Donald Macintyre – Speakers Festival

16th March, 2018

A coastal civilisation open to the world. A flourishing port on a major international trading route. This was Gaza’s past. Can it be its future? Today, Gaza is home to a uniquely imprisoned people, most unable to travel to the West Bank, let alone Israel, where tens of thousands once worked, and unable to flee in wartime. Trapped inside a crucible of conflict, the surprise is that so many of them remain courageous, outspoken and steadfast.

From refugee camps to factories struggling under economic stranglehold and bombardment, Macintyre reveals Gaza’s human tragedy through the stories of the ordinary people who live and work there. He portrays the suffering through siege and war, the failings – including those of the international community – that have seen opportunities for peace pass by and the fragile, lingering hope that Gaza, with its creativity and resilience, can be a part of a better future for the Middle East.

​Donald Macintyre was the Independent’s Jerusalem bureau chief for eight years between 2004 and 2012, and before that its political editor and chief political commentator. He is a former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster. He won the Next Century Foundation’s Peace through Media Award in 2011 and has previously been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism and for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.