Penniless Palestine | Foreign Affairs

Penniless Palestine | Foreign Affairs

The fabric of Palestinian identity

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=299083

The book “Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution” reminds the reader of the rich cultural history of the Palestinian people. (Image via Amazon.com) Hussein Ibish, August 9, 2011

What can a book about traditional folkloric costumes tell us about contemporary politics? Quite a lot as it happens.

Hanan Karaman Munayyer’s beautiful new volume, “Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution” (Interlink, 2011) combines superb photography of the renowned Munayyer collection of traditional Palestinian dress with an analysis of their origins, evolution and variations. Since the 1980s, Munayyer and her husband Farah have been assembling these costumes and other artifacts of Palestinian traditional life in their Palestinian Heritage Foundation.

Between the two of them and their foundation, they are among the most important documentarians and preservationists of this history and heritage, not just in the United States, but in the world. Their collection, which dates from the 1850s to the present, has been exhibited at the Kennedy Center in Washington and in museums and galleries across the globe....READ MORE

Palestinian artist use sands to show cultural heritage

Commemorating Darwish’s Legacy

Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and academic world renowed for his beautiful, and fiercely national, writings. He tackled pertinent and controversial issues such as exile, identity, and watan (homeland) with eloquent poems and reasoned articles.

The selection below is of special significance now, as the Palestinian people turn to the world seeking recognition of their sovereignty and identity. This call for sovereignty echoes through the words of an excerpt from Darwish’s poem “Diary of a Palestinian Wound”, written in 1969:

Ah my intractable wound!
My country is not a suitcase
I am not a traveler
I am the lover and the land is the beloved.

>Read more about the press release.

Facts on the Ground - By Hussein Ibish | Foreign Policy

"The expansion in Har Homa is not only highly damaging to prospects for peace, but it also taps into the deepest Palestinian fears of relentless and carefully choreographed settlement activity designed to permanently foreclose the possibility of their meaningful independence. The bitterest experience for Palestinians in their dealings with Israel since negotiations began in 1993 was the doubling of the number of settlers in the occupied territories from 200,000 to 400,000 during the 1990s, when they believed they were negotiating an end to the occupation. Not only did the occupation not end and no Palestinian state get created, but the number of settlements and settlers greatly increased throughout the entire era of the "peace process." Including East Jerusalem, they now number more than half a million." Facts on the Ground - By Hussein Ibish | Foreign Policy