Imagining Return: Countless Palestinian Futures

How is return imagined, and in what ways is return conceptualized in a landscape dominated by the materiality of territory, home, and nationhood? We see return practiced in a multiplicity of ways: the Great March of Return, the Intifadas, the images and videos showing Palestinians running toward Palestine from Jordan and Lebanon chanting, “We will return” cutting through barbed-wire fences that make a border. We see it reflected in literature in a linear singular conceptualization through Ghada Karmi’s Return, Salman Abu Sitta’s Mapping my Return, while stories such as “Returning to Haifa” by Ghassan Kanafani pose the point:

I always imagined that the Mandelbaum Gate would be opened some day, but I never imagined, never imagined that it would be opened from that other side […] maybe I’d be crazy if I told you that door should always open from one side only, and that if they opened from the other side they must still be considered closed.