Permission To Narrate

It is the year 2050 and Israel has fulfilled its vision for Jerusalem: Visitors will see a largely Jewish high-tech center amid a sea of tourists, with a minimal Palestinian presence. To achieve this vision, Israel is working on three master plans; one is well-known but two remain under the radar. 

YISHUV HADAAT, West Bank — With shoulder-length hair tumbling from beneath his knit skullcap, Hanamel Dorfman, a radical young Israeli settler, explains matter-of-factly on camera how hilltop settlement outposts like his own will continue to proliferate across the West Bank. From there, he says bluntly, Israelis will cross the Jordan River and start building on the other side.

Palestinians were baffled when Tanya Habjouqa first explained her photographic project to them. ‘They felt a political obligation to talk about their suffering,’ she says. ‘They were startled when I asked about pleasure. They would slowly ask, ‘Pleasure? We don’t usually discuss pleasure.’ While my pictures may seem light and easy, I had to foster their trust to convince them I was not working to show that things were actually ‘hunky-dory’ under occupation.’

A quarter century of experience working with the army “has brought us to the realization that there is no longer any point in pursuing justice and defending human rights by working with a system whose real function is measured by its ability to continue to successfully cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators,” the organization wrote in an 80-page report that accompanied the announcement.

Khalil Rabah, born in Jerusalem in 1961, currently lives and works in Ramallah. There may be few artists who embrace the make-believe as imaginatively and passionately as Rabah. If the hallmarks of a modern state include a national airline carrier and museum, then Rabah has brought the United States of Palestine to life.

Yarmouk Camp in Damascus is today unrecognizable even to those who knew the camp’s every alleyway and corner.
The rubble, the ruins of bombed buildings, tired and hungry people, and haunted alleyways and streets are the
painful remains of a shattered community. Yarmouk is not the only Palestinian locality in Syria, of course, but
it was in many ways the Palestinians’ social, cultural, political, and even symbolic heart.

On a Facebook page, a colleague accuses me of hate speech. He accuses me of ‘questioning Israel’s right to exist,’ which he says ‘crosses a line and, is I believe, tantamount to anti-Semitism.’ This is a serious charge. Have I denied Israel’s right to exist? Certainly not. Israel exists. It is a member state of the United Nations. Its factual basis is undeniable. Even Hamas does not ‘deny’ Israel’s right to exist.