Love and Sex in the Promised Land: The Private Lives of Israelis and Palestinians

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict viewed through the lens of romantic relationships. A humanizing journalistic portrait of the intimate lives of ordinary people in Gaza, where even love is a battlefield.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been extensively investigated, and yet, Love and Sex in the Promised Land feels novel. As comic journalism, the book collects a dozen interviews with real-life Gazans navigating messy boundaries in their homes and bedrooms against a background of geopolitical violence.

Collecting interviews conducted before the October 7 attack unleashed a new wave of bloody conflict, the book introduces fascinating individuals and couples who speak frankly about the transgressions that define their experiences with intimacy. The portrayals represent a diverse Gazan population, including an interfaith celebrity power couple, an Orthodox gynecologist, a young gay Muslim, a Palestinian American feminist, a Ukrainian-Israeli artist, and a Palestinian lesbian in a relationship with an Israeli soldier.

Through these candid conversations, recorded by Parent-Rachdi and illustrated with a warm touch by Deloupy, the authors humanize the people living in Gaza. As conflict wages around them, these ordinary citizens struggle with their all-too-human urges and desires that drive them to cross borders and boundaries in the name of love and sex.