hamas and fatah

Gaza Artists Union Defends Culture From Political Warfare

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Roughly 600 Gazan artists held a conference in Gaza City on Feb. 28 to form a new Palestinian artists’ union in a bid to preserve their work. The gathering of the General Union of Palestinian Artists is the first of its kind to be held in Gaza in two decades.

The conference sought to address Gaza’s neglected music and art scene, which has been hampered by war and Palestinian political division. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Yusuf Almeghari, a member of the conference steering committee, said that the gathering concluded with a series of recommendations, including electing a 78-member board, which would involve all the political parties in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

“I can tell you that many of those who attended had tears [in their eyes] because it was the first time we held such a gathering, which, we hope, will constitute the beginning of organized artistic activities across the territory,” Almeghari said.

Wars with Israel and political infighting between Hamas and Fatah have resulted in a lack of interest in Gaza’s art scene as well as funding for it. As a consequence, musicians in the Gaza Strip face significant challenges, including a dearth of professional training and fellow professional musicians.

Dwindling art in Gaza

In 1986, Mohammad Abu al-Seoud, a 50-year-old local musician in the central Gaza Strip town of Deir Elbalah, began composing and writing melodies for patriotic songs, but the veteran composer stopped working in 2004, citing a lack of support from authorities.

“I have spent all my life in music, and I have performed many melodies, even on Palestine TV prior to the 2007 political split in Gaza. Yet, I have increasingly felt disappointed as the musical scene in Gaza has become worse than ever, mainly because of the lack of music schools and professional training,” Seoud told Al-Monitor at his modest family home.

One band that took part in the conference was the National Band for Folkloric Palestinian Arts, which is one of the few leading national bands in the occupied Gaza Strip that primarily performs patriotic songs.

“Our band was established in 1996, and since then it has taken part in a series of performances locally and regionally, including festivals in Haifa, which was a Palestinian city prior to 1948, as well as in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia,” said Walid Ataiya, the band’s deputy director. The band consists of 35 members, including 7 women between the ages of 18 and 25, who perform the folkloric Levantine dabka dance.

In addition to producing new content, the band also revives famous Palestinian nationalist poetry, such as the late Mahmoud Darwish’s “We Can Never Forget Our Ancestors, We Can Never Forget the Days of Dignity,” Ataiya explained. The band’s ability to perform in Gaza, however, has been routinely disrupted since 2006 due to the political climate.

Fatah-Hamas split harms music scene

According to Swailam Alabsi, a well-known scenarist and film director in Gaza, the composition of patriotic songs has suffered because of a lack of patronage by the relevant authorities, as well as the absence of music schools, as reported by Asmaa al-Ghoul.

Patriotic music, once a hallmark of Palestine’s national resistance movement, has fractured along factional lines, according to Alabsi. “I personally have written hundreds of patriotic songs since 1967. The songs used to promote national trends, but since the Oslo peace accords, unfortunately, patriotic songs have begun to appear in different forms and colors, each representing a political faction,” he said.

Regardless, the national band continues to write patriotic songs that “only go with the national aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Alabsi explained.

“Even in the time of Oslo itself, I personally composed a song that was anti-Palestinian Authority corruption during the time of late President Yasser Arafat himself. Arafat told me, ‘Do not worry Swailam, the situation will get better,’” he said.

The internal split among Palestinian factions resulted in the national band being used as a political weapon of Hamas and Fatah. The band has faced restrictions in Gaza and an attempted takeover by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

“We have been facing lots of restrictions from local authorities here. For instance, they will not allow us to broadcast a certain song on a local radio station, or they prevent a certain singer from performing a certain song. We want real patronage of patriotic clips or songs that reflect the national Palestinian scene independent of any political affiliation,” Alabsi said while calling for Hamas and Fatah to repair their differences.

Nahed al-Hour, director of the national band, revealed that PA President Mahmoud Abbas had issued a decree three years ago to place the band under the auspices of the Ramallah-based authority.

“So far, such a decree has not seen the light for reasons that we do not know,” he said, appealing to all parties concerned to support his band and respect its non-partisan stance.

Union brings hope

The formation of the new union is in response to the neglect and politicization of Gaza’s art scene. Among the recommendations are, according to Almeghari, establishing acting and music schools in Gaza, having musicians and actors participate in festivals abroad to represent Palestinian art and folklore, and holding local shows at public theaters to generate much-needed income for the continued development of the arts in Gaza.

Almeghari emphasized that those elected at the conference will represent the Gaza union at an upcoming general summit for the Palestinian arts, to be held in either Ramallah or Gaza. The new union is part of a growing movement of grassroots Palestinians frustrated with the continued political division between Hamas and Fatah negatively affecting Palestinian life.

“We deeply hope that the current political split will come to an end once and for all and that we Palestinian artists will have our own home for all of us, irrespective of political affiliations,” Almeghari said.

Editor’s note: Yusuf Almeghari is a relative of the author.

Rami Almeghari is an independent journalist based in Gaza.

This article appeared here  http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/03/gaza-forms-new-artist-union.html#ixzz2MPpx3o1P

A compelling article: From manifesto to reality ‘Gaza Youth Breaks Out’

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“My story is marked by violence, persecution, arrests, abuse and resistance,” writes Matte

It has been almost two years now since we wrote our manifesto. We called it a manifesto, but in reality, I’m not sure what it was.

Was it a manifesto, or was it a cry for help? Perhaps, an accusation, or even perhaps a demand to the world and to ourselves; a demand for change from the outside and from within.

It was before the uprisings began around us, and they have been roaring the last two years in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain. But we had felt like shouting in the dark, and while this raging had brought light into the darkness of the dictatorships around us, the night around us has not thinned even a bit. No, if anything, it has only become darker.

We had come out from under the rubble in 2009, when Israel had embarked on what they liked to call a “war” – which in actuality had been a massacre – leaving 1,385 people dead, among them 318 children. They left Gaza in ruins.

We had built up Gaza again with our bare hands, even though cement was blockaded; we had buried our loved ones and tried to cover the holes in our hearts which they left. A year later, we regained the strength to shout out our unbearable situation to the world, and to unite for a fight against the hell we were – and are – living in.

We too organised large demonstrations, even though they were overshadowed by the revolutions taking place in the surrounding countries. Our demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip began on March 15, 2011, bringing out a large part of the population onto the streets. We wanted to achieve the unity of our parties and leaders – Hamas and Fatah – who in the quest to have seize power and wealth have betrayed our land of Palestine and the dreams and demands of our youth.

For this we demonstrated, for this we put in weeks of work to bring the people of Gaza to the streets, for this we were knocked down by thugs on the streets, for this we have been arrested and abused.

And for this goal, we achieved what first had seemed promising: Discussions, negotiations and unity efforts by our leaders. And still, all of that ended up in empty promises.

Manifesto? That sounds too fierce, like a struggle that might produce victory. But we are tired, two years later. Tired of the empty promises surrounding us. There is a peace process, but one that is an insult to the word “peace”, and that makes one wonder for whom such a farce is still seriously maintained.

Under siege

Since 2006, the ongoing siege punishes us daily – we could mention all the UN conventions it violates, as if that wasn’t mentioned enough already. Collective punishment for all of us, for having elected the wrong party, for having held one Israeli soldier who is now free, while thousands of our prisoners languish in Israeli jails. Collective punishments for being Palestinians, for being born in Gaza.

And that siege means that our hospitals regularly declare a state of emergency because they don’t have enough medicine or medical equipment. This siege means that we are literally sitting in the dark most of the time – without connection to the internet and thus without any connection to the outside world – because there is no electricity.

It also means that the discourse in the media is about whether there is enough food coming in, whether the siege has lifted a bit and if now there are enough sorts of Israeli chips packets in our supermarkets. Like we are animals in a zoo and the question is whether we are fed enough. We are, I can tell you. We don’t need your aid packages, we don’t need your chips, nor your bread.

We had well-functioning factories, which were bombed away. We had rich land that could produce not only enough food for us, but enough to export it to the whole world. If that land wasn’t raped daily by Israeli bulldozers, and if we weren’t forbidden to enter by military declarations. There is still an ongoing siege, keeping us needy like beggars – and we get bread instead of rights.

There are talks about unity and re-elections, consisting of words which are so empty that it is not even worth listening to them.

And then there are the new Arab governments. The new Egypt, which wants to open the Rafah border crossing in order to no longer be complicit in imprisoning us in our 5 by 20 km hell. But even with so many visits by Hamas to Cairo, it’s still just words. When will this happen? When will there be open borders instead of just assurances? When will our children no longer be born into a world where there is no freedom, no adequate medical care, no work, no future, nothing but violence and falling bombs?

We are still young enough to fight for our own future, not only for that of our children, and yet old enough to be tired. Tired of the daily struggle for survival, which distracts us from our dreams. Tired of our own government, which meets our hopes with violence.

Story of resistanceWe are still young enough to fight for our own future, not only for that of our children, and yet old enough to be tired. Tired of the daily struggle for survival, which distracts us from our dreams. Tired of our own government, which meets our hopes with violence.

I still regularly keep in touch with people in Gaza. The talk is usually about the lack of electricity, bombs in the night, graduates with no job opportunities, the tight grip of the Hamas government, and walls that are nearly impossible to scale. Yes, mainly they talk about leaving. Leaving Gaza, leaving this prison and dumpster of the world. Many of my friends left like I did, and many more want to.

We wrote this manifesto because we wanted to live. Not because we wanted to be tortured, arrested and sacrificed. No, we are young enough to demand a future for ourselves, and we don’t see a future for us in Gaza right now.

My friends and I were forced to leave by a Gaza that has been made unbearable by violence and arrests through Hamas. A future in Gaza has been robbed from us by a siege that leaves us no jobs or opportunities. Nevertheless, even though we might be leagues apart and spread throughout the world, we will never cease to see a future for Gaza. Palestine, Gaza, that is our land, that is where we belong.

There’s an olive tree in my garden, and I have always dreamed of seeing my children playing under it. Wherever I might be now, one day my children will be playing under this olive tree, in a free Palestine, without fear for their lives, and that is what I will keep fighting for.

Yes, we are weary. But still, my story – and the stories of all the other amazing youth of Gaza – is and always will be a story of resistance, of resilience. Of always coming back to the land we belong to. We carry the hope of a free Gaza, a free Palestine and a future there for us in our hearts, and in our hands, in our daily work.

We struggle every day against our obstacles and for our dreams, and you can see that in all the amazing creativity coming out of Gaza, in our art, poems, writing, videos and songs, you can hear it and meet us in the talks we give all over the world.

Yes, we wrote a manifesto, and maybe that was just the bright and loud outcry of the beginning of a journey, whose path is hard and tiring, thorny and also often very quiet and dark. But it is always there.

So two years later, we say: We will be free. We will live. We will have peace. And we are always out there, fighting our daily struggle, full of the resistance we inherited from a long struggle for Palestine. We live and write and say and sing silent or load manifestos every day. Just listen to us.

Mohammed Matter ‘Abu Yazan’, from Gaza, is a political activist, writer and a member of Gaza Youth Breaks Out movement. He is currently in Germany, about to resume his studies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.  

Source:  Al Jazeera  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210159115846939.html