NO WAY BUT FORWARD | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

No Way but Forward is not a treatise on history, politics, or economy, as is the bulk of the dozens of important books in English on Gaza. Neither is it a book about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Rather, it is a set of stories, deeply human accounts of three young men over the course of three decades as they navigated the formative first intifada, and then faced many obstacles in achieving their cherished education, finding employment, and forming their own families. 

These are stories of everyday life in a grim and sorely misperceived corner of the globe, tales of capacity and remarkable steadfastness in trying to forge a good and dignified life under an increasingly severe and repressive military occupation. The narratives are heartening and tragic, gripping and instructive. In seeing their day-to-day reality, we recognize ourselves, our own interests, struggles, dilemmas, joys, pains, including the thrill of birth, worry about school exams and the disappointment of failure, stigmatization and fear of infertility, self-satisfaction of earning a job and promotion, and the agony of learning about a cherished mother’s cancer. Readers will be lost in such familiar human drama—only to be awakened with the realization that all of this played out “over there” among those “hornets” in the “hellhole” of Gaza. 

The closing chapters of the book record the direct WhatsApp messages to the author from each of the three protagonists from October 7, 2023—the day of the shocking attack on Israel by Hamas—to October 7, 2024, a full year of the still-continuing, wholesale annihilation of Gaza and its culture by the Israeli military. Their messages record horrific scenes, catastrophic upheavals, deep humiliation, genuine fear of death, hunger, and illness. But they also reveal astounding stamina, resistance, and hope – their classic insistence that there is no way but to move forward.

Dr. Brian K. Barber is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Josh Ruebner, Policy Director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, to share more about the lives of these Palestinian families and discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Barber will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of NO WAY BUT FORWARD will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books

Brian K. Barber, PhD, is a non-resident senior scholar at the Middle East Policy Council, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, and professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee. He currently lives in Washington, DC. Barber’s work has addressed how context—from parenting to political systems—impacts individual and social development. Barber is the editor of Adolescents and War: How Youth Deal with  Political Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2008), among other books. For the past thirty years, he has researched more than ten thousand Palestinian families in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. His published articles have appeared in The Lancet, Social Science & Medicine, Global Public Health, PLOS ONE, Child Development, the Journal of Adolescent Research, and other journals. Barber’s commentaries have appeared in Haaretz, CNN.com, Informed Comment, Counterpunch, and Middle East Policy. His most recent book is No Way but Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip.

Josh Ruebner is Policy Director at the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project (IMEU Policy Project). He is also adjunct lecturer in Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University and is pursuing his PhD at the University of Exeter’s European Centre for Palestine Studies. His dissertation is entitled A Tragedy of Catastrophic Proportions: US Policy Toward the Palestinian Nakba, 1947-1949. Prior to joining IMEU, Ruebner worked at Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights after a stint as an Analyst in Middle East Policy for Congressional Research Service. He is the author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace and Israel: Democracy or Apartheid State?