What does the word solidarity mean today? How, in our age of communication technology, has the concept transformed? The internet offers a platform for easy solidarity – take a photo, hold up a sign, sign a petition, like and share. But what’s beyond that?

What is the Global South today? Beyond a geographic distinction, there are distinctions of class and privilege, climate responsibility and vulnerability, colonizer and colonized.

As international politics have realigned and global capitalism has dug its roots deeper, the need for new models of global cooperation is becoming increasingly urgent. The international landscape of solidarity with Palestine has changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War. State allies of the decolonizing movement have shifted to the neoliberal status quo, Arab states have been hollowed out by decades of dictatorship and, the rise of the Right in Europe and America is creating new existential crises that obscure commonalities in struggles that should unite rather than divide people.

PalFest 2020 will bring together 20 novelists, journalists, publishers, and artists from India, South Africa, the United States, Chile, and other countries for a festival that looks at these questions head-on: what is the relationship between Palestine and the Global South today, and what are the possibilities for tomorrow? How can we overcome the limits posed by borders, surveillance technologies, and political fragmentation? Please join us for these discussions from March 13 onwards. For the program, line-up, and more, please visit our website at www.palfest.org.