Beautiful resistance, and teenage angst, inside Aida refugee camp News
Entrance to Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem, with key symbolizing the right of return
Alice Rothchild reports in Mondoweiss:
In late March and early April 2019 I traveled to Jordan and the West Bank to explore and better understand the lives of refugees and the workings of UNRWA, with a focus on the status of refugee health.
Dr. Abdelfattah Abusrour has devoted his life in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem to creating what he calls “beautiful resistance,” developing theater, dance, photography, playing, and other activities to build cultural expression and resistance for children, youth, and women. We are sitting in his cluttered office, the walls covered with inspiring poetry, and pictures of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Pope Benedict (who visited the camp), and Pope Francis, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Albert Einstein.
Abdelfattah established the Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society 21 years ago and despite enormous and repeated financial crises, it has grown into a vigorous and inspiring program that is now housed in an old and a new building. The staircase is lined by the portraits of important cultural figures: Fadwa Toqan, Edward Said, May Ziadah. There is a brightly painted, welcoming children’s library and computer center, and a meeting area and to-be-developed museum of Palestinian artifacts upstairs on the third floor.
Abdelfattah has faced political challenges for himself as well. In 2014 he made a welcoming statement to Pope Francis who stopped to pray at the separation/apartheid wall. Later in the afternoon, when Abdelfattah attempted to return home to Jerusalem (his wife and children have Jerusalem IDs), he was told he was forbidden without explanation. When he asked why, the soldiers replied, “You know why.” After a long legal battle he found that the charges were (something like) having undue influence on the people, making a statement against the state, and organizing an illegal activity. Two years later, the Israelis dropped their case and classified the file, but he suspects that they were unhappy that the pope had stopped to pray, exposing the oppressive concrete barrier for all the world to see.