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Ramallah, Palestine. Sixteen kilometres from Jerusalem this little town was one of the most important centres of the West Bank of Jordan especially after the occupation of eastern Jerusalem in 1967, Yasser Arafat’s headquarters the Moukata is the residence of the Palestinian leadership and of numerous intellectuals and artists. Here Christians and Muslims mingle; Ramallah has a reputation of welcoming and celebrating differences. The town has often been accused of being too Western with its cultural effervescence, theatres and art galleries.
The Rebel Town
The Bir Zeit university, the largest Palestinian university 10km away was a very important point of reference during the first Intifada and is still considered today as a meeting place for progressive intellectuals from around the world. It was born out of modernism: founded in 1924 as a girl’s private school for girls from the town and neighbouring villages it was created by a woman from Bir Zeit, Nabiha Nasir (1891-1951) who thought the access to education for women was neglected in the country.
It is nowadays considered as a threatened and rebel institution, not only by Israelis who often occupy it by blocking access to it with their tanks or by destroying the roads..., but also by the Palestinian authorities as Roger Heacock, history professor at the famous university reminds us: “Bir-Zeit has always been a thorn in the side of authority(...) It is perceived by Palestinian as well as Israeli leadership as a centre of opposition to a certain ‘normalisation’ which is often a synonym for political and social injustice.”
Ramallah was glorified by the prestigious presence of the greatest Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich. He had set up one of his homes here and had equipped the beautiful house of the old headquarters of the Khalil Sakakini cultural centre, as his office. This was one of the most important cultural structures of Palestine whose role it was to promote visual arts, music, literature and Palestinian cinema. Darwich’s journal El Kermel also found its head office in the traditional building. During one of the Israeli army’s many incursions in April 2002, the journal archives were destroyed. Mahmoud Darwich’s place of residence was wrecked.
The town became a sort of myth for the young artists who established themselves there, finding suitable plot of land favourable for artistic creation. A myth also for young women who wish to live alone, “Ramallah is the only town where a single woman can rent an apartment without getting noticed or disturbed, or reviled” Fatin Farhat, a young actress explained to us during a visit to an artist and European cultural operators delegation in Ramallah a few months ago.
The second Intifada and the reoccupation of the territories by the Israelis put a lid on this bubbling atmosphere, the social capacity and this creative spirit so typical of the inhabitants of the town. The difficulties in going from one town to another – going through various checkpoints can take hours and sometimes it is impossible to leave a town – has lessened the voice of Ramallah.
The Israeli army’s incursions, admittedly less bloody than in Gaza or Jenin or in other refugee camps, have worsened the situation. The town usually so noisy with constant honking, suddenly becomes silent and the roads are empty. Only the sirens of the ambulances pierce the silence.
“It’s so difficult to go from one place to another in Palestine... even to go from Jerusalem to Ramallah... going to work each day is a battle. A journey that usually takes half an hour would now take three hours or more, Iman Aoun from the Asthar Theatre tells us. Our company used to go on tour all over Palestine and abroad too, but now, we are stuck in Ramallah even if we constantly try to reach our fans in the refugee camps.”
The inhabitants of Ramallah are scared to go out at night. Only the residents of Eastern Jerusalem are just about free enough to move about thanks to their precious resident cards. What’s more many intellectuals and artists have secondary homes or offices.
The continuous curfews mean that the Palestinians are often forced to alter their plans for lack of capability of reaching their destination. “Yesterday I had planned to go to the cinema but suddenly the curfew was announced, I couldn’t go” explains Adila Laidi, the director of the Khalil Sakakini centre. But the reality here is much worse than not being able to go to the cinema. Statistics evoke the sad number of dead in ambulances of the Red Cross which get blocked for an hour in town while they attempt to bring their patients to the casualty department. Pregnant women give birth in the middle of barb-wired border posts, other women, stuck at the checkpoint, loose their babies unable to get to hospital.
Culture held hostage
Cultural life has suffered tremendously from this situation, artistic production is today held back and artists are more and more isolated due to the cordoning off of territories and the impossibility of freely getting around. An important change compared to the relatively calm period of the Oslo procedure.
“Cultural life in Palestine was pretty prosperous considering the recent history of Palestine and of the situation of Arab countries and this geographic zone. In 1993 after Oslo and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, 1994 saw an explosion of summer festivals in many towns of the autonomous territories as well as exhibitions, art competitions, publications… a good local initiative particularly in the arts, cinema and theatre” tells Adila Laidi
“The start of the second Intifada in September 2000 and its bloody repression paralysed the cultural community of Ramallah and we had the same reactions we had during the Intifada of 1987: cinemas were closed, cinemas were closed, planned cultural events were cancelled.”
In Palestine in Ramallah there is a whole society kept hostage. Education and research suffer enormously. Children only go to school during periods of calm, which are becoming rare. Cultural centres and theatres are actually doing a lot to keep children busy who would otherwise be left to their own devices, and go and throw stones at Israeli soldiers, like at the Kalandia checkpoint, where some of them have died by shots fired from the occupier.
The Theatre Children
Iman Aoun is an actress and director of the Asthar Theatre in Ramallah. Created in 1991 in Jerusalem it launched the first vocational theatrical programme aimed at young school children. The Asthar Theatre is a non-lucrative NGO. The company established itself in Ramallah in 1995 and has for the last few years been inspired by the forum theatre/oppressed theatre invented by the director and Brazilian political activist Augusto Boal. The shows produced by the Asthar often draws their content from Palestinian society, the weight of the occupation, the Intifada and present a reoccurring character, Abu Ishak. After forty five minutes of the play, the company turns to the audience and asks them what is wrong with the behaviour of such and such character, before asking them to come on stage to take the place of the actors and to replay the scene, change the roles.
“In our plays, we wish to discuss this violence, this agony which the Palestinian population is living through and the social, political and economical effects of this agony on our youth. We therefore put the checkpoints, the bombing of buildings, the humiliations people endure on stage... then we perform these plays in schools” explains Iman Aoun.
The shows of the company have travelled to diverse Palestinian regions and a large space is assigned to training. Ten years ago, Asthar launched a temporary training pilot programme destined to students. It can be extended to a period of three years for those who wish to become professional actors. Iman Aoun and Edward Muallem, another member of the company and her spouse, have succeeded in transforming the Asthar theatre into permanent research laboratory of different theatrical techniques and methodologies.
Other cultural centres do an important job of promoting and developing the arts to the young inhabitants of Ramallah. The popular arts Centre (PAC) founded in 1987 is an NGO created by the Palestinian popular dance company El-Funun. Music and dance are essential disciplines of the centre which contribute to the preservation of the Palestinian folklore heritage. In this way it has set up a library of traditional music audiovisual archives and in 1993 launched the annual international Palestinian music and dance festival. But as Palestine is becoming more and more cyber-Palestine, to evoke the title of a film by Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman, another organ the Baladna cultural centre has opened an internet café which is much frequented by young people.
The cinema and video also hold an important role as film clubs and an audio and film recording workshop has been established in villages and in refugee camps.
Network in the Territories
The PAC and other cultural centres have created The Palestinian Network of Art Centres which groups eight cultural and artistic centres whose aim it is to develop artistic and cultural life in Palestine and to work internationally and in the Arab world with other cultural organs.
Amongst the initiatives of the network, the “100 artists in Palestine” project which runs in collaboration with European organs in order to promote cultural and artistic exchanges between Palestinian artists and their European partners.
The Khalil Sakakini Centre also does important promotional work and disperses art amongst all intellectual audiences to battle against the decrease in visits linked to the difficulties of getting around. Its contemporary art exhibitions have nothing to envy European exhibitions, the quality concerts and literary evenings are extremely sought after.
The commitment is nevertheless constant, through the personality of its director, intellectual activist and under the aura which Mahmoud Darwich’s tutelary presence oozes. Recently the beautiful exhibition on martyrs, the Shahid, “100 Shaheed – 100 Lives” had for objective the celebration of the lives of the first 100, women, men and children killed during the first Intifada. The celebration was through personal objects exposed and designed to be artefacts.
The Palestinian Film Industry |
But the point is not to show Palestinians as victims. “Thinking that we are victims has to stop, this will give us the strength to carry on” Iman Aoun reminds us, and echoes with Darwich’s words “Hope is an incurable illness in Palestinians, hope of a normal life where we would be neither heroes or victims”.
It is also what film maker Elia Suleyman says in her latest film, Intervention Divine. It is also what young Palestinian film makers say after producing an important number of films in the last two years, of which many are documentaries. Production costs were greatly reduced due to the use of DV cameras. We owe this “Palestinian revival on Intifada background”, as Le Monde headlined, to film makers such as Rachid Masharawi and Elia Suleyman but also to young film makers who live in Israel, Arab with Israeli passports, or to those who live in the Territories.
It is the case for Azza El-Hassan who filmed daily stories in Ramallah in News Time. We owe other recent films to the poet Liana Badr (The Olive Tree in 2000, The Green Bird in 2002), to Ghada Terawi (We want to Live in 2001) and to the actress Hiam Abbas (The bread in 2001). |
Film production still remains fairly limited: the Cinema Production Centre (CPC) in Ramallah founded in 1996 by Rashid Masharawi who has also created a mobile cinema – a kind of travelling cinema which toured the length and breadth of the countryside, has unfortunately been put on ice. Like many other Arab film makers, Masharawi has to finance his films somewhere else, more particularly in Europe, thanks to financial backing from Fonds Sud or television channels such as Arte in France.
In Ramallah one can see films at the PAC, and only recently has been possible to attend film evenings and debates organised by Shaml, the refugee and diasporas camp.
The most important room is that of the Al Kasaba theatre, an impressive place to see shows (plays are also performed here) directed by George Ibrahim. Last March, during the delegation of the International Parliament of Writers’ (PIE) visit, an evening of poetry reading and music with the famous group Sabreen had been organised in the presence of Mahmoud Darwich who welcomed his colleagues.
What solidarity?
The public was present and the room packed. As always a long ovation always followed Darwich’s readings. Before this evening, the same delegation accompanied by the poet had visited the Bir Zeit University, after countless difficulties to get through the blockades. “To get to the Palestinian Bir Zeit university, the students and professors, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns have to change vehicles, travel 500 metres on a road blocked by Israelis and cram themselves in groups into taxis and minibuses that wait for them on the other side. It is not a security measure but rather a collective punishment for the whole of the population” had indicated the writer Juan Goystisolo.
Support from the PIE and other European intellectuals and artists has made the silence even more deafening on the Israeli side. In Ramallah, this silence is felt as a condemnation on the whole of the community due to the terrible attacks. The intellectuals and artists in Ramallah feel isolated from their counterparts despite being near them. Even if the pacifists and activists are united, (Michel Washawari, Bet’selem Association, etc) “We have no support from the artists” says Iman Aoun. “The Israeli intellectuals for the most part, condemn the Palestinians. Or at best they ignore them. They do not want to know what is going on here” Roger Heacock tells us, a professor at Bir Zeit and resident in Ramallah who is also half American and half French. Admittedly there are remarkable exceptions such as the local Israeli newspaper journalist Amira Haas who has lived in Gaza and now in Ramallah. As an Israeli she recounts without respite the daily humiliations the army subjects to the occupied population, human rights abuses, mass destruction of Palestinian homes, the shameful devastation and the excremental desecration of the Sakakini centre in April 2003.
Let us leave Iman Aoun to conclude: “The role of the artist in a conflict such as ours is that of a critic but also that of the spirit of the society. To light up the structure of the community and to make the notion of a future grow.” |
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Antonia Naim |
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| An investigation in Ramallah on the key figures of Palestinian culture in times of war. |
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