The goal of this performance is to allow the audience to become more familiar with the verses by Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan. Through her poem “The Deluge and the Tree,” she highlights the violence committed by Israel in the Palestinian Territories, especially as of 1967, the year when the Six-Day War took place, after which Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank. This situation, portrayed through Tuqan’s verses, allows us to see a glimmer of hope for existence and re-existence. The tree which grows again out of the bottom depths of the rubble is the symbol representing the Palestinian people’s desire to remain.

In 2017, 100 years will have passed since the signing of the Balfour Declaration, a document which would pave the way for creating a national Jewish homeland, to be materialized as the State of Israel as of 1948, the year known in Arabic as the Nakba: the disaster. These events would give rise to the beginning of what is now referred to as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which drags on perpetually with no apparent solution. This year of 2017 also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Six-Day War, after which Israel achieved the annexation of a large portion of the Palestinian territories, most notably a part of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. At present, Israel’s occupation of these territories continues to cause violence and deprivation in the lives of thousands of Palestinians.