Al fenieq in Miska. D A A R D e c o l o n i z i n g A r c h i t e c t u r e Art Residency. A Journal on the Ongoing Nakba

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1 Al fenieq in Miska A Journal on the Ongoing Nakba Towards return of Palestinian refugees Issue no. 6 August 2011 D A A R D e c o l o n i z i n g A r c h i t e c t u r e Art Residency

2 In April 2005, on the evening of the 57 th anniversary commemoration of the Nakba, a group of young people, members of the Nakba s third generation who lived in Tira, not far from their village, established the Committee of Miska s Uprooted. They decided to document the story of their village and their ancestors suffering in order to defend their future. That April initiative continued with a visit to the village by a large number of people, including dozens from the village and their supporters as well as members of Zochrot. The participants planted olive and fig saplings. A few days later the authorities uprooted the saplings and blocked the roads leading to the village school, barring its door. The initiative continued. The committee reopened the school building and turned it into a cultural center. The first cultural evening was held on May 11, Salman Natour, the author, was the guest; he presented his play, Memory. The authorities reacted quickly. They surrounded the school building with barbed wire. ground the location where the school had stood before the Nakba. In May, 2007, we held the first commemoration of the Nakba without the school building. But we nevertheless planned a special children s activity drawing a huge wall mural. This time, after the regime finally understood that the destruction failed to stop us, it didn t respond. Umar Ighbarieh wrote this account and published it in April, 2009, two years before this issue of Sedek was prepared, in a booklet Zochrot published for a tour of the village of Miska. During these two years, activities commemorating the village and planning for the return continued, and Miska became increasingly important as a site of commemoration and political activity. That is why three of the projects described in this issue of Sedek focus on the possibility of a return to Miska. This project is carried out by DAAR Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency in Bethlehem, which offers the possibility for the return of Palestinian refugees to Miska, and begins by opening a space at the center of the destroyed village for creative action and culture. Al Fenieq, the mythic creature that rises over and over again from its ashes, is the name of the center for creativity and culture in the Dheisheh refugee camp, which is constantly being destroyed by the Israeli army and then rebuilt by the camp s residents. The image of Al Fenieq is replicated in the framework of the projected refugee return from the Dheisheh refugee camp to the village of Miska, a return that will be built not on the denial of the refugee camp, but on its inclusion. Two more cultural evenings were held in July, The guest at the first was the Iraqi-Jewish writer, Sami Michael. The second involved artistic and political activities in which dozens of artists, activists and villagers participated. The fence was turned into a huge protest display. The nervous authorities responded stupidly, tearing down the art works. A year later, on May 3, 2006, on the 58 th anniversary of the Nakba, Lutf Nuweser, the actor, presented "Uncle Matta", a story of the Nakba for children, amidst the remains of the village. This time the response bordered on the insane. The regime sent bulldozers to destroy the school building, and planted orange trees to hide the criminal act. Our response was to mark on the 3 2

3 Return to the common The notion of return has defined the diasporic and extraterritorial nature of Palestinian politics and cultural life since the Nakba in Often articulated in the suspended politics of political theology, it has gradually been blurred in the futile limbo of negotiations. Our project extends the legalistic approach to the right of return with a projective one that aims to open the political imagination towards the different forms in which a present return could take place. The right of return also includes a multiplicity of rites of return, practices undertaken at present. What are the multiple forms of present return? Thinking about return necessitates the adoption of a stereoscopic vision that navigates the complex terrain between two places the extraterritorial space of Extract from a conversation between Amal, Abu Khalil and Salma. Deheisheh camp, August 11th, 2007 Amal: Abu Khalil, when will we return home to our villages of 48? Abu Khalil: We are still looking for enough buses to take you home. Amal: We already have the Ibdah bus of return! [The bus that Ibdah centre bought for Dheisheh camp refugees in order to be ready when it is time to go back home] Salma: But I don t really want to leave Dheisheh! To whom shall we leave the camp? Is there no way to have both, our village our right and the camp our life? refugee and the out-of-reach village of origin. 5 4

4 Miska (absentee property), 2010 Deheisheh refugee camp (UN-administered area), 2010 Both the demolished villages and the refugee camps are extraterritorial spaces, not fully integrated into the territories that surround them. The former is legally defined as absentee property and the latter as a United Nations administered area, a sphere of action carved out of state sovereignty. Refugee life is suspended between these two ungrounded sites. Always double. 7 6

5 The School of Miska Ismat Shubeita Al Fenieq Center in Dheisheh Naji Odeh We are internally displaced people, refugees with Israeli passports. We have the possibility and responsibility to go back to our villages or origins despite the fact that Israel forbids us access to our own lands. Since 2002 we have started reusing the remains of Miska s school. We celebrated weddings and birthdays, ate together, then marked the outlines of the demolished building around the school and posted signs bearing the names of children who once attended it. The Israeli authority feared these activities and decided to destroy the school. But we have not stopped coming back and more people have joined us now. The Committee for the Defense of the Expelled chose the school of Miska as the site for the annual March of al-awda ( the March of Return ) with thousands of Palestinian supporters assembling every year around the ruins in support of the right of return. Al Feneiq, the cultural center that we have built in Dheisheh refugee camp, is like a novel that we have collectively written; it represents an innovative cultural process that can also change and reverse itself. Indeed it has become a model. The first Fenieq was created in Dheisheh, but we have succeeded in also creating another center in Aroab camp a Fenieq could be created also in Deir Aban, my village of origin. We need to think about a model for the return. I know that finally a Fenieq in my village would be even stronger than the Fenieq in Dheisheh camp I will leave Dheisheh Camp to the city of Bethlehem. I know I will miss Dheisheh. I will return to walk in its alleys in the summer nights Bethlehem will remain the place where I will gather my forces and my people to prepare a new base and a new life after the Return. I m sure we will be able to reproduce a model through the collective work that will not only prepare the environment for the return, but that will influence refugees across the Arab world 9 8

6 Miska, 2010 Deheisheh Camp,

7 Miska 1948 Dheisheh refugee camp, 1953 On 20th April the paramilitary Zionist organization of the Haganah occupied the village of Miska and expelled its inhabitants by force. In 1953, fearing return, the core of the village was razed to the ground. The boys elementary school and a part of the mosque remained standing. Like many other prominent buildings in the emptied villages, they might have been reserved for tourist reasons. The camp was established in 1949 within the municipal boundaries of Bethlehem on less than a third of a square kilometer. The camp s original refugees came from 45 different villages. Like other West Bank camps, Dheisheh was established on a plot of land UNRWA leased from the government of Jordan

8 Miska 2007 Dheisheh refugee camp, 2007 The carved-stones from the ruined houses and the tombstones of the cemetery have grown together into a single rock covering the top of the hill. In the cracks of this rock a small forest was planted, hiding the remnants of a crime. The camp has grown to one square kilometer and its population to 10,000 refugees. Against a cultural/political background in which every form of material improvement in camps is necessarily understood as normalisation or the renunciation of political rights, our project adds a dimension of presentness. The present return is inserted between the conceptualizations of refugee habitat as trapped between a traumatic past and the indeterminate future. Improvements, politically articulated, must support the lives of refugees as a platform on which their political claims can be articulated and from which political struggles continue. We propose to build not instead of but rather in order for camps to become political spaces with claims to make

9 A circular probe from both camp and village. Our building materially articulates the complex extraterritoriality stretched between the two sites

10 Exploring the present return means also exploring ways in which the figure of the refugee and its associated spatial regime of dislocation reshape the political space of the present. It is between the sites of dislocation and destruction that the architecture of the future can take place and shape

11 Present returns must have a simultaneous material effect in both the sites of origin and the sites of displacement. The result might be a reciprocal extraterritoriality that connects these two sites

12 Apart, both are transferred to common use

13 Sedek A Journal on the Ongoing Nakba, Issue no. 6, May 2011 Towards return of Palestinian refugees B o a r d : Ofer Kahana, Osnat Bar-Or, Ayyub Aamer, Norma Musih, Eitan Bronstein, Tomer Gardi, Umar Alghubari E d i t o r : Tomer Gardi V i s u a l E d i t i n g : Ofer Kahana and Osnat Bar-Or, Parhessia P r o d u c t i o n : Zochrot L a n g u a g e e d i t i n g a n d p r o o f r e a d i n g : Linda Landau P u b l i s h e r s : Zochrot, Parrhesia