Art and survival in Palestine
Filmmaker and academic Juman Quneis on life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and how art provides a means of resistance
byJennie Kermode
03-12-2024 17:15
image by Ahmed Abu Hameeda. CC0 1.0
“We see the missiles dropped on Gaza. We hear the explosions, the bombs there, but we can’t even help them”, says Juman Quneis, who lives in the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories. She’s afraid that before long, the West Bank will become a target too.
Juman Quneis on life under Israeli occupation
Quneis is assistant professor of media at Birzeit University, and a prolific creator of short films. She recently visited Yorkshire to present her most recent work, Palestinian Street Art, at the Leeds Palestinian Film Festival.
“It highlights the street art in Palestine which started in the 1990s in the first uprising, which we call Intifada”, she says of the film. “People started to write on the wall some sentences that resist the occupation, and then it developed after Israel built a wall around surrounding West Bank. Palestinian artists considered that wall, which separated the Palestinians from each other, as a big canvas. They started to draw their thoughts, their art on it. Now some Palestinian street artists go all over the world and just draw what they think.
“The film tackles this issue. It’s very short film. It’s full of history, but also it has two examples of Palestinian street artists, who are Taqi Spateen, who draws on the wall surrounding Bethlehem, and another artist who draw on the walls of Al Amhari camp, which is very close to Ramallah city.”
Art keeps hope alive
There’s a long tradition of Palestinians using art as a form of resistance, keeping their culture alive and making their situation visible to the wider world.
“If you look at what they are drawing, you will find symbols of Palestine like the kufiya [a traditional scarf], people like Yasser Arafat, people who are still in jail, people who are really symbols, especially the leaders of Palestine”, says Quneis. “You will see also the hope. Sometimes you will find a girl who is flying with balloons. Sometimes you will find a window which is open on the sky, which is not true, but it reflects the hope of Palestinians to be free from the occupation.”
This hope persists, she says, despite everything.
“It’s hard because also some artists, they consider that we shouldn’t make the wall nice, it shouldn’t be coloured, it should be just grey as the reality is. But I think Palestinians would like to keep the hope on that wall, but also remind people who come to the Palestinian cities that many citizens are suffering, and that reflects what they are suffering from and their hope to be free.”
The West Bank and Gaza
“What’s going on in Gaza is really a genocide against the Palestinian people who live in Gaza. Everything is targeted: the schools, the refugee camps, the journalists, the ambulances, everything is targeted by the Israeli missiles. This is what’s going on in Gaza. In the West Bank, we don’t have that much violence, but still we are surrounded by the wall I talked about. We are separated, our families are separated, we are separated from our schools, our universities, our hospitals sometimes. It’s really very hard to go from one city to another because of the checkpoints. We have 8,170 checkpoints in the West Bank. On each entrance of villages, cities, camps, we have checkpoints that stop you and check your ID.
“Sometimes they check our phones just to be sure that we don’t have contacts with people, for example, in Gaza, or images of people who were killed by the Israelis, or any information that they don’t like. So, these checkpoints are places for suffering. And, you know, we waste more than 60 million working hours there yearly, according to an organisation that did research about the Palestinians.
“The most important, dangerous thing in the West Bank is the settlers. There are settlements built on our land. They confiscate the Palestinian land and then they build settlements on it. These settlers who are living there are armed, and they believe that this is their land, and that Palestinians should not be there – and if they are there, that they should be their slaves. They talk about that, and they are extremists. They believe in burning cities, villages and people.
Opinion
Bombs will never bring peace to the Middle East
byAndy Brown
22 October 2024
Palestinians under siege
“There was a family which was burned completely when settlers set fire to their house. All the family died except for one child, so he witnessed the death of his family. This was in a village very close to Nablus. And there was another incident. There was a settler who forced a Palestinian boy to drink kerosene and he burned him to death. So, these are things which are very dangerous. It’s not only that they come to seize the land. It’s more than this. It’s very dangerous to be very close to settlements.
“They confiscated the land not only to build settlements, but also to build roads for the settlers. They move on these roads and deprive the Palestinians of using them, so we must go through bypass roads just to reach our cities or our work or hospitals sometimes. Lots of people died at these checkpoints because of the roads designated only for the settlers.
“For more than 20 years, there has been no continuity between the West Bank and Gaza. We can’t see them, and they can’t see us. They can’t join us. The Palestinians in Gaza were not allowed to flee, neither to the West Bank nor to Egypt. They are under siege. They are not allowed to go anywhere, and they are targeted. We can’t send support to them. We can’t send food or clean water to drink. We can’t do anything for them because all the crossings around Gaza are closed and dominated by the Israeli army. So, the circumstances there are very hard.”
03-12-2024 17:15
image by Ahmed Abu Hameeda. CC0 1.0
“We see the missiles dropped on Gaza. We hear the explosions, the bombs there, but we can’t even help them”, says Juman Quneis, who lives in the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories. She’s afraid that before long, the West Bank will become a target too.
Juman Quneis on life under Israeli occupation
Quneis is assistant professor of media at Birzeit University, and a prolific creator of short films. She recently visited Yorkshire to present her most recent work, Palestinian Street Art, at the Leeds Palestinian Film Festival.
“It highlights the street art in Palestine which started in the 1990s in the first uprising, which we call Intifada”, she says of the film. “People started to write on the wall some sentences that resist the occupation, and then it developed after Israel built a wall around surrounding West Bank. Palestinian artists considered that wall, which separated the Palestinians from each other, as a big canvas. They started to draw their thoughts, their art on it. Now some Palestinian street artists go all over the world and just draw what they think.
“The film tackles this issue. It’s very short film. It’s full of history, but also it has two examples of Palestinian street artists, who are Taqi Spateen, who draws on the wall surrounding Bethlehem, and another artist who draw on the walls of Al Amhari camp, which is very close to Ramallah city.”
Art keeps hope alive
There’s a long tradition of Palestinians using art as a form of resistance, keeping their culture alive and making their situation visible to the wider world.
“If you look at what they are drawing, you will find symbols of Palestine like the kufiya [a traditional scarf], people like Yasser Arafat, people who are still in jail, people who are really symbols, especially the leaders of Palestine”, says Quneis. “You will see also the hope. Sometimes you will find a girl who is flying with balloons. Sometimes you will find a window which is open on the sky, which is not true, but it reflects the hope of Palestinians to be free from the occupation.”
This hope persists, she says, despite everything.
“It’s hard because also some artists, they consider that we shouldn’t make the wall nice, it shouldn’t be coloured, it should be just grey as the reality is. But I think Palestinians would like to keep the hope on that wall, but also remind people who come to the Palestinian cities that many citizens are suffering, and that reflects what they are suffering from and their hope to be free.”
The West Bank and Gaza
“What’s going on in Gaza is really a genocide against the Palestinian people who live in Gaza. Everything is targeted: the schools, the refugee camps, the journalists, the ambulances, everything is targeted by the Israeli missiles. This is what’s going on in Gaza. In the West Bank, we don’t have that much violence, but still we are surrounded by the wall I talked about. We are separated, our families are separated, we are separated from our schools, our universities, our hospitals sometimes. It’s really very hard to go from one city to another because of the checkpoints. We have 8,170 checkpoints in the West Bank. On each entrance of villages, cities, camps, we have checkpoints that stop you and check your ID.
“Sometimes they check our phones just to be sure that we don’t have contacts with people, for example, in Gaza, or images of people who were killed by the Israelis, or any information that they don’t like. So, these checkpoints are places for suffering. And, you know, we waste more than 60 million working hours there yearly, according to an organisation that did research about the Palestinians.
“The most important, dangerous thing in the West Bank is the settlers. There are settlements built on our land. They confiscate the Palestinian land and then they build settlements on it. These settlers who are living there are armed, and they believe that this is their land, and that Palestinians should not be there – and if they are there, that they should be their slaves. They talk about that, and they are extremists. They believe in burning cities, villages and people.
Opinion
Bombs will never bring peace to the Middle East
byAndy Brown
22 October 2024
Palestinians under siege
“There was a family which was burned completely when settlers set fire to their house. All the family died except for one child, so he witnessed the death of his family. This was in a village very close to Nablus. And there was another incident. There was a settler who forced a Palestinian boy to drink kerosene and he burned him to death. So, these are things which are very dangerous. It’s not only that they come to seize the land. It’s more than this. It’s very dangerous to be very close to settlements.
“They confiscated the land not only to build settlements, but also to build roads for the settlers. They move on these roads and deprive the Palestinians of using them, so we must go through bypass roads just to reach our cities or our work or hospitals sometimes. Lots of people died at these checkpoints because of the roads designated only for the settlers.
“For more than 20 years, there has been no continuity between the West Bank and Gaza. We can’t see them, and they can’t see us. They can’t join us. The Palestinians in Gaza were not allowed to flee, neither to the West Bank nor to Egypt. They are under siege. They are not allowed to go anywhere, and they are targeted. We can’t send support to them. We can’t send food or clean water to drink. We can’t do anything for them because all the crossings around Gaza are closed and dominated by the Israeli army. So, the circumstances there are very hard.”
Fears for the future in the West Bank
People in the West Bank are afraid that they may soon find themselves facing a similar level of violence.
“It’s not only a worry”, she stresses. “We believe that there will be something. It’s weighing very hard on the West Bank because there have been statements from many Israeli ministers who announced that they will annex the West Bank to Israel. That means there will be no Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank. So, we have worries and fears because of this. And as I mentioned, all the settlers are armed, and they will never hesitate to open fire on Palestinians. Two weeks before I came here, they broke into Ramallah and they burned many buildings, many cars, and then they went out. They said that it’s only a rehearsal for what’s coming.”
In the circumstances, it’s hard for West Bank residents to get on with day-to-day life. Working in education, whose focus has always been on the long term good of individuals and society, Quneis is determined to keep doing her job, but finds it increasingly difficult.
“It’s really hard to even to think”, she says. “It’s hard to plan. It’s hard to do anything concerning the future, concerning the young generation, because we know that the young generation is targeted, and we know that universities are targeted. Universities in Gaza were completely destroyed. So, when we plan, we must do different scenarios because we don’t know what the future will be. And then also education itself, you know, sometimes we find ourselves obliged to turn it into online lectures because our students couldn’t reach the university because of the checkpoints. Not only this, but sometimes the Israeli army break into the university and confiscate materials, curriculums, equipment.
“We are always threatened. Many times, they broke into the campus and kidnapped students or arrested them or even professors. You can’t imagine how much it’s unstable and scary to think about the future for that generation. The hardest thing is when a student is killed. The funerals come from the university, usually, and all students participate. You can just think of the lectures that come after these funerals. You see the students, the young generation, crying, sad. They can’t concentrate. They can’t focus on their lessons. And to be honest, it’s hard for us.
“Once, for example, I had a student who was killed, and when I mentioned his name for the absence at the beginning of the lecture, I cried in front of my students. So, all of us were crying because he was there a few days ago. He was between us; he was among us. And then he disappeared, and he was killed. So that’s why it’s difficult to talk about education under occupation.”
Media reporting on Palestine
Quneis knows that most media in the UK are reporting only a limited part of what’s currently happening in Palestine, and that Palestinian voices are rarely heard, so she wants to encourage people in Yorkshire to verify what she’s said for themselves.
“The world is open now. Social media is open for everybody. If you search about anything that I said or think that it’s not true, just go and Google that and do proper research. You will find all the evidence there. Just listen to what people say from the West Bank, from Gaza. And if you have the time, if you have the opportunity to go there, just go and see the situation. You will find that it’s much harder than I described now.”
Jennie Kermode is an author and journalist based in Paisley who specialises in LGBTQ issues and film. Her work has appeared in the likes of New Internationalist, the New Statesman and the Independent, she is a commissioning editor at Eye For Film and her most recent book is Growing Older as a Trans and/or Non-Binary Person. Follow them on BlueSky
No comments:
Post a Comment