Ibtisam Azem`s The Book of Disappearance: A Critique of Settler Colonialism in Middle East

Abstract

This paper aims to bring forth a critical and truthful question of twenty first century contemporary era, where people vanish overnight from their homes leaving no traces behind. The research will investigate ongoing subjugation and the notion of settler colonial project of Israel in Middle East in The Book of Disappearance (2019) by Ibtisam Azem through the lens of Patrick Wolfe`s (2006) settler colonialism theory. Azem dramatizes the systematic exclusion and unexpected disappearance of racialized and colonized groups and the institutional practices after the Nakba (1948). The novel focuses on the issue of sudden disappearance of Arab community from Palestine/Israel that causes a serious social and political unrest among the settlers. The study also highlights the entrenched Israeli policy to free the sacred land from Palestinian Muslims through their settler project since the Nakba (1948). The paper bridges Azem`s Palestinian narrative with Patrick Wolfe`s (2006) settler colonial theory, which defines the erasure of colonized Muslim population in a dystopian state of Israel. The systematic and ongoing process of elimination where the sovereign can have the power to decide to live and let live. The study will investigate the questions of erasure, displacement and replacement of indigenous population in a self-proclaimed democratic state of Israel to accentuate politics of settler groups. How politics of the sovereign works to eliminate the physical presence of marginalized groups on the basis of their ethnic and religious association in Azem`s The Book of Disappearance. The study critiques the Zionist project of Israeli settlement and elimination of indigenous people as an ultimate goal of settlers in Middle East.