are stolen, manipulated, or silenced, they will 

never be forgotten.  

The theme of memory in Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa and Boaz Gaon’s Ha-

Shiva Le-Haifa navigates a seemingly pivotal role in shaping the character's identity and 

its connection to traumatic events. In Kanafani’s novella, memory for the Palestinian 



28 

character is a tool of resistance and continuity. The past memories of the occupied land 

are a national heritage that is inherited from one generation to the other to challenge the 

Israeli discourse. While, in Gaon’s Play, memory for the Israeli character is a reflection 

of their traumatic past which justifies their right to the land and creates a narrative of 

belonging utilizing empathy.  

2.4 Trauma and Exploitation of the Holocaust in Ha-shive Le-Haifa; A justified 

cause and profitable effect 

 The use of pain and trauma in the Israeli narrative helps in shifting the focus of the 

Palestinian trauma to the Israeli's tragic holocaust and justifies their right to have a nation 

in Palestine. Although Kanafani's novella tells the story of the Palestinian uprootedness 

whose pain and trauma were and still are centralized, trauma is associated with return as 

a main theme in Returning to Haifa while it is linked to previous traumas to have a right 

to establish a state in the Israeli discourse. For the Palestinians, the concept of return has 

obtained a good sense of essentiality in the lives of displaced Palestinians like Said and 

Safiyya, but their reaction and interpretation of it is related to constant scarifies, loss, and 

pain. For example, encountering the past for someone might be an emotional moment like 

Safiyya while Said's moment was an exemplification of absolute pain and loss, a moment 

of silence and disengagement, or a moment of resistance. 

The Palestinian narrative explores the trauma, and tragedy of the Palestinians, who carry 

the tragic memory of loss, pain, and forced displacement. Their inability to forget their 

homeland “The predominant model that suggests traumatic memory remains frozen and 

separated from ‘normal’ memories” (Balaev, 2012, p. 40) and the impossibility to forget 

the painful past. Simultaneously, Said has stressed the idea of increased Longing for one's 

homeland and the wish to return in comparison to the immense suffering the uprooted 

Palestinian might feel when they re-visit their homeland “I know this Haifa, but it refuses 

to acknowledge me.”(1969, p.150) to indicate the endless longing and love for someone's 

homeland even after years of displacement.  

Nevertheless, Kanafani anticipates the use of pain and victimhood by the Israeli twisted 

discourse of the Holocaust, which is utilized to promote worldwide Jewish victimhood 

and sympathy. Miriam, now the host in Said and Safiyya’s old house, twists the narrative 



29 

when she implies that she shares with them the feeling of being victimized “Do you think 

this hasn’t been as much of a problem for me as it’s been for you?” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 

172) for she is a Holocaust survivor. El-Hussari (2019) questions the narrative of Jewish 

victimhood in comparison to the context of the Palestinian Nakba, in which the phrase 

“victims of victims‟ sounds insensible and ironical as a claim, for victims are not 

supposed to victimize others.” (p.11). The Jews, who fled Europe to survive the 

oppression and the atrocities of the Holocaust, have become Israelis victimizing “the 

other” the Palestinians who have nothing to do with the Jew’s suffering. This process is 

a cycle of projection that navigates victimhood as a tool to kill, steal, occupy, and 

victimize according to the El-Hussari. 

In Gaon’s adaptation the Holocaust and the theme of victimhood indicate the Jew's right 

to exist in Palestine by articulating specific situations. For instance, Gaon replaced Said's 

sense of estrangement and regret to depart from Haifa in 1948 with sarcasm about Said's 

emotional attachment to Haifa while revisiting it. To clarify, Said, in Kanafani's novella, 

continues to state his inability to reconnect with Haifa “I know this Haifa, but it refuses 

to acknowledge me” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 150) that he can see the street and the house is 

in no longer his or belong to. Yet, Kanafani goes beyond the traditional image of Said’s 

estrangement and disconnection by highlighting Said’s rabid connection to Haifa “he 

knew Haifa well, and now he felt as though he hadn’t been away for twenty years” in 

displacement that indicates the departure was the reason of such a sorrowful- temporal 

detachment. However, this sense of estrangement can only be overcome, Kanafani 

continues, by declaring the right to fight back “Naturally we did not come to tell you to 

get out of here. That would take a war” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 167) and scarifies everything 

for the sake of return. This highlights that connection and rootedness are always 

centralized.  

Moreover, pain in Kanafani’s novella is subjective because” pain is often either a result 

or a cause of the denial of another person's voice” (Norridge, 2011, p. 209). Similarly, 

their pain is a result of the reconstructed and divided homeland. Re-arriving to one's 

homeland after being exiled for a long time can be seen as a moment of 

national conflict that involves confusion, a constant sense of loss in time and place, and 

a struggle that comes from being ribbed out between the past and the present. Only this 



30 

pain is associated with Sarcasm in Gaon's adaptation “Said: They already took our heart 

out twenty years ago, in 1948 –Safiyya: You’ve come here to look for a heart, Said” 

(Gaon, 2011, p. 1) this quotation clarifies the decentralization of Said's regret and shifting 

the focus to Safiyya's sarcasm of Said's emotional attachment. Creating a new 

controversial context years after the publication of Returning to Haifa in 1969, Hutcheon 

(2012) clarifies when an adapted text migrates from its context of creation to the 

adaptation’s context of reception” (p.15) the change cannot be avoided which produce a 

whole new context. According to Derrida (1988), the French philosopher, the shift of the 

lectionary act, in this case pain, from one context to another can help in producing a 

different interpretation" The written sign can break its real context and can be read in a 

different context regardless of what the writer intended" (p.167) this supports Gaon's use 

of adaptation to produce an Israeli discourse through mockery and sarcasm.  

Another example is Gaon's utilization of pain to shift the blame from the Israeli political 

invasion of Palestine to Palestinian terrorism. Said, in the Palestinian novella, accepts the 

sacrifice the Palestinian parents have to make to gain the right to return.  

Do you know something, Madame? It seems to me every Palestinian is going to 

pay a price. I know many who have paid with their sons. I know now that I, too, 

paid with a son, in a strange way” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 187). 

The notion of sacrifice Kanafani presented was again deconstructed by Gaon to shed light 

on the Palestinian uncivilized and terrorizing acts of killing their son. 

Miriam: Murdered by Arabs. In the battle to liberate the Western Wall. (Pause) 

He was raised as a Jew. It was only natural that he’d join the IDF. Froike wanted 

him to stay home. But he wouldn’t. All his friends went… I tried to spare you. 

But you… do not want to be pitied. No, no. You want to dig, with knives, into 

the open wound until the blood covers us all! (Gaon, 2011, p. 12). 

The Palestinian pain and trauma as a main theme have been replaced with the Israeli 

traumatic pain and deconstructed to justify their cause to gain a right to live in Palestine. 

In Gaon's adaptation, the Palestinian male father concerning the notion of fatherhood is 

fundamentally essential; in which Gaon insinuates Said’s action as a father to be a 



31 

medium and a trigger for the Palestinian loss of their homeland and their honor 

symbolically.  In Returning to Haifa, Said was forced to leave his son, Khaldon, behind 

due to the invasion of Haifa “Madame, you did not tell him the truth. And when you did 

tell him, it was too late. Are we the ones who left him?” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 183). Hence, 

Kanafani articulates Said constantly trying to go back to find his son, but he is prevented 

every time by the Israeli soldiers. Interestingly, Gaon has deleted Said's constant pain for 

losing his son Khaldon and he pleaded the harshness and backwardness of such a father 

who leaves his son behind. He even goes forward to describe Said as a dead and castrated 

figure. “Miriam: You want the parents to be dead! And Artzilevich wants that too because 

it’s more convenient that way! But no one knows! Ephraim: Yes, I know, Miriam. They’re 

dead. If they weren’t dead… would they have left a child?” (Gaon, 2011, p. 7). 

Connecting Said's death with his inability to protect his child is a metaphorical death in 

which the father's absence and his failure to protect his son is considered a symbolic form 

of castration. Sarnoff & Corwin (1959) have asserted in their article “Castration Anxiety 

and The Fear of Death” different ways of castration “Presumably, this threat of castration 

may be made directly and literally, or maybe conveyed indirectly and symbolically" 

(p. 85) this quotation indicates the variations in which castration as literal process can 

take a direct or an indirect way.  

However, Kanafani's text presents this encounter between Miriam, Said, and Safiyya 

differently. The center of it, is Miriam relating Dov, or Khaldon to his Jewish father 

Froike denying Said's presence which leads Said to question his fatherhood about loss, 

and pain “It’s time for him to return now, but he’s late. He never was on time getting 

home. He’s just like his father.” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 171) leaving Said on the margin of 

manhood and fatherhood. Ironically, the Israeli discourse has an ability to mislead the 

truth even with the presence of his original father, Said. Kanafani (1969) was aware of 

the Israeli desire to demolish Palestinian manhood. Savir (1987), an Israeli lecturer, 

asserts "The sovereignty over the ‘land of Israel’ will not be decided by a gun, but control 

will be determined through the bedroom and universities and the Palestinians will win 

over us in these two places,” (p.118). The absence of the father image in Dov’s memory 

is a form of refusing the masculine discourse and a form of literal and historical castration 

for Said as a Palestinian father. 



32 

2.5 Conclusion 

The concept of Return in Returning to Haifa and Ha Shiva Le-Haifa offer two 

contradictory versions of homecoming, memory, nationhood, identity, and traumatic 

narrative.  In Kanafani’s novella, return for the Palestinians is ultimate and it overlaps 

with sacrifice, trauma, steadfastness, resistance, remembrance, unity, and home. Kanafani 

ultimately suggests that home is not merely a physical space but an idea shaped by 

memory, loss, and the scars of historical trauma. While, for Gaon, Said’s homecoming 

was necessary to refute the Palestinian right of return and replace his nostalgic memories 

with real facts about the establishment of Israel. Gaon does not suggest a resolution for 

the Palestinian uprooted masses and their collective trauma. Instead he sheds the narrative 

on the Holocaust and the pain the Jews had endured. This chapter also demonstrates that 

the embedded reason for Gaon’s adaptation emanates from a process of projection; Israel 

projects its internal justified narrative on the weakest other; projecting the Holocaust on 

the Palestinians and occupying their land.  

  



33 

Chapter Three 

Palestinian Narrative; Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin 

3.1 Introduction 

Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin emerged as an adaptation of Kanafani’s Returning to 

Haifa. Abulhawa states “The seed for my novel came from Ghassan Kanafani’s short 

story about a Palestinian boy who was raised by the Jewish family that found him in the 

home they took over in 1948” (Abulhawa, 2011, p. 327). Mornings in Jenin studies return 

and its transformative impact on the Abulhaj family as a medium for all Palestinian 

families. They re-live and re-call the image of the imagined home, the one they have left 

behind due to the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948. Abulhawa's novel was published in 

2006 under the title Scare of David, but soon after that, it was changed to Mornings in 

Jenin. This shift in the title perhaps indicates the move from individualism to collectivism 

that the symbolic scar isn't David's only but often it refers to the traumatized and displaced 

Palestinians.  

The novel paves its way through Abulhawa's visit to Jenin refugee camp in the immediate 

aftermath of the massacre that took place in April 2002. This visit has deeply affected 

Abulhawa and enhanced her by writing the human story of the Palestinian people who 

are living under the Israeli occupation. Moreover, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian 

politician and a scholar encouraged Abulhawa to write a Palestinian novel after reading 

her article about her childhood memories in Jerusalem. She states “A very moving 

article—personal, Palestinian, and human. It sounds like you can write a first-rate 

biography. We need such a narrative. Have you thought about it?” (2006, p.251). Dr. 

Ashrawi's recommendation leverages Abulhawa to start writing an impressive adaptation 

of Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa.  

Abulhawa's sophisticated adaptation is a cosmopolitan one as it has contributed to the 

Palestinian narrative and the daily struggle of living under the Israeli occupation. The 

novel maintains a deep connection to the land and the endless struggle to return by 

presenting a line of patriarchs resisting in various ways to achieve a return and end the 

sense of uprootedness the Palestinians feel in exile. Also, being narrated by a 



34 

contemporary Arab American writer in the twenty-first century with a humanitarian 

narrative style guarantees to convey  

 A sense of trust where the reader could grasp the consequences of cultural, 

ideological, racial, economic, and political Israeli aggressive boundaries upon 

the Palestinians with some degree of understanding and acceptance (Soud, 2015, 

p. 6).  

Abulhawa's hybrid identity strengthens to “grant the Palestinian case visibility more 

easily than with historical fiction” (Irving, 2014). Abulhawa's narrative draws an 

emotional imagery of return that triggered the quest for justice and reclaiming one's roots 

within the Palestinian struggle.  

Narrating the Palestinian's story has required a creative adaptation process. Abulhawa 

introduced the text to some “additions, expansions, accretions, and interpolations”  

(Sanders, 2006, p. 172) that offer her complete freedom to creatively adapt the original 

text while being faithful to the original text.  The new additions Abulhawa utilized, take 

the text to a completely new horizon which constantly invites the reader to shift back and 

forth between the experience of a new story and the wistful memories of the Palestinian 

Nakba among three generations in exile. Accordingly, Abulhawa offers her readers a 

unique opportunity through which they enjoy an unforgettable experience that “combines 

familiarities with differences” (Hutcheon & O’Flynn, 2006, p. 43). This section navigates 

the representation of the notion of return between Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa and its 

adaptation in Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin as a national right for the Palestinians and 

as a term used daily by the uprooted Palestinians who have a collective dream to achieve 

it someday.  

In Kanafani and Abulhawa's narrative pain is subjective because "pain is often either a 

result or a cause of the denial of another person's voice" (Norridge, 2011, p. 209). 

Likewise, the anguish experienced by Abulhaj's family in Abulhawa’s novel, as well as 

that of Said and Safiyya, stems from the reconstructed and divided homeland. Both 

characters are exacerbated by the ongoing Israeli oppression of anyone possessing 

Palestinian nationality or ID. For example, in both narratives pain is associated with loss 

and sacrifice experienced by Said, Safiyya, Amal, and Abulhaj's family. Similarly, the 



35 

theme of the “Palestinians’ Stolen Children” which both texts consider a core component 

of the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948. In addition, both narratives associate return with 

resistance and homecoming. For example, Said and Safiyya re-visited Haifa as a medium 

of remembering the past and reassuring the need to resist to return. Similarly, the 

grandfather of Amal, in Abulhawa's novel, died while trying and re-trying to go back to 

Ein-hood village as a metaphor for the endless resistance as a repetitive echo of 

homecoming from one generation to another. This navigates the “Sterility of the Zionist 

Project” in Palestine as a manifested metaphor in both texts. For instance, the Israeli 

women ‘Jolanta and Mariam’ are described as being sexually infertile which makes it 

impossible to give birth to children, and that pushed them to steal the Palestinian children 

‘Khaldun and Ismael’ to pretend that they are metaphorically the parents of Palestine.  

The divergences between Kanafani's Returning to Haifa and Abulhawa's Mornings in 

Jenin delve into creating a broader discourse for the Palestinian's story, and the question 

of return. Hence, the research asserts that the theme of home and homecoming in 

Kanafani’s novella is contrapuntal because a short-term homecoming can be a form of 

symbolic resistance but a long-term homecoming can transcend to be a return only by 

military resistance according to Kanafani “Naturally we did not come to tell you to get 

out of here. That would take a war” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 167). While “Abulhawa represent 

another humanistic voice that resists dominant political narratives by dismantling the 

hegemonic power structure (Abu-Shomar, 2019, p. 101) of Zionism through literal 

adaptation.  

In Abulhawa’s novel, the theme of homecoming and home is associated with generational 

suffering and loss in which Abulhaj’s traumatic experiences overlap. For example, Dalia, 

Amal’s mother, never recovered from her melancholy of losing her infant, who is a 

symbol of her stolen home, until she drew her last breath. Towards the end, Amal shrank 

further into her memory to associate her mother’s death with waiting for her family 

members and the normality of home “Baba was gone forever. My mother kept waiting 

for him until the day she died, just as she waited to return home, just as she searched her 

mind for Ismael” (Abulhawa, 2010, p. 88). 



36 

The term home is replicated in a sense of pain and loss in Amal endured as the third 

generation in refugee camps who hadn’t seen their land before the Israeli occupation in 

1948. For Amal, the female protagonist, home and memory are a paradox that intertwines 

amid exile “the petitions of memory pulled her back to a home she had never known”  

(Abulhawa, 2010, p. xiii) due to the Israeli inhumane occupation. However, memory for 

Said is a reflection of the Palestinian's past mistakes “I am looking for Palestine that is 

more than memories” (Kanafani, 1969, p. 186) as well as a fuel for the coming generation 

to liberate their country from the oppressors; Kanafani (1969) continues" Tens of 

thousands like Khalid will not be stopped by the tears of men searching in the depths of 

their defeat” (p.186). Therefore, for Kanafani the Palestinian collective trauma alludes to 

a national collective resistance, while Abulhawa hightails individual traumas and across 

generations whom the same occupying force has oppressed. Hence, Abulhawa navigated 

individualism to stress collateral collectivism.    

Abulhawa’s core divergence is the “Feminist” narrative style as her protagonist, Amal, 

narrates the novel and presents with a feminine tone the struggle most Palestinian women 

experience under the brutality of the Israeli occupation. While Kanafani's novella is the 

embodiment of the masculine struggle under the Israeli occupation. As Said, the main 

character in Kanafani's novella, stands for the masculine Palestinians who have endured 

the loss of their land which is a metaphor for pride and respect. Moreover, Kanafani 

utilizes individualism to highlight the Palestinian collective trauma, but Abulhawa 

leverages collectiveness into an intergenerational transmission of pain and trauma. For 

instance, Amal's repressed memories of her father, and mother and the dream of return 

came floating to the surface of her unconscious mind as she was in exile and when she 

faced death at the end of the novel. Exile and death according to Abulhawa increase 

repressed memories once again foregrounds the inaccessibility of extreme pain to the 

conscious mind and manifests itself as a series of flashbacks. (Comparing pain, p. 210).  

Amal, However, transmits her story to her daughter Sarah as a symbol of inherited trauma. 

Then the research moves to explore how Abulhawa’s work depicts Abulhaj’s four-

generation story, while Kanafani’s novella depicts the story of Said’s one-generation 

family. Abulhawa presented the Palestinian life pre-Nakba with some use of Arabized 

terms to add a sense of antiquity and traditions that transcend the text to compete globally 



37 

and survive via time and place. Finally, in Returning to Haifa, Said, or the patriarch, 

expresses despair at the moment of re-arrival with the realization of the loss that occurred 

in 1948, when he lost his child, home, and homeland. For Kanafani, the only to retake the 

land is by force and war rages again.  Whereas Abulhawa indicates through the title 

Mornings in Jenin a message of hope and the search for reconciliation to co-exist with a 

humanitarian “justification of resistance concluding that Israel is the actual terrorist and 

not the Palestinians who have a ‘just cause’ to resist Zionist colonization” (Alkodimi, 

2019, p. 132). Abulhawa gives the readers a glimpse of hope in which the word 

“Mornings” stands for hope to achieve peace.  

As discussed above, Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa with all its aesthetic details and 

human dimensions formed and is still an inspiring site for various critical readings and 

adaptations from diverse scholars, critics, and writers. Abulhawa’s adaptation as argued, 

involves changes in the characters as well as narration to “enable it to survive in a new 

environment” (Cahir, 2006, p. 97). Therefore, Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin explores 

thematic concerns and aesthetics in correlation with the discourse of diaspora and exilic 

consciousness. 

3.2 The Representation of Homecoming in Abulhawa’s Mornings in Jenin 

Home is a place to return to, but in the Palestinian narrative, home is associated with 

“alienation and displacement” (Kamatchi, 2017, p. 111) due to the constant Israeli 

occupation since the 1948 Nakba. In Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa, the sophisticated 

notions of “home mirror the problematizing of community, nation, and identity that one 

finds in” (ibid) the Palestinian’s writing. Similarly, Abulhawa’s adaptation Mornings in 

Jenin unravels the complicity of home that is manifested in the Israeli-Pale