Fires that Light the Way: On Witnessing Occupied Palestine—and Beyond

This paper investigates the situations unveiled symbolically by the wildfires in Jerusalem (Al-Quds). It considers the ongoing situation in Palestine as a complex of events that reveals various forms of settler colonialism, from their entanglements with archaeology, to their impositions on the flora and fauna of Gaza, taking the wildfires as a point of departure for a metaphorical contemplation on two possibilities: the possibility of hope and the possibility of political change that gives the fields both of Palestine and folkloristics a more optimistic future.