Ammar Awad/Reuters

A man walks among cars burned the previous day in a rampage by Israeli settlers, in the West Bank town of Hawara, Feb. 27, 2023. One Palestinian died in the settler attack, which was carried out hours after a Palestinian gunman killed two settlers driving through the town.

Before the ink dried Sunday on the agreement reached during the highest-level direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in years, violence burned in the West Bank – killings, revenge attacks, the torching of homes and cars.  

It was a vivid reminder for many of the urgent need for de-escalation and the immediate challenges facing this rare diplomacy, but also of the questionable ability of Israeli and Palestinian leaders to calm or even control the situation on the ground.

The Biden administration, Jordan, and Egypt insist that following through on Israeli and Palestinian commitments reached Sunday in Aqaba to “work towards a just and lasting peace” is the only path to avert even greater intercommunal violence.

Yet as of Tuesday, members of the Israeli government continued to distance themselves from or denounce the talks, Palestinians called for armed resistance, and Israeli lawmakers called to “burn” Palestinian villages. The doubts and rhetoric threatened to unravel the de-escalation agreement before it is implemented, exposing the limits of traditional diplomacy in polarized times.

Once a mainstay of American foreign policy, U.S.-arranged talks between Israelis and Palestinians have become increasingly rare. Far-right currents and political developments have made getting Israeli and Palestinian officials in the same room difficult – even as violence has escalated to record-levels. 

Which is why the talks in the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba, facilitated by the United States, Jordan, and Egypt, weeks in the making, were seen as a pivotal step forward.

Jehad Shelbak/Reuters

Jordanian members of the Islamic Action Front party protest against the meeting between top Israeli and Palestinian officials at the Red Sea port of Aqaba, in Amman, Jordan, Feb. 26, 2023.

As delegates from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, and the Biden administration gathered in Aqaba, a Palestinian gunman attacked and killed two Israeli settlers driving through Huwara, in the West Bank. The town is adjacent to Nablus, site of a deadly Israeli military raid last week.

Less than an hour after participants issued the joint Israeli-Palestinian communique, which committed the sides to work for “de-escalation on the ground and to prevent further violence,” a mob of 400 settlers vowing revenge swept through Huwara, killing one Palestinian and injuring more than 100 others, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Viral videos showed plumes of black smoke blocking out the sky as the mob torched homes and cars – with the Israeli military largely standing by.

“The meeting in Aqaba took place against horrific incidents in the West Bank yesterday that unfolded as we were meeting, and that is another reason why those meetings are important,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told CNN on Monday.

“Because unless the parties talk, unless we find agreement, we are looking at an even worse situation going forward. There is simply too much to lose here, there is too much at stake. If the commitment at Aqaba is honored then we might see some progress towards de-escalation.”

Interest in de-escalation

On all sides there is a clear interest in tamping down violence.

Palestinian militia attacks on Israeli settlers in the West Bank and lone-wolf attacks on civilians in Israel have exposed the limited ability of the Israeli government to maintain security and order, making it increasingly difficult for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rein in the far-right members of his hard-line government.

Israeli settler attacks and deadly Israeli military raids into the West Bank, which Palestinian Authority security services cannot engage or deter, has exposed the PA’s weakness in the eyes of Palestinians who increasingly rely instead on local militias for their protection. 

Jordan, too, is increasingly alarmed by the explosion of violence in the neighboring West Bank and the potential collapse of the PA, which could reverberate in the kingdom. King Abdullah intervened personally to facilitate the Aqaba talks.

Majdi Mohammed/AP

Israeli soldiers search a Palestinian's car after a fatal shooting attack Monday on a highway near the Dead Sea and the West Bank town of Jericho, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023. The slain driver, who held citizenship in both the United States and Israel, was killed the day after two Israeli settlers and a Palestinian man died in separate attacks in the West Bank town of Huwara.

The Biden administration, which does not wish to see an explosion of violence become an added diplomatic burden as it faces Russia’s war in Ukraine and global competition with China, made the meeting and ongoing talks a priority, according to Arab and U.S. officials.

The Aqaba talks followed a string of recent high-level Biden administration visits to Jerusalem and Ramallah by CIA Director William Burns, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Hady Amr, the special representative for Palestinian affairs.

All parties are seeking to prevent a fresh wave of violence during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which this year coincides with Passover and Easter.

On Sunday, at the end of several hours of talks, Israel and the PA “confirmed their joint readiness and commitment to immediately work to end unilateral measures for a period of 3-6 months,” including “an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for 4 months,” according to the joint statement as shared by the U.S. State Department.

They also stressed “the importance of upholding unchanged the historic status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem in word and practice,” and Jordanian custodianship of Islamic sites, including Al Aqsa and the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, which has been a frequent flashpoint.

In perhaps the biggest win for cooperation, the Israelis and Palestinians agreed “to pursue confidence-building measures and strengthen mutual trust in order to address outstanding issues through direct dialogue,” committing to meet again in Egypt in March, prior to the start of Ramadan.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

A general view of Jerusalem after a snowstorm, as seen from the Mount of Olives, shows the Dome of the Rock, located in Jerusalem's Old City in the elevated compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, Jan. 27, 2022.

Political obstacles

Within hours it was clear that the de-escalation agreement faces an uphill political battle.

Pressures from the far-right in Israel led to confusion, obfuscation, and condemnation of what, exactly, Israelis and Palestinians agreed to.

The Israeli delegation to Aqaba was led by the national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, whom Mr. Netanyahu dispatched without informing his cabinet, many of whom oppose talks with the Palestinians. 

No sooner was the summit concluded and communique issued than the Israeli government began distancing itself from the agreements.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultra-nationalist with responsibility for civilian affairs in the West Bank, said he “heard about this unnecessary conference from the media,” adding “there won’t be a freeze on [settlement] construction and development, not even for one day.”

Mr. Hanegbi issued his own statement confirming that Israel would move ahead with the already approved “regularization” of nine settler outposts and the construction of 9,500 housing units in the West Bank. He added that there would be “no restriction” on Israeli military activity in the West Bank.

Mr. Netanyahu himself finally issued a statement clarifying that “there is and will not be any freeze” on settlement building and that it will not amend the Israeli army’s access and operations in the West Bank.

Some hard-line members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, meanwhile, cheered on the revenge attacks on Huwara.

Then there is the question of what, if any, influence Mr. Abbas’s autocratic and unelected PA has among Palestinians. The aging leader’s electoral mandate ended in 2009.

The evening before Aqaba, hundreds protested in Bethlehem and Jenin, denouncing the talks as a “betrayal” and accusing Mr. Abbas and his advisers of “selling out” Palestinian blood.

Majdi Mohammed/AP

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, meets with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Jan. 31, 2023. Mr. Blinken was wrapping up a two-day visit to Israel and the West Bank with renewed appeals for Israeli-Palestinian calm amid an alarming spike in violence.

Dozens of political factions and organizations previously allied with Mr. Abbas criticized the talks and their outcome, saying he does not have the support or legitimacy to negotiate in Palestinians’ name. They question the wisdom of negotiating with a far-right Israeli government that has shown no desire for a peace process.

“Mahmoud Abbas is not a revolutionary; he is a diplomat that believes in diplomacy and non-violent protest as the only mechanisms to achieve Palestinians’ rights,” says Daoud Kuttab, the Palestinian journalist and columnist.

“From his point of view, he is pursuing talks for his people. He believes the best opportunity to defend his people and their rights when there is such a power imbalance is diplomacy – he does not care about popular support,” he says.

“But there is a political price to be paid. To say that these talks were ‘controversial’ is being generous.”

Implementation at stake

Palestinians are concerned that the Aqaba talks will lead to a resumption of security ties with Israel and a crackdown on militias such as the Lion’s Den in Nablus, which many view as the only forces protecting them in the face of increased settler attacks.

The gunman in Huwara Sunday reportedly was wearing a Lion’s Den t-shirt.

Waiting in the wings are Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Gaza-based Islamist militant groups, who denounced the “ill-fated” talks as a “betrayal.”

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, in a statement Sunday, cautioned that the talks in Jordan were “a starting point and that there is much work to do over the coming weeks and months.”

“Implementation,” he said, “will be critical.”

But many potential spoilers in Israel and the Palestinian territories vowed to obstruct that implementation.

“What happened in Jordan,” said Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, “stays in Jordan.”

Andrew Burton/AP/FIle

Roald Dahl’s books are displayed at Barney’s on East 60th Street in New York on Nov. 21, 2011. Dahl’s publisher made changes to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda” to make them more acceptable to modern readers. After a controversy, it decided to release editions of the original texts, too.

It is the publishing world’s version of New Coke vs. Classic Coke. 

After a week in which everyone from Salman Rushdie to the queen consort weighed in on Puffin’s decision to make Roald Dahl’s works less … nasty (resulting in hundreds of changes to the text), parent company Penguin announced that classic versions of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Matilda,” and others would be released with their writing intact. That way, the publisher said, families can choose the version of “James and the Giant Peach” that best suits their own child.

The brouhaha over the “BFG” author is reminiscent of the 2021 controversy in which six lesser-known Dr. Seuss books were removed from publication by his publisher – accompanied on the right by accusations that woke progressives were coming for childhood. Highlights included GOP senators reading “Green Eggs and Ham” (not one of the titles) as a fundraising tool. In recent years, classic works from “Little House on the Prairie” to “Babar the Elephant” have come under renewed scrutiny for racist passages. Most of all, it comes at a moment in which children’s books are being yanked off library shelves, particularly in red states, at a rate the American Library Association has not seen in decades. 

Some writers who object to the changes to Dahl’s work say any attempt to sanitize his writing is both futile and repressive – akin to covering nudity in Renaissance art. Other authors say that, with works that have entertained generations of children, a judicious update might preserve the magic for modern readers. But, whether or not they thought Puffin had lost the plot, writers on both sides of the Dahl divide say it points to the centrality of children’s books in culture.

“Children’s books have always been the battleground of the culture wars,” says Betsy Bird, a children’s author and librarian. “That being said, children’s literature is sort of remarkable in that it is probably where you will find the most open-minded books on a wide variety of subjects.”

AP/File

Roald Dahl and his wife, Patricia Neal, arrive at the Academy Awards on April 11, 1969. “I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities,” Dahl said in a 1988 interview. “If a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. ... That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.”

“The solution is not to change the book”

Daniel Handler, author of the popular “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books written as Lemony Snicket, calls the Puffin edits censorship, full stop. And, to boot, the changes were “particularly absurd.” 

In “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” the line “each man will have a gun and a flashlight” was amended to, “each person will have a person and a flashlight.” (That is not a typo.) In “The Witches,” the grandmother’s advice that “you can’t go around pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try and see what happens,” is removed and replaced by, “besides, there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m all for a conversation about what people might find offensive about a particular book. I think that’s super interesting,” says Mr. Handler. But “if there’s a problem, the solution is not to change the book. You can have a conversation about it.”

“Roald Dahl is notoriously nasty on and off the page,” says Mr. Handler, “and people can talk about that and have their own emotional reaction to it and make their own decisions about reading his work, but his [original] work should be available to read, rather than some cleaned up, strange, truncated version.”

Dahl himself was clear that his writing delighted in the nasty, the rude, and certainly the hyperbolic. “I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities,” Dahl said in a 1988 interview. “If a person is nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. ... That, I think, is fun and makes an impact.”

Katy Winn/Invision/AP/File

Bestselling author Daniel Handler, who writes children’s books as Lemony Snicket, speaks at the 2013 LA Times Festival of Books on April 20, 2013, in Los Angeles. “The idea that you could make a book that wouldn’t offend anyone is a really offensive idea,” Mr. Handler said of the hundreds of changes to Roald Dahl’s books made by the publisher Puffin.

The case for updating

Other writers, like children’s author Debjani Chatterjee, point to the tradition of rewriting and abridging classics like Shakespeare’s plays to present them to young readers. “I think that happens for a very good reason, because if we did not adapt them for modern audiences, then [we’d have] wonderful literary treasures which really would be inaccessible,” says Dr. Chatterjee.

Language changes over time, says Dr. Chatterjee, as do societies’ morals and values. Rather than turning away from Dahl entirely, modern classics can be saved by edits that bring a book along with current sensibilities, she says, adding that she would be open to such updates in her own books.

Others say such changes should be done judiciously, and sparingly.

Certain changes, such as removing slurs, can be appropriate, says Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, which categorically opposed the Puffin edits and applauds the restoration of Dahl’s words. “I think it has to be done surgically, judiciously. I’m very dubious about adding things to the text to sort of make it more politically palatable, which is part of what was done in this case.”

If books don’t fit current sensibilities? “People don’t have to read them,” says Ms. Nossel.

For her part, Ms. Bird draws a distinction between picture books that are read to children, and mid-grade books that children often choose themselves. Because Dahl’s books are written at a level that children read independently, Ms. Bird says, conversations about problematic portrayals or content often don’t take place.

Should books be “safe”?

On the other hand, Heather Heying, an evolutionary biologist and author of the Substack newsletter Natural Selections, argues that prioritizing safety-ism for children doesn’t help them navigate the world or understand actual risks that come along.

“Safety isn’t what we’re supposed to be seeking in literature or in art in general. And I would argue it shouldn’t be our highest goal in life either,” says Ms. Heying. “Certainly not psychological safety.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff/File

International Charter School fifth grade students read independently on Jan. 9, 2019, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Children’s books have been a lightning rod in the culture, with book challenges and removals from school library shelves coming at a rate the American Library Association has not seen in decades.

Children’s books today are a lightning rod, pulled into the debate over whether they should be adapted to the current time or understood as relics of their own. 

It’s understandable that people want to protect children, says Mr. Handler, but many of the edits, such as removing a reference to Rudyard Kipling but leaving Ernest Hemingway, “seem like quite a stretch.”

“The idea that you could make a book that wouldn’t offend anyone is a really offensive idea.”

PEN America’s Ms. Nossel argues for not banishing books. “They may yield insight even if they offend contemporary sensibilities,” says Ms. Nossel, adding that context about the time, setting, and mores in which a work was created is an important part of the discussion. “Even if there is an offending word, that doesn’t negate the value of the whole story ... you may learn that somebody who would use such a word might have also some noble ideas that you really subscribe to, and it’s an opportunity to embrace that kind of complexity.”

Ms. Bird, who is the collection development manager of Evanston Public Library in Illinois, is optimistic about efforts to dig into nuanced issues.

“I often say that we’re kind of living in a golden age of children’s literature right now,” she says. “There is so much more complexity regarding history and contemporary issues and things like that in books for kids than there ever was before.”

Puffin did not respond to an interview request. A spokesperson for Inclusive Minds, which worked with the publisher on the updates, wrote that the company doesn’t edit or rewrite texts or provide sensitivity reads. Instead, the company has a network of Inclusion Ambassadors who consult based on their own lived experiences.

Whitewashing a “complicated legacy”?

One thing that sets this situation apart, says Kat Rosenfield, a novelist and cultural critic who has written on the rise of sensitivity readers, is that Dahl, who died in 1990, is unable to provide input.

“There’s an element of fraudulence to it,” says Ms. Rosenfield. “They’re going to change the language of his books in a way that is quite substantial and really has stripped quite a lot of the magic and the cheekiness in the way that he saw the world that was so resonant to kids specifically, because it can be kind of crude and funny and colorful and definitely not sensitive.”

“I’ve been trying to think of what a comparable thing is,” says Ms. Rosenfield. “The thing that I came up with was if they put some bikini briefs on Michelangelo’s David and then they told everyone that it always looked like that.”

By editing Dahl’s work to make it more palatable, publishers run the risk of portraying the author more favorably than perhaps he deserves, says Ms. Rosenfield, pointing out that Dahl was openly anti-Semitic.

“I think it’s good to know that [his books] were written by not a very nice man,” says Ms. Rosenfield. “And to sanitize them is actually to kind of whitewash that complicated legacy.”

As it happens, Dahl himself weighed in on his preferences about posthumous editing.

In a recorded conversation with the artist Francis Bacon in 1982, Dahl threatened to unleash his “enormous greedy grumptious brute,” the Enormous Crocodile, on his publishers if they tweaked “a single comma.” 

“When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir,” said Dahl in the conversation recorded by Barry Joule and published in the Guardian, “Or I will send along the ‘enormous crocodile’ to gobble them up.”

Staff writer Stephen Humphries contributed to this report.

Dominique Soguel

Stockholm-based Kurdish author Bubu Eser, at the Kurdish Library Feb. 6, 2023, pulls out two editions of a book he wrote documenting his experiences of torture in a Turkish prison.

Tucked away in an unassuming apricot building, the Kurdish library in Stockholm is a place where Kurds can celebrate their culture, literature, and language. More importantly, it represents what many Kurds long and fight for but have historically been denied.

“In Sweden, I found a democratic system,” says Hedi Gomei, an aging volunteer at the library who was born in Iraq and today considers himself a Kurdish Swede. He came to Sweden in the 1970s after many years fighting with the Kurdish peshmerga and being arrested three times for his political activism. “They welcomed us. For me, coming to this library is like going to a garden with the flowers in full bloom.”

That sense of tranquility and freedom from political repression or jail time – threats all too common in the history of Kurdish minorities in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq – means most Kurds here consider Sweden home, even while dreaming of a state for the Kurdish people.

It is also why many now fret about Sweden’s deal-cutting with Turkey to enter the NATO military alliance. Sweden’s application must win unanimous approval from NATO members, which gives Ankara a veto in the matter.

The 100,000 Kurds in Sweden, making up about 1% of the Swedish population, are well integrated politically and culturally. Now they are caught in a geopolitical tug of war that is challenging their faith in Swedish democracy.

“Kurds are quite worried and uncomfortable since Sweden announced all of a sudden last spring that they were going to submit an application to join NATO,” says Gothenburg-based Arin Savran, author of the book “Turkey and the Kurdish Peace Process.” “Kurds, particularly Kurds originating from Turkey, associate NATO with Turkey. NATO has been supplying weapons throughout the years and those weapons have been used against Kurds. There’s a history there.”

A game of foxes

Kurdish refugees have long been a point of friction in Kurdish-Swedish relations. Ankara considers Sweden a safe haven for members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been branded a terrorist group in Turkey and Europe, as well as other Kurdish groups it considers to be extensions of the PKK.

Christine Olsson/TT News Agency/AP

A protestor in Stockholm prepares to jump on a banner depicting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a demonstration organized by Kurdish exiles. There are concerns that Sweden might repatriate some Kurds in a bid to win Ankara's approval of its NATO membership application.

Turkey is troubled by Sweden’s support for the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which fought against ISIS alongside the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. The YPG’s political wing, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), has an office in Stockholm.

“The PYD is a de facto recognized group” in Sweden,” explains Khalid Khayati, an associate professor focused on the Kurdish diaspora at Linköping University. “The Kurds in Syria have sacrificed more than 13,000 people in the fight to ISIS. It would be unfair and inhuman to consider that group as a terror organization.”

In June 2022, during the Madrid NATO summit, Sweden and Finland – which submitted joint applications to join the military alliance – tried to allay Turkey’s concerns. They committed to step up their efforts to prevent PKK activities and to deny support to the PYD/YPG. Both Nordic nations have moved to tighten anti-terrorism legislation.

In January, Sweden leveled money laundering charges against the PYD’s representative in Stockholm. The same month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan demanded the extradition of 130 “terrorists” in exchange for his country’s green light for Sweden and Finland to join NATO. 

“They expected to be safe here,” says Mr. Gomei, the library volunteer, of Kurds who have sought asylum in Sweden. If the authorities send Kurds to Turkey “this will go against their own Swedish values, of protecting everyone. [But] politics is a game of foxes,” he adds. “Sweden is acting in its interest. Even countries that are democracies put their interest ahead of democracy.”

Swedish officials have clearly stated that they will not meet Turkey’s demands that they extradite all those whom Ankara has asked for. The controversial list reportedly includes Swedish citizens, who by law cannot be extradited to Turkey, and Kurds with permanent residence in Sweden, as well as asylum-seekers.

It is the fate of the latter that worries Miran Kakaee, a Swedish lawyer of Kurdish descent.

“Most of the allegations against them regard crimes that are not even crimes under Swedish law,” says Mr. Kakaee, who is representing a person on Mr. Erdoğan’s wish list. To his knowledge, no one on the list has been extradited to Turkey since Turkey, Finland, and Sweden signed a memorandum on counterterrorism cooperation last June in Madrid. But last year’s deportation of Mahmoud Tat – who had been convicted as a PKK militant in Turkey and whose asylum request was turned down before Sweden’s NATO bid – was painted as victory in Turkey.

Closer police controls

Mr. Kakaee says Kurdish asylum applications have encountered greater scrutiny by the Swedish security and counterintelligence service, SÄPO, since 2019, perhaps because of a 2017 terror attack in Stockholm carried out by a failed asylum-seeker linked to ISIS. 

Kurdish activists in Sweden say they have been under greater scrutiny since last summer. “It is dirty politics ... to do an agreement with one dictator [Mr. Erdoğan] to protect the Swedish people from another dictator [Russian President Vladimir Putin],” says Abdullah Deveci, a member of the Kurdish Democratic Society Center and a Gothenburg-based Kurdish lawyer with roots in Turkey. “Me, as a lawyer, journalists, activists – even we have problems now with the Swedish police. They call us and pay us visits, just to control. We never had this situation before.”

Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute, says Ankara has legitimate concerns regarding Kurdish activities in Sweden. He attributes them to “lax attitudes Swedish law enforcement agencies have shown towards the PKK and other Kurdish networks,” as well as the country’s ties – informal as they may be – to the YPG in Syria. Ankara is watching closely how Sweden’s tightening of anti-terrorism legislation plays out.

“Turkey was hoping to use Sweden’s accession to NATO to set a precedent ... that it is not OK for the alliance members to have formal contacts and informal support for the YPG,” says Mr. Cagaptay. “That’s why Ankara is playing hardball with Sweden,” he explains. But now, due to the recent devastating 7.8 earthquake in Turkey, “there is almost zero chance that the Turkish parliament will do anything on Sweden before the elections in Turkey.”

NATO has come to Turkey’s aid but also kept up pressure on Turkey to rapidly allow Sweden and Finland into the alliance, irrespective of whether it considers their bids separately or together. “The time is now to ratify both Finland and Sweden,” said Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaking in Istanbul on Feb. 16.

Dominique Soguel

A display of books in front of a photograph of Kurdish shepherds, at the Kurdish Library in Stockholm, Feb. 6, 2023.

Back at the Kurdish library in Stockholm, author Bubu Eser lets his mind drift as he looks out of a window. Moments earlier, he had shared one of his worst memories of Turkey – being thrown out of a four-story window during police questioning. He suffered many kinds of torture during the 72 days he spent in pre-trial detention and the more than two years he spent behind bars, he says. He turns page after illustrated page of his book, “Guardian,” to convey his ordeals.

Sweden, to him, is synonymous with safety. He feels confident Sweden will not just hand over Kurds who might risk ill-treatment to Turkey for political gain. Decisions to send people back to Turkey are a matter for the courts, he stresses – a point that Swedish politicians have also made. He says he supports the country that gave him shelter, no matter what path it takes when it comes to joining NATO.

“Sweden has every right to do what the country needs,” says Mr. Eser. “Turkey is a dictatorship and it shows in the way Erdoğan threatens Sweden. But I don’t feel threatened by this dictatorship. I trust the Swedish government, and I trust that Sweden will do right by the Kurds.”

Venus doesn’t get a whole lot of visitors – just the occasional bank robber and Hollywood movie star.

The bank that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow robbed a century ago is in this small town south of Fort Worth, and so, Venus residents insist, are the bullet holes. Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, and Tom Cruise have passed through, but that heist might have been the most exciting day in the town’s otherwise sleepy history.

That is until “Yellowstone” filmed here last November, flooding downtown with cast, crew, and hundreds of fans of the hit television show. The town is still talking about it – and feeling the bump in tourism.

If the newly booming Texas film industry has a heart, it might be Fort Worth.

Eight years ago, tired of watching productions go to Dallas, the city created its own film commission. Since then, it’s driven $555 million in economic impact and supported over 18,000 jobs, according to Jessica Christopherson, the head of the commission.

“The requests and interest in filming, people coming to scout, has just increased year over year,” she says. “I’ve seen it grow from reality shows to independent films, to now [major] films and television series.” 

From Weatherford to Waxahachie, the past few years have seen a surge in film and television production in the Fort Worth area. A steady stream of films and music videos have been shot in and around the city. “The Chosen,” a crowd-funded television series dramatizing the life of Jesus Christ, has set up permanently in Midlothian. Production companies have been planting roots, and sound stages have opened.

But when you think about the Fort Worth scene right now, there is one dominant force: Taylor Sheridan.

Prominent and prolific, the Fort Worth-raised actor, writer, and producer has three shows airing, two shows filming, and four shows in development – many of them filming in Texas, where he lives and, since 2021, owns the century-old 6666 Ranch.

The “Sheridan-verse” has sprawled to include “1883” and “1923,” both prequel series to “Yellowstone.” A forthcoming series about Bass Reeves, one of the first Black U.S. deputy marshals west of the Mississippi River, has been filming in the area this year.

“The people who have really helped make Texas a provocative option are the artists,” says Tom Nunan, a continuing lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater, Film and Television, and a former network and studio president. 

In the past that has included Austin auteurs like Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick. Today, Fort Worth is building its own local talent base. Channing Godfrey Peoples (“Miss Juneteenth”) and Augustine Frizzell (“Never Goin’ Back”) are two young filmmakers who launched their careers with low-budget coming-of-age movies set – and filmed – in Fort Worth.

Patti Perret/Focus Features

“Vengeance,” a 2022 film featuring (left to right) Clint Obenchain, B.J. Novak, and Boyd Holbrook, was set in West Texas but filmed mostly in New Mexico. Local leaders in Texas want the state to invest more in attracting film and TV production.

Indeed, beyond the economic activity, the increased production is helping show a Texas beyond the traditional stereotypes, says Kim Owczarski, an associate professor at Texas Christian University who is studying the Fort Worth film industry.

“As important as [Mr. Sheridan] has been in bringing attention, there is a lot more going on,” she adds.

“The past has always been a fascination with Texas, the myths,” she continues. But “we [haven’t] seen a lot of what it’s like in modern times to be Texan. ... We’re a much more diverse state than we see represented.”

“It just comes down to money”

Texas was long a popular filming location, not least for Westerns, says Mindy Raymond, communications director for the Texas Media Production Alliance (TXMPA), a lobby group. 

But since incentive programs came into the picture in the 1990s and 2000s, studios have looked to other states, even for films set in Texas. “Dallas Buyers Club,” an Oscar winner in 2014, filmed mostly in Louisiana. “Hell or High Water,” a 2016 Sheridan-scribed film about two brothers robbing banks in West Texas, was filmed mostly in New Mexico, as was “Vengeance,” a West Texas-set dark comedy released last year.

New Mexico offers a base tax credit of 25%, plus a refundable tax credit with a yearly cap on incentives of $110 million. Oklahoma is offering up to a 38% tax rebate – higher even than Georgia, a production powerhouse. And Louisiana offers a base credit of 25% and an annual cap of $150 million.

Texas, meanwhile, offers a maximum tax credit of 20%, and for 2021-23 allocated $45 million for production incentives.

“The state ran out of that allocation [after] about six months,” says Red Sanders, founder and president of Red Productions, a Fort Worth-based video and film production company.

After that, when studios came knocking, he adds, “we had to say, ‘Well, if you can wait until September 2023 when our budget gets re-upped, then there will be something here.’”

Incentive packages are now so important producers “will literally change the look and feel of the script to reflect the tax incentives that exist,” says Mr. Nunan, who also founded The Industry Way, a company aimed at helping creators break into Hollywood.

“There’s an openness from creatives in L.A. to work [in Texas],” he adds, “but the incentives have to be right. It just comes down to money.”

Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor

Stacey Robar, a small-business owner and head of the Venus, Texas, Chamber of Commerce, poses in the town square on Feb. 13, 2023. Venus recently benefited from “Yellowstone” filming there.

New stories, new hope

The state legislature is now debating what that budget should be, and the TXMPA is asking that it be increased to about $200 million for the next two years. But there may be some obstacles to those efforts. 

One is political. In a Republican-dominated state, supporting tax breaks for liberal Hollywood hasn’t been popular. The other is fiscal. Texas is already a very low-tax state (including no state income tax), which doesn’t give the state much budgetary wiggle room.

“There’s always been this discussion of handouts to Hollywood,” says Ms. Raymond. Meanwhile, “we have about a 5-to-1 return on investment,” she adds, and “a lot of our Texas stories are being told in other states, which is quite maddening.” 

Local and industry leaders think they have two new, compelling stories to tell lawmakers, however. One is the popularity of Mr. Sheridan’s shows. The other is the experiences of towns like Venus.

“It used to be the belief that production only happened in the metroplexes, and that really isn’t true anymore,” says Stephanie Whallon, director of the Texas Film Commission, in an email.

The “Yellowstone” crew spent four days in Venus, with the town ultimately featuring in five minutes of a recent episode. The square was packed all day, and local businesses say they are still feeling the “Yellowstone” bump.

“It was so much fun. It was great,” says Stacey Robar, a small-business owner and head of the Venus Chamber of Commerce.

“Something like that would definitely help get some of these places on the map,” she adds. “Venus has really struggled. ... A lot of these small towns that are barely surviving need it.”

Venus Market, a retail co-op space Ms. Robar co-owns and rents to about 30 vendors, opened on the square last July. They made two-thirds of their July sales in one day while the show filmed. The next month was their best sales month to date, she says. 

“We thought it would be just kind of be one and done,” she adds. “It’s still happening, to be honest.”

Ellis County Judge Todd Little feels the same way. The county courthouse in Waxahachie, 20 miles from Venus, just finished portraying a 19th-century Arkansas courthouse for “Bass Reeves.”

“It takes traffic to keep those [local] businesses alive. That’s what films will do for these towns,” he says. “It will be a great help to these small and historic communities.”

Then there are the intangible benefits, notes Jim Burgess, the mayor of Venus. He can remember watching “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Born on the Fourth of July” downtown and smile, even while dealing with infrastructure and other problems. 

An influx of camera crews and set designers and movie stars anywhere is, simply put, fun. And that’s not something he can put a price on.

“It brought some excitement to the town more than anything else,” he says. “It just kind of gives you a little spark.”

This Indio, California, fair is pure Americana – corn dogs, rides, demolition derby, face painters who can turn a child’s cheeks into butterfly wings. For 10 days in February, the desert city fairground glows with candy-colored lights while the wind flicks American flags.

But walk toward the heart of the hubbub, past the smoke of sizzling turkey legs, and the scene transforms.

What looks like a minaret rising tall among the palms is part of an outdoor stage. It’s meant to conjure long-ago Baghdad – or what a Hollywood set designer in the 1940s envisioned as such. Here, Coachella Valley locals have long paid tribute to the origins of a local cash crop, the date, by performing pageants loosely tied to tales in “One Thousand and One Nights.” The half-hour version of “Aladdin” this year was based on the 1992 Disney film.

As a kid at the fair, “I’d come here every day and I forced my parents to come and watch. ... It’d come to the point where I knew the dance numbers to all the songs,” said teenager Linda Ceniceros. Backstage before a show, she sat still as a helper affixed her Princess Jasmine headpiece.

Local nostalgia runs deep at the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival, where guests once got in for free for wearing “Arabian Nights” attire. Such fairground folklore is tied to local date palms, which originated in the Middle East and North Africa. The full-blown event, which ended Sunday, returned after a pandemic hiatus with a new operator, who has scaled back some traditions while keeping more typical events found at a county fair. The traces of sequined fantasies that endure may reveal more about America than about the Arabian Peninsula.

For many locals, those traditions have cultivated community. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

A cast of "Aladdin," based on the 1992 Disney film, performs at the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival in Indio, California, Feb. 18, 2023. The annual pageant features shows loosely based on the tales of "One Thousand and One Nights."

“What brings me back? The cast, the people,” said pageant co-producer Richard De Haven, involved for two decades. 

Castmates “become family,” said performer Mellissa Ballard, whose own family has participated for three generations. During a quick change, her mother, Pamela Ballard, was tasked with zipping up Mellissa’s flying carpet costume.

“America’s Arabia”

In the United States in 2021, California accounted for three-quarters of date production – 44,220 tons, according to a federal crop report. Date palms used for large-scale cultivation were introduced to the Coachella Valley starting around the turn of the 20th century from Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco by Americans who included “agricultural explorers.” These U.S. government-appointed scientists traveled the world seeking profitable crops to fill the country’s expanding borders.

The arid Southwest matched conditions in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, which have grown the syrup-sweet treat for millennia. 

Indio’s date festival officially began in 1921 – the same year the silent film “The Sheik” offered American imaginations an exotic Orient. (The Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival became an annual event in 1947.)

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Pamela Ballard (left) and her daughter, Mellissa Ballard, come backstage after Mellissa's performance in "Aladdin" at the date festival, Feb. 18, 2023. Three generations of the Ballard family have participated in the fair's pageant.

To boost tourism to their desert, locals capitalized on the date industry, infusing the fair with “Arabian” themes based on Hollywood aesthetics – fantasies of how the West imagined the East. Beyond the event, a town was renamed Mecca, streets were given names like Arabia, and Coachella Valley High School sports teams became known as the “Arabs.” (At the urging of the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the district agreed to modify the image of the mascot, now known as the “Mighty Arab,” in 2014.)

Local boosters marketed the eastern Coachella Valley as “America’s Arabia,” says Sarah Seekatz, professor of history at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton. “It’s strange, because it is a cultural appropriation, but it’s based on Hollywood – and the locals are sort of not hiding that,” she says. Archival photos show young women crowned Queen Scheherazade – a central character in “One Thousand and One Nights” – posing for photos with her court beside camels and dates.

The pageantry became a source of wonder to locals like Linda Beal, born and raised in the valley, whose family grew dates. 

“The costumes and the dancers and the singers ... we wait every year just to see them in their beautiful costumes,” said the Coachella Valley History Museum volunteer, who holds a small, camel-shaped purse.

To Dr. Seekatz, however, the harem imagery – like the bare midriffs used to market Medjools – involves problematic stereotypes.

“There’s a sexualization of Middle Eastern people that is historically happening in the United States for a really long time. I think the fair really shows that off,” says the historian from the Coachella Valley and author of “Images of America: Indio’s Date Festival.”

Finding a picture of her grandmother, who is Mexican American, dressed as a dancer in the pageant in the 1950s was “complicated,” she adds. “Historically, they’d been excluded from the community. And participating was one way of trying to be a part.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Magazines from the 1970s depict costumes of Queen Scheherazade and her court crowned in competitions at the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival. The archival material is courtesy of the Coachella Valley History Museum, Coachella Valley Historical Society Inc., in Indio.

“Just imagination”

Mohammed Bwaneh said his family has enjoyed coming here for several years. But he wishes event organizers would publicize more about the date sector’s history and how the fruit hailed from abroad – something to help explain why fairgoers traipse by domes and arches. 

“There’s more history than just food and drinks,” said Mr. Bwaneh, representing the Islamic Society of Palm Springs at a booth. The “Arabian Nights” performances haven’t bothered him, he says; he knows their source material comes from stories.

“It’s just imagination,” he adds. “It does not represent or give you the culture of the Middle East.”

Indeed, organizers distanced themselves from the region when promoting the fair during the Persian Gulf War.

“We always hope it doesn’t scare anybody away,” an executive director of the festival told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. “We’re not involved in the Arab cause, it’s just kind of unusual timing.”

“We don’t pretend to be authentic,” a member of the fair board added. “It’s fantasy. We want dazzle and glitter.” 

Visitors this year could still see prizewinning platters of dates in a building called the Taj Mahal, but gone were the ostrich and camel races (though for $15 you could ride a camel). Scholarships were awarded to 14 high school seniors, no matter their gender, in place of the Queen Scheherazade competition, which had also involved scholarships. Some locals interviewed hope that tradition, seen as more than a beauty pageant in recent years, will return.

Courtesy of the California Date Commission

Date palm trees grow in California's Coachella Valley. The local crops originated from the Middle East and North Africa.

Chris Pickering, operational manager of Pickering Events LLC, which is the new fair operator, said he’s unaware of any cultural appropriation concerns. 

“The fair has its own rich, steeped traditions, and we’re looking to honor those, while also inviting and welcoming everyone in our community,” he said, noting, for example, the addition of Out at the Fair, an event that promotes the inclusion of LGBTQ individuals. Musical acts like Mariachi Sol de México serenaded guests in Riverside County, where around half of nearly 2.5 million residents are Hispanic or Latino.

“Aladdin” was spared the sword – both in programming and plot. Though critics have targeted the Disney film over Orientalist tropes, Ms. Ceniceros, playing Jasmine, said the entertainers approach their roles with respect. 

“We don’t use brownface,” she said. “We don’t use funky accents making fun of them.”

The show got a shorter time slot this year, but the cast pulled it off through vibrant song-and-dance routines and surprise pyrotechnics. Ms. Ceniceros’ pastel blue gown dazzled like her voice.

“We’re happy to see it, because we haven’t seen it in three years,” said county local Richard Rios, sitting in the audience with two adult daughters. “When we come here, we’ve always got to watch it.”

Thwarting custom, “street rat” Aladdin won the princess after all. It’s a rags-to-riches rise that smacks of the American dream. 

Reuters

An Ethiopian boy who fled fighting in Tigray region gestures in in Kassala state, Sudan, Dec. 15.

One long-standing challenge for Africa has been a pattern of military conflict and misrule. Now two of its most consequential countries, Ethiopia and Sudan, are seeking to break that pattern with new models for stability – one after a war, the other after a coup. Both are implementing fragile agreements to restore peace.

Ethiopia is trying to forge a future of national unity that might break from a past of ethnic fragmentation. Sudan seeks to end a cycle of military rule. Their different approaches underscore lessons for how conflict-torn societies foster civic values that can bind people to shared identities.

For nearly 50 years, Ethiopia was overshadowed by the rise and dictatorial rule of a small ethnic minority known as the Tigrayans. That era came to an end in 2018 when Abiy Ahmed became prime minister. He personified the new national identity he hoped to promote. His father was Muslim, his mother Christian. They hailed from different ethnic groups. “Before we can harvest peace dividends,” Mr. Abiy said when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, “we must plant seeds of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the hearts and minds of our citizens.”

A year later, his country was at war. The new prime minister pushed out the Tigrayan old guard. Accounts vary over what happened next. Mr. Abiy says Tigrayan rebels attacked a military outpost in the north. A new book written by two BBC reporters published last week suggests he had been preparing for war well before that incident.

The fighting lasted two years, killing more than 600,000 and displacing 5 million others. A United Nations report last September alleged that Ethiopian and Tigrayan troops had committed gross human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing, rape, and deliberate mass starvation.

The other victim of the war may be Mr. Abiy’s doctrine of reconciliation. A peace accord signed last November is the first to incorporate the African Union’s new framework for transitional justice. That document calls for national healing through post-conflict reconstruction and “accountability of State and non-State actors for serious violations of human rights activities.”

Yet Mr. Abiy consistently blocked humanitarian intervention during the war. And now he is trying to rally support to suspend an ongoing U.N. investigation into atrocities committed during the war. Meanwhile, observers are watching to see what forms of accountability he might endorse.

In Sudan, a different process is unfolding. Since 1956, the country has seen 16 military coup attempts. Six were successful. The most recent, in October 2021, has sparked a sustained and coordinated grassroots campaign to restore democracy. Nearly 120 people have been killed by security force crackdowns during peaceful protests. But the military’s heavy hand hasn’t worked. Eight months after taking power, the generals apologized and promised to give up power. In December, they signed a transition road map with pro-democracy groups. A dialogue for restoring civilian rule is gradually gaining ground.

Sudan’s long pursuit of lasting democracy, noted Jawhratelkmal Kanu and Jonathan Pinckney in a recent U.S. Institute of Peace report, forged an incubator of civic activism based on nonviolence, solidarity, and empathy. “A country with high levels of civic mobilization is much more likely to democratize, and to build qualitatively better democracy,” they wrote, “as a newly engaged public holds transitional leaders to account and pushes for more inclusive politics.”

No two peace processes are the same. But Sudan and Ethiopia may prove that their success depends on fidelity to ideals on which they are founded.