This chapter examines Francophone representations of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict as it spills over into the twenty-first century. As the European country with the largest Jewish and Arabic-speaking Muslim populations, France is uniquely situated as an observer of these disparate and often competing cultures not only because of its current demographics but also because of its colonial history in the Maghreb and the Levant. French cultural production about and around this continuing geopolitical crisis is particularly relevant in our global conversation about this conflict, because France remains a primary diplomatic force for both Israelis and Palestinians: it was one of the first nations to recognise the state of Israel and also to advocate for the creation of a Palestinian State. While Belgium does not share France’s colonial history in the Middle East and North Africa, it does have one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities and the economic and diplomatic ties between Israel and Belgium continue to grow stronger, as evidenced by the billions of dollars in trade between the two countries. Like France, Belgium has been committed to Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Territories and to the Palestinians’ rights of self-determination for decades. Belgium’s foreign policy can be best described as one of ‘ethical diplomacy’ or ‘equidistance’ during the early 2000s, which aimed at treating all parties equally and allowing the EU to play its mediating role (Herremans 81). It is within this foreign policy context that I analyse a European Francophone cultural response to Israeli–Palestinian relations after the Second Intifada through two graphic novels: Faire le Mur (a play on words that can alternately mean Build the Wall, Go Over the Wall, or Sneak Out) by Maximilien Le Roy from France and Les Amandes vertes: Lettres de Palestine (Green Almonds: Letters from Palestine) by Anaële and Délphine Hermans from Belgium.

The graphic narrative seems particularly appropriate for historical representations of the ongoing geopolitical struggles between Israel and Palestine because such a narrative spatially juxtaposes ‘past, present, and future moments on the page’ (Chute 453). Much in the same way that Art Spiegelman’s enunciation of history in his Maus series weaves through ‘paradoxical spaces and shifting temporalities’, namely the reliance on space to illustrate time – these French-language graphic narratives and novels incorporate an array of modalities (Chute 456).