The Arabic novel has played an active and influential role in the literary historiography of events, incidents, and developments. Arab writers in general, and Palestinian writers in particular—both the free and those imprisoned in Israeli occupation gaols-have attempted to rely on the art of the novel to convey their experiences with this enemy. Their narrative experiences have thus emerged with high narrative credibility, sensitivity, and precision, depicting the policy of repression and settler restrictions practised against Palestine, its land, and its people. They have denounced the military killing machine, relaying their experiences in occupation prisons to the outside world in the form of narrative discourses that support the journey of struggle and adherence to the Palestinian identity.

Palestinian literary productions belonging to prison literature have been distinguished by the richness of literary material depicting the psychological and ideological struggle that the imprisoned writer endures in Israeli prisons and detention centres, alongside the physical and physiological suffering inflicted on free-spirited writers imprisoned for exposing the intellectual methodology of the occupation state and uncovering the reality of Israeli policy centred on self-interest, excluding Palestinian identity, and denying the legitimate right of the land to its people. The Palestinian novel produced in Israeli prisons has portrayed the writer’s experience of mentally confronting the Zionist  occupation movement from a point-blank range, understanding and assimilating it, and translating it into a novelistic work. Through this, the writer has been able to delve artistically, psychologically, and ideologically into the internal thought of the Zionist settler mentality, capturing in their narratives the psychological and ideological conflicts that the Palestinian individual, and particularly the Palestinian writer, experiences when confronting this mentality, characterised by illegitimacy, falsehood, illusion, lies, and deception.

In this study, the researcher relied on both the descriptive analytical method and the psychological method to trace the details of the conflict dialogues intended for study in the research. The study will address the description of the main phenomena driving the events, most notably the conflict of identity, existence, and freedoms, and delve into its details, causes, and results. Subsequently, some narratives in which the features of the conflict appear will be analysed. Using the psychological method, the depths of the characters will be explored to study the manifestations of the psychological and ideological struggle within the protagonist of the novel on one hand, and to infer the character of the settler to uncover his inner self on the other hand, as he represents an objective substitute for his alleged state.

The study consists of an introduction, an entry, two partial chapters, a conclusion, and a list of sources and references. The introduction highlights the importance of the research, its reasons, its problems, and its methodology. In the entry, the researcher introduces the biography of the Palestinian writer, poet, and novelist “Basem Khendagji,” mentioning that he was born on December 22, 1983, in Nablus, Palestine. He received his primary and intermediate education at Al-Maari School and then obtained his high school diploma from King Talal School. He enrolled at the private An-Najah National University as a student in the Department of Political Science, but soon transferred to the Department of Journalism and Media. Occupation forces arrested him on November 2, 2004, after the Carmel Market operation on November 1 of the same year. Basem Khendagji was accused of being a member of the group that planned the operation, and he was sentenced to three life sentences. The researcher listed his major literary works as follows: “Drafts of a Patriot’s Lover,” the thoughts: “Thus Humanity Perishes” about the experience of the Palestinian prisoner in occupation prisons, and two poetry collections: “Rituals of the First Time” (2009) and “Breaths of a Night Poem” (2013). His novels include: “Musk Al-Kifayah: The Biography of the Free Lady of Shadows” (2014) published by the Arab Scientific Publishers, “Narcissus of Solitude” (2017) published by the Popular Library in Nablus, “Eclipse of Badr Al-Din” (2018) published by Dar Al-Adab in Beirut, and “Breaths of a Disappointed Woman” (2020) published by Dar Al-Ahlia in Amman, leading to his fifth novel: “Mask of the Sky” (2023) published by Dar Al-Adab in Lebanon, which won the International Prise for Arabic Fiction “Booker” in its seventeenth session for the year 2024.  

After introducing the writer’s biography, the researcher moved on to discuss the content of the novel, seeing it as a blend of narrative techniques and storytelling tactics based on: fiction, historical recall, memory utilisation of places, autobiography, and monologue dialogue. He saw that the events of the novel revolve around a main narrative associated with the character of the protagonist “Noor Al-Mashhadi,” who is interested in studying antiquities and lives in a camp inside the city of Ramallah. He is occupied with writing a novel about “Mariam Al-Mashhadiya,” necessitating historical and archaeological research to verify the truth of Mariam’s existence. However, the falsified human historical texts created a state of despair for him in proving her existence, and the difficulty of moving between Palestinian cities due to the travel permit system increased the difficulty of his literary task. The narrative turning point occurs when Noor finds a blue identity card in the pocket of a used coat he bought, starting the novel’s central conflict. The semantic threads intertwine between the term mask, as a main part of the title, and the identity, forming the duality of the mask/blue identity as the core of the central event. Noor donnes the mask of the occupier, the owner of the identity of Jewish Ashkenazi origins, Or Shapira, and tries to assume his character to escape many of the restrictions imposed on Palestinian movements. Because Noor has blue eyes and blonde hair, genetically linking him to the Ashkenazi Jewish race, and being fluent in both Hebrew and English, he uses the blue identity card to replace the original owner’s photo with his own, appearing to the community as Or. Through Noor’s psychological, ideological, and intellectual struggle with this character, the writer reflects the falsification in conveying historical facts and the intentional omissions of the history of Palestine and its people.

The researcher then provided an overview of Palestinian prison literature, stating that it has established itself as a literary phenomenon in modern Palestinian literature. In the artistic study, the first chapter discusses the theoretical concept of conflict in general and psychological conflict in particular in the novel, defining conflict linguistically and terminologically, and discussing the relationship between conflict and the plot. Some critics present the plot over the conflict, making it a result of the conflict. In reality, the plot develops after the writer successfully narrates events according to a narrative structure that relies on conflict, culminating in the climax and tension eagerly awaited by the audience. This can be called the peak of the conflict. The conflict may be between the characters in the novel or between the ideas and principles represented and believed in by the characters. It can also be internal, growing within the psychological and ideological realm of the character through crises they experience within the events, becoming captive to hesitation and fear as they try to adopt certain positions. In the literary context, the writer reveals psychological conflict when they delve into human nature through careful observation of the character’s behaviour and actions towards evolving events. The character grows psychologically with the escalation of the narrative event. According to the psychologist Jung, literary works as an art form may benefit from psychology if this borrowing serves the creative process and enhances its beauty and artistry.  

The researcher then transitioned to discussing ideological conflict, seeing it as one of the types of internal psychological conflict that the dramatic event’s development in this novel has led to. The researcher provided examples of how the writer employed this type of conflict in his novel, serving the literary, artistic, social, and intellectual dimensions he wanted to convey to the reader. In the study’s conclusion, the researcher mentioned the key findings he reached, such as Basem Khendagji’s ability to utilise the novel in highlighting the role of prison literature in conveying the vivid and real image of the Israeli occupier through his personal experience in detention, which he used to provide information analysing the Zionist mentality in dealing with the Palestinian people. He also highlighted Khendagji’s skill in elevating the spatial imagination of his novel to depict models of the conflicts experienced by the characters in his novel, reflecting the Israeli political mentality in dealing with concepts of freedom, human rights, and acceptance of the non-Israeli other. He effectively employed internal and psychological dialogue in the novel to draw the psychological depth of the characters, tasked with artistically exposing the intellectual sterility of the occupation state, the brutality of the theoretical and practical behaviours of the Israeli system in suppressing intellectual freedom, and falsifying history, among many other conclusions.