Review by Ian Keogh

In 2008 Anaële Hermans left Belgium to undertake volunteer work for ten months in Palestine, an area controlled by Israel. She wrote letters back to her sister Delphine, and after a while the idea occurred to collaborate on turning her experiences into a graphic novel.

A tone is set early. A colleague apologises for not meeting Anaële at the airport, but he’s not allowed to leave Palestine. At the airport she knows to conceal intentions to visit Palestine, having heard of people being refused entry to Israel for that reason.

The drawing remains simple throughout, deceptively so, as in combination with the words they show what’s needed without sensationalising anything. Atrocities, and there are plenty of them, are related via text accompanied by symbolic illustration rather than graphically represented, but losing none of their power for being provided without violence. In some places the art deviates into different interpretations, such as a game simulation to depict the labyrinthine nature of Hebron’s passageways, while the chapters are separated by illustrations of the Belgian scenes on postcards Delphine sent to her sister.

In graphic novels and other media, particularly since the 2023 invasion of Gaza, Palestine has been presented as an oppressively occupied zone and latterly a war zone, but Hermans ensures scenes of everyday life are seen, which goes on, but is very restricted. Children construct and fly kites, for instance. It’s not only the intrusive Israeli surveillance and administration that constricts Anaële, though, as she also feels bound to respect cultural propriety, which she finds restrictive. She’s astute enough to know that exploring what a different society has to offer also has drawbacks, but the title is derived from a delightful discovery: almonds picked from trees before fully formed and eaten with salt.

Already a contentious issue in 2008 is the spread of Israeli settlers into Palestinian land, seen as illegal by most nations, and how the Palestinians, not protected by the army, are being forced away. While world attention has been focussed on Gaza since 2023, this process of occupation has greatly increased in the West Bank area.

Part travelogue and part reportage, Green Almonds is a thorough chronicling of why people feel they have no option other than violence, which unless the Herman sisters are more subversive than this generally indicates, doesn’t seem the creative intention. Still, people will make of it what they will of any project. It’s important, though, not to buy into the demonisation of an entire people as vested interests would have us believe, and what’s shown here is ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives under circumstances most of us can’t really imagine.