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Bank of Palestine granted its sponsorship for the activities of the Tenth Annual Palestine Festival of Literature – PalFest, which was held in May over a period of one week in several Palestinian cities among them Ramallah, Abu Dees, Jerusalem, Haifa and Nablus, in the presence of international authors alongside their Palestinian fellows, who presented a series of readings, performances, debates and music.
This year's international participation featured the poet and writer Eileen Myles, novelist Nadeem Aslam, writer and academician Jelani Cobb, poet Solmaz Sharif, playwright Ismail Khalidi and others. For the first time ever since 1967, one of the episodes of PalFest was held in the city of Jerusalem. Alongside the public activities, visiting writers toured in historical sites, Palestinian refugee camps and Palestinian neighborhoods to get a feel of life under occupation, and over a period of one week, writers and artists visited Hebron and Bethlehem as well as the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan in Jerusalem.
Bank of Palestine's sponsorship falls in line with its support for social responsibility and promoting Palestinian culture around the world, especially since PalFest involves the participation of several Palestinian writers, artists and authors from within and outside Palestine. Over a period of ten years, these participations contributed to the promotion and enrichment of Palestinian literature, and benefiting from global intellectual, literary and artistic products. Over the past decade, PalFest managed to host over 200 visitors from novelists, poets, playwrights, artists and publishers from all over the world with an aim to break the cultural siege imposed on Palestinian and promote cultural links between Palestine and the rest of the world.
On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of PalFest, 2017 witnessed the launch of a book entitled "This is Not a Border" (Bloomsbury), which is a unique collection of articles, poetry, impressions and stories contributed by PalFest participants and collected over a period of ten years of literature celebrations.