What Now

At once searing, loving and rousing, this is an acrobatic feat of political leadership from a generational talent. Baconi conjures dazzling levels of intellectual courage and ethical clarity to imagine true freedom in the grips of a genocide, a freedom that flatly refuses to replicate or mirror the oppressor. The result is a propulsive read of unparalleled import – Naomi Klein, author of DOPPELGANGER
In this moment of utter despair, where the Palestinian people have faced perhaps the darkest moment in their collective history, Tareq Baconi manages to write with rare clarity about the Palestinian struggle - cutting through the noise and despair to show us exactly where we stand and what comes next. Written more as a love letter to our struggle than a conventional analysis, this book offers insight, rigor, and, above all, hope - hope that liberation is not out of reach, but requires a strategic recalibration of the movement to achieve it – Yara Hawari, author of THE STONE HOUSE
In the wake of Israel’s genocide, What Now reaches for a politics adequate to the moment. Its diagnosis of 1988 as the strategic rupture that migrated partition into our own political grammar is among the sharpest such accounts in English; its reactivation of the thawābit, its reframing of sumud as latent militancy, and its placing of the decomposition of Zionism alongside the territorial question, give the book an architecture from which the global movement for Palestine can take direction. A welcome and generative intervention. – Abdaljawad Omar, Birzeit University
Tareq Baconi has written an open letter to his Palestinian siblings entreating us to find strength in our survival, enough to redouble our conviction to struggle until victory. What Now speaks directly to our internal fissures, our quiet doubts, our booming pain, and the rage that threatens to consume us. It boldly calls everything we have known and felt by its name so that we have the fortitude to keep going on. Baconi reminds us that while our liberation is necessary to save ourselves and a global future, it is not inevitable, and instead requires a strategic precision we have yet to develop – Noura Erakat, Professor and author of JUSTICE FOR SOME: LAW AND THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE
What kind of world do we wish to inhabit after a genocide? Continuously posing the right questions, Tareq Baconi not only wrests incandescent insight out of overwhelming defeat and despair. He dares to offer that rare thing these days - hope in a better future - and heroically affirms the invincible human determination to strive for liberation and fulfilment. In these bleak times, What Now reminds us of the transformative power of lucid and uncompromising thought. – Pankaj Mishra, author of THE WORLD AFTER GAZA
One of the most important books written on Palestine in many years … every Palestinian and every ally should read it – Ahmed Alnaouq, author of WE ARE NOT NUMBERS
With searing clarity and an unbending commitment to the liberation of Palestine from Zionist domination, Baconi offers us a conjunctural analysis of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians … What Now offers clear and strategic insight for those situated inside the heart of empire - it is a call to critically assess, strengthen and escalate our solidaristic action – Lola Olufemi, author of FEMINISM, INTERRUPTED
Amidst a flood of books reviewing the wreckage and consequences of the ongoing genocide, Tareq Baconi has chosen to look to the future and the past, to the long struggle for a Free Palestine - a struggle that can, and must, be won. Audacious, honest, visionary Baconi pulls no punches. Liberation is not about a state or recognition or “peace.” It is war by any means, for the land, for the right to return, for the end of Zionism, for decolonization, for global revolution. And how to get there is to be determined in collective struggle - a struggle that can, and must, be one. – Robin D. G. Kelley, author of FREEDOM DREAMS: THE BLACK RADICAL IMAGINATION
This brilliant little book by Tareq Baconi feels like a conversation with multiple voices working through the most essential questions facing scholars and activists commuted to Palestine today. Reading it gives a sense that the task of liberation is attainable and within reach – Eyal Weizman, author of UNGROUNDING
What do we do in the aftermath, when there is still no “after”? Tareq Baconi speaks to this paradoxical predicament that Palestinians confront in this compelling manifesto. His lucid political and conceptual interventions provide a rigorous lesson in ethics - a call to action that challenges the very meanings of solidarity, decolonization, and liberation. This is a must read for all. What Now now! – J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, author of SPEAKING OF INDIGENOUS POLITICS
In this urgent and unflinching book, Tareq Baconi writes with tenderness, ferocity, and clarity at a pivotal moment in Palestinian history. With surgical precision, What Now cuts through despair, disillusionment, and political stagnation to offer a lucid, clear-eyed roadmap to liberation. A manifesto for our movement – Saleem Haddad, author of FLOODLINES

Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. He contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short, One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of What Now, Fire in Every Direction, and Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, which was short-listed for the Palestine Book Awards.

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