-Am Johal

About a fifteen minute walk from the street vendors
and businesses of the downtown Palestinian cultural
capital of Ramallah, is a dangerous subversive place
according to the Israeli authorities. So much so that
they in fact in 2002 raided the Khalil Sakakini
Cultural Center and according to the Miami Herald
"seized a computer and a cellphone, broke dozens of
windows, swept books off shelves, peppered walls with
shrapnel and bullets, spit pumpkin seeds on the floor
and allegedly stole 3,700 shekels."

The Georgetown educated Director Adila Laidi said at
the time, "It was just vandalism, part of a conscious
desire to ruin everything Palestinian. Once you
decide to do that, you go and methodically destroy
every institution. Subconsciously, they are dreaming
about shoving the whole Palestinian people out of
existence."

In Occupied Palestine, it is as if you live a
dehumanized existence from the day you're born. You
are uneqal. You feel it everyday in how power is
exercised. That relationship is rarely altered. You
are second class and relegated to a Bantustan-like
existence. When the people in power talk peace, you
see the situation deteriorate. You see loved ones
die, killed off by security forces. You face the
Separation Wall and are denied entry into Israel to
see family members. You learn to hate because you're
isolated and you know nothing else.

Today you can still see the broken glass of the
picture, the bullet holes and a broken door left in
the board room, curated like an art exhibit. The
Sakakini Center has at different times received
funding from the Japanese Government, the United
Nations Development Program, the Ford Foundation, the
European Union and Dutch benefactors - hardly radical
organizations in the grand scheme of things.

Director Adila Laidi tells me that the role of culture
evolves over time and raises to the public questions
like the normalcy of the Israeli Occupation. If
Edward Said and Noam Chomsky argue that the role of
the intellectual is to speak truth to power and Bill
Moyers says the same of journalism, then what Laidi is
arguing is much the same for art and culture in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In the office next door, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud
Darwish, known as the conscience of his people, is
working on his literary review, Al Karmel, as he has
since he used to edit it in Lebanon.

Laidi says that since the outbreak of the Second
Intifada in 2000, there has been no normal life. And
that as the role of art and culture develop as a means
of expression in the context of the Occupation and the
current Intifada, the Sakakini Cultural Center has a
duty to reach beyond the middle, educated classes.

Her view is that music, culture, art and literature
still has the power to lift people up to dream and
imagine when their humanity has been reduced to an
identity card. And by giving people access to these
forms of expression, it can also reduce the gaps
between those who are here and isolated with those who
are in the Palestinian diaspora and the outside world.
She sees it as a place where people can channel their
anger and creativity.

Laidi sees the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center as a
place to nurture Palestinian visual artists. She was
also involved with curating the controversial 100
Shaheeds exhibit which memorialized the first 100
Palestinians which died in the Second Intifada.

In the introduction to the book, Laidi as the Editor
writes, "one of the project's goals was to give back
to each shaheed (martyr) his or her
individuality...[hence] each [was given] his or her
own personal space, featuring his or her name,
photograph and personal object. The Shuhada [are] also
presented in order of age. The objects and photographs
... speak for themselves, on their own terms, going
beyond death to recreate a life without the clutter of
text or obtrusive display devices." The exhibit has
gone abroad to several countries and generated much
discussion.

For now, the Sakakini Cultural Center is limited in
their ability to go beyond Ramallah, hampered by the
same security restrictions as everyone else.

Adila Laidi says, "We need to have more rooting in the
community that does not currently consume culture, and
have more popular forms which they can affiliate
with."