Podium (You Have Three Minutes)

Since Israel was established and its legislature — the Knesset — first convened, Palestinian lawmakers have served alongside Jewish ones. Be they communists, liberals, nationalists, or Islamists — every Palestinian parliamentarian steps up to the podium with pain, frustration, anger, and hope. Yet most of their words fall on deaf ears. Were we to listen to a collection of 3-minute speeches by these parliamentarians, what would we hear? A hungry appeal for a rightful place at the table of governance, sovereignty, and self-determination rather than the carrot, the stick, and the civil rights crumbs begrudgingly and conditionally swept off of it.