Category: Photo Story

Telling old stories in a new way: Palestinian dabke

At the first annual Hebron Festival, an event organized by the Hebron Municipality to celebrate the culture and history of Palestinians in Hebron, students from across the West Bank put on a theatrical performance, telling of life and history in Palestine through a play combined with music and dabke.

Dabke is a native Levantine folk dance popular in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Iraq. Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings, festivals, and other joyous occasions, sometimes even at protests like the Great March of Return in Gaza . Dabke in Palestine is thought to date back to ancient Canaan or Phoenicia, and involves a variety of footwork.

On September 22nd, Palestinian youth at the Happiness of Childhood Centre, Hebron, put on a moving dabke performance, depicting various aspects of life in Palestine, such as weddings, coming of age, protests, as well as historical events that shaped their lives, such as Al Nakba and the first Intifada, all woven together through the tale of a young boy and his sister growing up in Palestine in the 20th century.

The play’s protagonists — a young boy and his sister.

 

The opening dabke performance.

 

Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces in 1948.

 

Life (and dabke!) in the refugee camps after Nakba.

 

Seeking fatherly advice.

 

The first Intifada: a child shot and killed at a protest.

 

Imprisonment of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

 

A Palestinian wedding.

 

The cast.

Settler tour exemplifies the difficult reality of occupation in the Old City of Hebron – a photo essay

July 7 | International Solidarity Movement | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Every Saturday, illegal Jewish settlers from around the West Bank take a “tour” of the busy souq (market) in Old City of Hebron, the busiest market street in the area since the closure of Shuhada Street. Local Palestinians believe that the Israeli authorities facilitate the tour as a deliberate method of intimidation, making life intolerable and unsustainable for them in order to prompt displacement.

On the tour, current and prospective settlers are given a skewed history of Hebron which disregards and contradicts the documented history of peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in the city before 1948. Instead, it identifies the land’s heritage as solely Jewish. As shown, the settlers are escorted by numerous Israeli soldiers and Border Police officers, who randomly detain Palestinians for ID checks and prevent free movement in the souq during the duration of the tour.

Military and police can also be seen on the rooftops of Palestinian homes, many of which are now empty as a result of forced evictions for surveillance purposes. Palestinians living in the Old City are under constant threat of home invasions by the Israeli military and Jewish settlers, further contributing to displacement and the theft of Palestinian property.

 

 

International and Palestinian Journalists Tear Gassed

November 17, 2018 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Ramallah, occupied Palestine

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) decided to hold its annual meeting in Palestine this year, where they demonstrated at the infamous Qalandia checkpoint on Saturday. The dozens of journalists, holding only international press cards, were immediately met with canisters of tear gas.

“We went peacefully, wearing IFJ uniforms and carrying IFJ cards. It’s obvious that it was journalists who were demonstrating,” explained Nasser Abu Baker, Chairman of the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, a representative to the IFJ. Nasser was one of the many journalists fired upon at Qalandia.

“In the last four years there were three 3000 crimes committed against journalists, 26 of which were murders… It’s obvious that the Israeli leadership couldn’t accept our demand for freedom of movement, and the scene of IFJ being there, standing with Palestinian journalists.”

Lack of freedom of movement is a common experience for Palestinians in the West Bank, most of whom are unable to leave. The few who leave the West Bank for work face the physical torment of waiting in line for hours, crammed together in zig-zagged cages, and facing the high probability of Israeli aggression.

Qalandia checkpoint is the subject of much reported abuse, though none of this would be known if it wasn’t for the Palestinian press. But their reporting has come with a price: It has created huge controversy and caused them to suffer incredible abuse. Today’s demonstration was no exception.
In Nasser’s words:
“This was a crime against Palestinian journalists… It was crime against the international press.”