Love and Desire in the Promised Land: The Pri­vate Lives of Israelis and Pales­tini­ans is a work of graph­ic jour­nal­ism that inter­venes in the inde­scrib­ably fraught Israeli – Pales­tin­ian con­flict using the lens of romance and sex­u­al­i­ty. Writ­ten by French jour­nal­ist Salomé Par­ent-Rach­di and illus­trat­ed by Deloupy, Love and Desire in the Promised Land explores how the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in Israel/​Palestine affects the per­son­al lives of all who live there. The book tells the sto­ries of rough­ly a dozen Israelis and Pales­tini­ans, rang­ing in age from their ear­ly twen­ties to mid-fifties, liv­ing in Israel prop­er as well as in Gaza and the West Bank. Par­ent-Rach­di toured these areas and con­duct­ed inter­views that are illus­trat­ed in the book.

Some of the inter­vie­wees are famous, such as the Arab Mus­lim reporter Lucy Ahar­ish and the Israeli actor Tsahi Hale­vi. They explain how they fell in love and the ret­i­cence their fam­i­lies had in accept­ing their part­ner­ship. As a visu­al nar­ra­tive, the book can depict the set­ting and tone of Parent-Rachdi’s inter­view while over­lay­ing it with images of sto­ries the inter­vie­wees tell about their past. The book also play­ful­ly uses the lan­guage of comics, in one scene depict­ing Ahar­ish and her fam­i­ly as bowl­ing pins knocked over by the rev­e­la­tion of her rela­tion­ship with a Jew­ish man. Forty-four-year-old artist Zoya Cher­ras­ki, a Russ­ian immi­grant, explains how the stig­ma she faced was a fac­tor in her mar­ry­ing a Niger­ian man. In con­trast, the forty-five-year-old Pales­tin­ian film­mak­er Sami­ra Saraya details how she was unable to main­tain her rela­tion­ship with a woman serv­ing in the Israeli army.

Het­ero­nor­ma­tiv­i­ty and the expec­ta­tions of sex being strict­ly for pro­cre­ation shaped both Israelis and Pales­tini­ans. Twen­ty-eight-year-old Avi felt alien­at­ed by the ultra-Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ty into which he was born, in part due to its stric­tures against sex­u­al explo­ration. The Gazan Mohammed, also twen­ty-eight, report­ed how queer men arrange secret meet­ings in Gaza despite the grave risk of their homo­sex­u­al­i­ty being dis­cov­ered. He now lives in exile in Cal­i­for­nia after a Hamas oper­a­tive cat­fished him.

Ashraf, a Pales­tin­ian Mus­lim, is serv­ing a twen­ty-one-year prison sen­tence after being con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism. Like a num­ber of oth­er incar­cer­at­ed Pales­tin­ian hus­bands, Ashraf sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pro­vid­ed his wife, Fathiya, with his semen in a chip pack­et dur­ing a super­vised vis­i­ta­tion, mate­r­i­al that was lat­er used to impreg­nate her. Due to fear of accu­sa­tions of infi­deli­ty, the fer­til­i­ty clin­ic insist­ed that mem­bers of both fam­i­lies were present for the pro­ce­dure that result­ed in their son, Amir.

NGO work­ers also fall in love in the Promised Land. French­woman Alexan­dra and Pales­tin­ian Mar­wan, both thir­ty years old, met at a par­ty and were even­tu­al­ly mar­ried. They explain the bureau­crat­ic issues they faced both in hav­ing their mar­riage rec­og­nized and in main­tain­ing Marwan’s sta­tus as a res­i­dent of Jerusalem. 

In illus­trat­ing the sto­ry of Mus­lim Arab Lana, Deloupy depicts her in bed between two sleep­ing fig­ures, one with a blan­ket depict­ing the Israeli flag and the oth­er wear­ing pants with Pales­tin­ian col­ors. Lana’s arms are crossed, show­ing her obvi­ous dis­com­fort of hav­ing to nav­i­gate pol­i­tics in the bedroom.

Love and Desire in the Promised Land urges read­ers to remem­ber the human­i­ty of those whose lives are shaped by the Israeli – Pales­tin­ian con­flict. It is thus vital read­ing for any­one invest­ed in the con­flict. Emo­tion­al­ly res­o­nant­ly and deft­ly drawn, the book shows how love and desire can flour­ish even under the most chal­leng­ing circumstances.