From Boston to the West Bank Art school director has a vital vision

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent | August 15, 2007

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- At first, the road sign at a busy intersection
in this town looks like any other: A raised silhouette of a hand on a
red background in a circular white border.

But the index and middle fingers of the hand are missing, and the
warning written in Arabic in the border has only a tangential
connection to traffic control: Awkefu al-ketel "Stop the killing."

It's a powerful message directed at both sides in the civil war
between Hamas and Fatah, which has claimed dozens of lives in the Gaza
Strip and could spread to the West Bank.

The artwork, displayed at 50 major junctions across Ramallah and its
neighboring town El Bireh, is the creation of Majd Abdel Hamid, a
19-year-old local artist and one of 12 students selected for the
opening semester of the newly inaugurated International Academy of Art
Palestine.

"It's missing the two victory fingers which usually indicate the
Palestinian revolution and victory. It was a sign that Arafat often
used," explains Hamid. "It says that no one is going to win. It's a
lose-lose situation. The situation with killing is like losing parts
of your body, it's something really bloody."

Hamid's road sign is the first art project to be sponsored by the
Academy and a perfect example of what its founders, a group of local
Palestinian artists, hope to achieve.

"Politicians for more than 60 years haven't really solved our
problems," says Maria C. Khoury, the Academy's Boston-educated project
director.

"For a long time, artists have wanted to say that through art there
can be a new language, there can be communication among ourselves, as
artists, and with the international community," she says.

Khoury, 47, who was born in Greece and raised in Denver, is a graduate
of Hellenic College in Brookline and Harvard University Extension
School, with a doctorate in childhood education from Boston
University. She met her Palestinian husband David at Hellenic College
and in 1996 emigrated to Taybeh, the tiny West Bank village where he
was born.

The Khoury family owns Foley's Liquors in Brookline and on their
return to the West Bank they poured their savings into creating Taybeh
Brewing Co., the first Palestinian brewery. It flourishes despite the
Israeli occupation, the Palestinian intifada, and the rise of Hamas,
which disapproves of alcohol even when brewed by Greek Orthodox
Christians. Today, David Khoury is the mayor of Taybeh.

Maria Khoury says the brewery slogan -- "Taste the Revolution" -- was
built on the same principle as the International Academy of Art
Palestine.

"We're trying to establish an institute that speaks out and says we
love our country, we love our culture," she says. "If we have freedom,
we too can produce excellent products, not just in business. My
husband tries to do that in business and commerce. But we also do it
in the arts, to have the freedom to express who we are."

The Academy aims to be the first independent degree-awarding art
institute in Palestine. Art courses are available at three Palestinian
universities, but their aim is to train high school teachers and they
focus on traditional Arabic art.

The 12 students selected to begin Academy studies this fall will focus
on contemporary visual art across a range of disciplines from video
installations to sculpture to painting.

The Academy's launch came thanks to the initiative of Henrik Placht, a
Norwegian artist who visited the West Bank in 2002 at the height of
the intifada. Placht secured a three-year grant of $1 million per year
from the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
sponsorship of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Placht has already initiated a series of student visits and teaching
exchanges, which began this summer with a Palestinian student building
an Israeli military checkpoint as an art installation at an Oslo train
station.

Khoury is justly proud of the Academy's premises in El Bireh, the
former home of Palestinian historian Aref Al Aref. It housed a
fledgling art gallery more than 20 years ago. The house is a
century-old stone mansion that has been refurbished with studio space
in the basement and the loft, a computer design room, and, at its
center, a white cube with parquet wood flooring, the only exhibition
space of its kind in the Ramallah area.

For Nabil Anani, one of the four local artists who established the
Academy, it is a dream come true.

Anani, 64, was one of four Palestinian artists who founded the "New
Vision" movement during the first intifada. Together they produced
Palestinian art using local materials, placing their work at the
center of the struggle against the occupation.

"The Israelis know that art is important for the Palestinians and so
they were against us from the beginning," Anani says. "They
confiscated many artworks. They arrested many artists. They closed
many exhibitions."

Since the Oslo peace accords in 1993, the Israelis have largely
withdrawn from towns like Ramallah and El Bireh, but freedom is still
elusive. Israeli settlements, and the constant presence of military
jeeps and checkpoints are daily obstacles to free movement around the
West Bank.

Meanwhile, internal political tensions between Hamas and Fatah have
recently erupted into the kind of violence which prompted Hamid's
"Stop the Killing" project.

Anani says a Palestinian art academy is not a luxury -- it's a necessity.

"Palestine needs culture, needs writers, needs artists, needs dance,"
he says. "They need food, hospitals, security, work -- they need
everything. But if you want food, you also want to see art and to
dance and to be happy."

Adds Khoury: "We are starving as Palestinian people to be normal, so
we don't only just need food and medicine. We need to feed our souls."

We'll never surrender! Israeli settlers protest during clash with cops

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, August 8th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - Wielding sledgehammers and power saws, Israeli police in riot gear smashed through doors and walls in a predawn raid on an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank town of Hebron yesterday, destroying three homes.

Police - more than 3,000 officers backed by soldiers - battled with more than 200 demonstrators who pelted them with stones, light bulbs, oil, flour and water.

"We will never surrender!" settler leaders chanted through bullhorns.

Settlers were dragged shouting and screaming from the houses, located in a former Arab market. Three young activists who barricaded themselves inside one of the homes were evicted by an elite army unit usually tasked with rescuing victims of earthquakes and collapsed buildings.

Four soldiers, 14 police officers and 12 settlers were injured during the operation, a police spokesman said. Eleven settlers were detained briefly and two were arrested.

The illegal settlement was built at the site of the ancient Jewish Quarter of the city, close to the Tombs of the Patriarchs. Two families were evicted, along with protesters who had occupied a third house in the area.

Tensions remain high in Hebron, the only town in the West Bank where Jewish settlers live in the middle of the Palestinian population under heavy military protection.

Settler leaders vowed not to allow more West Bank outposts to be demolished. They said the Hebron houses, populated in protest at the murder of baby Shalhevet Pass by a Palestinian sniper in 2001, would be rebuilt.

"We will return to the Shalhevet neighborhood and the families will be back in their homes," said Noam Arnon, spokesman for the Israeli settlers in Hebron.

The raid triggered a political debate inside Israel after several soldiers refused to follow orders to oust the settlers.

The destruction of the settler homes in the heart of Hebron came as Israeli leaders floated a new peace plan seeking to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, with land inside Israel swapped for the larger settlement blocs.