In the West Bank, an exhibition to preserve Palestinian art from Gaza

In the town of Bir Zeit, in the occupied West Bank, a museum presents an exhibition bringing together works of art and artifacts from the Gaza Strip, thus offering an alternative space in solidarity with the territory scarred by the war between Israel and Hamas, where cultural sites were devastated.

Objective: “to preserve the Palestinian heritage which was destroyed by the war in Gaza”, explained to AFP Ehab Bessaiso, former Palestinian Minister of Culture and one of the managers of the Bir Zeit museum (center).

Also read Mosques, churches, museums... The cultural heritage of Gaza ravaged by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The war in Gaza was provoked by an unprecedented attack carried out in Israel on October 7 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from Gaza, which resulted in the death of more than 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count. based on official Israeli data.

In retaliation, Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, and is carrying out a military offensive which has left nearly 29,700 dead in the Palestinian territory, the vast majority civilians, according to the Hamas Health Ministry. .

The conflict also caused irreparable cultural damage, inspiring a solidarity movement in the West Bank. “We were surprised when the works of hundreds of artists came to us from universities and cultural centers and from Palestinian individuals in the West Bank,” Mr. Bessaiso said.

The exhibition aims to be “an alternative space to the one that existed in Gaza before the fires of the war destroyed it,” the museum administration said. It presents paintings, traditional costumes, archaeological objects and offers “a way to address the challenges and difficulties that artists and culture face in Gaza in a context of destruction and siege,” continued Ehab Bessaiso. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, 24 cultural centers were damaged or completely destroyed by the war.

Sites such as the Al-Qarara museum, which was surrounded by 5,000-year-old Roman columns, and an ancient Phoenician port were destroyed, as well as the Arab Orthodox cultural and social center and that of Rashad Shawa, which notably included a theater and a library.

The exhibition is “a journey through Palestinian art from Gaza, particularly after the assassination of dozens of artists, writers, poets and journalists,” added Mr. Bessaiso, stressing that “this journey affirmed the unity of the Palestinian people that the (Israeli) occupation is trying to destroy.” The West Bank is territory occupied by Israel since 1967. Three million Palestinians live there and around 490,000 Israelis live in settlements considered by the UN to be illegal under international law.

The exhibition also depicts the devastation caused by the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In the main room, rubble symbolizing destruction, sound effects from Israeli surveillance drones and videos of ambulances transporting the wounded, immerse visitors in the reality of Gazans. The names of 115 artists are listed at the entrance to the exhibition, some of whom were killed during the war.

“The exhibition is a reminder of the solidarity between the West Bank and Gaza,” Mohammed al-Houwajia, an artist from Rafah, a town in the southern Gaza Strip, told AFP in a video call. Nearby, a series of paintings by Tayseer Barakat, born in the Jabaliya camp in Gaza (north) but living in the West Bank since 1984, is on display. Some carry written messages about the war.

“How do you lose 7,000 children? By raining bombs on them one after the other, then preventing them from being pulled out of the rubble,” one of them read. “How do you lose a population of two and a half million people? By cutting them off from communications, electricity, water and life,” said another.

The painter explained to AFP that this series is “a message and an expression of what I saw and heard about the senseless war that our people are suffering in Gaza.”