Birzeit: The Palestinian Museum held its second annual conference, Unsettling Jerusalem: Academic Reflections and Societal Engagements. The conference was organised by the Museum’s Knowledge and Research Programmes Department as the year’s concluding event accompanying the Printed in Jerusalem: Mustamloun exhibition.
The conference examined the centrality of Jerusalem in the Palestinian political, cultural, and social imaginaries, expanding on the research upon which the Palestinian Museum’s exhibitions, Jerusalem Lives (2017) and Printed in Jerusalem (2020), were built. It addressed the notion of there being two Jerusalems or more: one manifest in the individual and collective imaginaries, and the other, more distant, walled off and sealed with military checkpoints, unattainable to most Palestinians. The conference posed the following questions: How can we read Jerusalem in the collective Palestinian imaginary? How is the centrality of Jerusalem represented in the Palestinian cultural sphere? Is there unanimity with regards to one Jerusalem? How does resistance mesh with the acts of ordinary daily life in the city? Does Palestinian discourse reflect the reality of Jerusalem and its features?
The Director General of the Palestinian Museum, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, PhD, gave a welcoming address, in which she stressed the significance of holding the Palestinian Museum’s second annual conference as planned, despite the obstacles caused by the pandemic, and in fulfilment of the Museum’s new five-year strategy that builds the Museum’s role as a disseminator and producer of knowledge about Palestine. She affirmed the Museum’s cumulative approach to knowledge production, and highlighted the crucial position that Jerusalem occupies in the Museum’s programmes and activities, and the novel academic questions raised and explored about the city’s reality by the conference speakers.
The conference began with a keynote presentation by historian, researcher, and professor of history, Issam Nassar, who spoke about reclaiming the centrality of Jerusalem in arts and culture. Nassar presented features of Jerusalem’s artisanal and artistic practices historically, focussing on the city’s role as a photography and iconography production hub. Despite the city’s religious and historical status, Nassar asserted, it was its social sphere in addition to its progression and creativity in the arts and architecture that lent Jerusalem its central role in the region. The Nakba and its aftermath contributed to weakening Jerusalem’s symbolic role within the Palestinian national discourse, according to Nassar; Jerusalem became a national symbol as a function of its religious status at the expense of its significance historically and as an urban centre. He concluded his presentation by focussing on the importance of reconsidering and recalling the pivotal role of Jerusalem in modern Palestinian life, as a reclamation of the city’s status in the Palestinian collective imaginary, a step on the way to material reclamation.
First Session – The Institutional and Cultural Centrality of Jerusalem
The first session began with a presentation by writer Nasab Adeeb Hussein in which she spoke about cultural work in Jerusalem and the challenges it has faced in recent years. She noted the work of several cultural institutions and youth initiatives that gained prominence and helped to activate and shape Jerusalem’s cultural scene. According to Hussein, a cultural boom took place, beginning in early 2011 and lasting about 5 years, only to be followed by decline over the past two years due to Israeli policies and internal Palestinian challenges.
In a presentation titled “Jerusalem: Transcending Colonial Geographies Culturally and Politically”, the Director of the Jerusalem Arts Network, Daoud al-Ghoul, focused on the central cultural and political role of Jerusalem over different periods. He noted the transformations that this role has undergone, citing, as an example, the existence of eight cinemas in the city prior to the Nakba, and the absence of any today. Al-Ghoul then addressed Jerusalem’s central role in producing political leaders, a role he believes has been transformed following the Oslo Accords; for despite the Palestinian Authority’s discourse and efforts focusing on Jerusalem, the primary challenge has remained the absence of cultural planning or action that lives up to the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.
Acting Director of the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive project, Salim Abu Thaher outlined the presence of Jerusalem in the Digital Archive, which holds about 200,000 digitized items that cover different aspects of Palestinian social history, 22% of which intersect with Jerusalem. Among the significant collections he cited, are those of educator Khalil Sakakini, artist Fatema Muhib, writer Mahmoud Shukair, playwright François Abu Salem, the Hakawati Theatre, the Women’s Union Association, al-Tali’a and al-Sha’ab newspapers, and al-Bayader al-Siyasi magazine.
Second Session – Jerusalem Chronicles: Accounts of Jerusalemite Steadfastness
Researcher at al-Haq Center for Applied International Law, Ghassan Halayqa, spoke about the colonial policies of censorship and control in Jerusalem, which are implemented through the isolation of Jerusalemites from their compatriots and geography. Halayqa outlined the role that checkpoints and the apartheid wall play in this isolation, in addition to the effects that these and other systematic Israeli policies have had on generations of Jerusalemites isolated in a tightly-controlled space that is polluted with visual manifestations of the occupation. Other systems of control include the network of surveillance cameras in the Old City and the so-called “security zones” across the city’s neighbourhoods.
Advocacy Coordinator for Grassroots Jerusalem, Fayrouz Sharqawi, gave a presentation titled “Bab al-Amud: Confronting Hegemony” in which she spoke about Bab al-Amud (Damascus Gate) as a prime target for colonial policies of domination. Those attempts are manifested in settlement concentration around the area, urban planning policies that include the establishment of adjacent parkland, the suffocation of Palestinian commercial life, and the prohibition of political and cultural gatherings in the area. On the other hand, over the years, Bab al-Amud has also been a site of Palestinian resistance, a hub of cultural gatherings, demonstrations, political uprisings and direct confrontation.
For his part, researcher in Arab and Israeli affairs Ahmad Izzedin Asaad gave a presentation titled “Lions at the Gate: The Resistance Narrative of the Bab al-Asbat and al-Rahma Uprising” in which he described the successful Palestinian resistance and defiance of the occupation’s attempts at altering the historical status quo within the walls of the Old City. Asaad discussed Palestinians’ rejection of the placement of electronic gates at the entrances of al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), in addition to their success at reopening the al-Rahma prayer area, which had been closed for years.
Journalist Abdel-Raouf Arnaout’s presentation, “Framing Jerusalem Journalistically”, focused on Israeli military censorship of the Jerusalemite press historically. Arnaout also discussed the terminological struggle and the occupation’s deliberate emphasis on terms like “Jerusalem Municipality”, “East Jerusalem”, and “Civil Administration”, and the Palestinian Press’s efforts to evade these terms. Arnaout also described the occupation’s employment of advertisements in the interest of achieving certain policies. He concluded with a discussion of the advantages of the relocation of the Palestinian press to Palestinian Authority areas and away the Israeli occupation’s grasp.
Writer and poet Ali Muwasi’s presentation, “Framing Jerusalem Intellectually”, addressed the following questions among others: What knowledge is to be produced that addresses Jerusalem’s challenges? How can knowledge be produced that benefits the dissemination of the Palestinian Jerusalem narrative globally? And how can the knowledge produced about Jerusalem be employed?
Third Session – Jerusalem: Present and Future
The last session of the conference began with a presentation by professor of architecture and urban design Camillo Boano in which he discussed viewing Jerusalem as a paradigm for urban critical studies. Boano framed his presentation with the concept of paradigm as defined by Giorgio Agamben, addressing Jerusalem as an exceptional case surrounded with tension.
The conference was concluded with a final presentation given by Yasser Qous, executive director of the African Community Society, titled “Afro-Palestinians: Reasons for Migration and Manifestations of Integration”. Qous addressed the question of when and how West African communities arrived in Palestine and settled in Jerusalem, and how they related to the local society. He also shed light on the Afro-Palestinian community’s role in different stages of the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation.
The Palestinian Museum will issue a publication containing the research papers submitted for the conference. Video of the entire conference is available on the Palestinian Museum YouTube page.