solidarity in the face of fascism

courtesy the Democratic Socialists of America. a protest sign for our times. 

(in hyper-secular France, would any left organization propose such a sign?)

Wafa Hourani, Qalandia 2067

I first saw Qalandia (Kalandia) refugee camp in December 1961, on my first visit to the "Holy Land," with my family, when we flew into Jerusalem and landed at Qalandia (Kalandia) airport. When I did fieldwork in Palestine/Israel in 1984-85 I drove by it, on my way between Ramallah and Jerusalem, multiple times. I saw it again many times, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, on research trips in the summer of 1992 and again in 1993. In summer 2008, my last trip, I waited for long periods at the checkpoint, which is the site of a huge Israeli checkpoint that controls travel between East Jerusalem (annexed by Israel in 1967) and the West Bank. It is an awful ugly edifice, that looks like it belonged at an international border. (It's not, since the Palestinian authority enjoys no sovereignty, and there is no Palestinian checkpoint checking passes/passports after you leave the Israeli checkpoint.)

Here's my photo of the checkpoint, and here's one of the separation barrier/apartheid wall at Qalandiya.

As for Qalandiya camp, I don't think I ever actually visited it, just viewed it from the outside. But I've had many many views between 1961 and 2008. The camp has been there since 1949, to house refugees who fled the fighting and expulsions of 1947-48, and today has around 11,500 residents. It has been in existence for 65 years.

I have just read a very fine New Yorker review of the current New Museum exhibit of contemporary art from or about the Arab World, by Andrea K. Scott. What really struck me was this photo, of Wafa Hourani's piece "Qalandia 2067."

Scott describes it as follows: “Qalandia 2087,” [in fact it's 2067- TS] an elaborate architectural model by the Ramallah-based Wafa Hourani, reimagines a Palestinian refugee camp as a utopian zone of playgrounds, cafés, and landscaped courtyards—there’s even a glitter-paved aquarium, stocked with fish.

Fair enough, this seems a plausible enough reading, and I don't want to be too hard on Scott here, as her review of the exhibit as a whole is very favorable and very smart.

But notice the date in that title, and imagine what a Palestinian artist is thinking when he imagines that a refugee camp that was established 65 years ago will still exist 53 years hence.

If you consult the page for Hourani's "Qalandia 2067" exhibit at London's Saatchi Gallery, however, you will read the following:

Qalandia 2067 takes its name from the main check point crossing through the West Bank Security Fence which divides the cities of Ramallah and ar-Ram; it is a site of political unrest and human rights concerns. Dating his piece 2067 – one hundred years after the Arab-Israeli 6 Day War – Hourani has constructed 5 scale models envisioning the future of a refugee camp where time seems to have regressed rather than evolved. Basing each segment on an actual site – the airport, border crossing, and 3 settlements – the buildings are rendered as war-ravaged and crumbling, crowned by implausibly archaic remnants of TV antennae. Each building is a miniature light-box illuminating glimpses into the private lives of the residents through film strips placed in the windows, an unnerving reminder that this science fiction horror is, for many, an everyday experience.

In fact, I think both readings hold. Yes, Qalandia is a "horror" for its residents, due to circumstances, and at the same time it is where people manage to make a life and homes for themselves and manage to persist despite the ongoing, seemingly endless, displacement and occupation and oppression.

Check out these photos of the exhibit, from the Saatchi exhibit (and there are more to view at the link above):

 

Remarkable, no? I sooooo wish I could make it to this exhibit.

Statement from the Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews

Statement from the Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews, 14 September, 2012 / 27 Elul, 5772 

A) We most sincerely thank the Israeli government for confirming our status as refugees following a rapid, 62-year-long evaluation of our documents.

B) We request that Ashkenazi Jews are also recognized as refugees so that they won't consider sending to our homes the courteous officers of the Oz immigration enforcement unit.

C) We are seeking to demand compensation for our lost property and assets from the Iraqi government - NOT from the Palestinian Authority - and we will not agree with the option that compensation for our property be offset by compensation for the lost property of others (meaning, Palestinian refugees) or that said compensation be transferred to bodies that do not represent us (meaning, the Israeli government).

D) We demand the establishment of an investigative committee to examine: 1) if and by what means negotiations were carried out in 1950 between Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said, and if Ben-Gurion informed as-Said that he is authorized to take possession of the property and assets of Iraqi Jewry if he agreed to send them to Israel; 2) who ordered the bombing of the Masouda Shem-Tov synagogue in Baghdad, and if the Israeli Mossad and/or its operatives were involved. If it is determined that Ben-Gurion did, in fact, carry out negotiations over the fate of Iraqi Jewish property and assets in 1950, and directed the Mossad to bomb the community's synagogue in order to hasten our flight from Iraq, we will file a suit in an international court demanding half of the sum total of compensation for our refugee status from the Iraqi government and half from the Israeli government.

E) Blessings for a happy new year, a year of peace and prosperity, a year of tranquility and fertility.

 ~ The Ramat Gan Committee of Baghdadi Jews

(As originally posted by Almog Behar on FB. I got it via Racheli.)

Displaced: Middle East Report Issue 244

Very timely new issue of Middle East Report (244, Fall 2007), on Displacement. The promotional blurb is below. Read and SUBSCRIBE! (Confession: I'm on the editorial committee).

Downplayed in the media, dithered over by the international community and (until recently) ignored by the Bush administration, more than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes since the US-led invasion of their country in 2003. Even before the Iraqis' flight, the Middle East held the dubious distinction of being one of the foremost generators of refugees -- Palestinians, Sudanese, Somalis and others -- in the world. In the mass uprooting and dispersal of Iraqis, as demonstrated in the fall 2007 issue of Middle East Report, "Displaced," there is much that is sadly familiar.

What is novel about the Iraqi displacement crisis, writes anthropologist Julie Peteet, is the near silence about the displaced, the absence of camps and the belated humanitarian assistance. The crisis magnifies the trend noticeable in the 1990s toward categorizing the displaced as something other than refugees and thereby minimizing the legal obligations of states and international bodies to help them.

Madona Mokbel surveys the plight of Iraqis in neighboring states, where they are denied access to jobs and services, and also face the growing resentment of the native population, who blame them for rising prices and groaning infrastructure. As political scientist Stefanie Nanes finds in Jordan, this blame is misplaced. Given the limited capacity of neighboring states to absorb refugees, the question is why the US and UN have been so slow to respond, argue researchers Kathryn Libal and Scott Harding.

The displacement of Iraqis of course recalls the 1948 expulsion and flight of Palestinians, who continue to live in a harrowing limbo. Muhammad Ali Khalidi and Diane Riskedahl, analyzing the Lebanese army's summer 2007 assault on the Nahr al-Barid refugee camp, conclude that the only thing uniting Lebanese factions is "antipathy for the Palestinians living in their midst." Relief efforts, reports Mayssun Sukarieh, are received with ambivalence by Palestinians who wish their supporters would focus on campaigning for Palestinian rights -- including the right of return. Middle East Report interviews the activists of Zochrot, an Israeli organization working to recover the suppressed memory of the Palestinian displacement in Israel.

Also featured: Stephen Dedalus chronicles another forced migration that has passed almost unnoticed in the West -- the Pakistani military's displacement of perhaps 250,000 people from rebellious Balochistan; Joel Beinin visits settler-besieged al-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills; Laleh Khalili reviews Bernard Rougier's Everyday Jihad; and more.

Subscribe to Middle East Report or order individual copies online at www.merip.org.