Wholesale
Imprisonment
Dr. Nuha Khoury
Early morning Friday, November 22, the Israeli army has reentered the city of Bethlehem, ending a suffocating siege on Bethlehem and its surrounding area and replacing it with a new round of curfews; curfews, which can better be described as, wholesale imprisonment of the entire population.
In the past few months, the employees of the International Center of Bethlehem have been working hard to rid the inhabitants of Bethlehem of the feelings of despair that the past curfews and sieges produced. Surrounded by Israeli tanks, we continued organizing and sponsoring music concerts, films, lectures and youth meetings. Imprisoned by a wall that Israel is building around Bethlehem to isolate us from the rest of the world, we daily opened our art workshops for the artists to express themselves and continued to teach art courses for new artists, both young and old. Deafened by the noise of the Israeli fighter planes and helicopters, we filled the ICB halls with the sound of music, as children came for their daily lessons at the National Conservatory of Music. Knowing that Israel is doing its best to keep our people ignorant, we defiantly kept our Dar al-Kalima school running, believing that our children are our best hope for a bright future. Experiencing the wonton destruction of our compound in April of this year as well as the targeting of all Palestinian civil society institutions, we continued building our Cultural and Conference Center as well as our Wellness Center, thus providing work for more than one hundred families. Realizing that they want us to give up and to despair, we started new programs and projects, like the young Christian leadership-training program, mobilizing-volunteers training course, and a Media Center project. Most of all, knowing that all expressions of joy are made impossible, we planned the inauguration ceremony of our state-of-the-art al-Dar Cultural and Conference Center.
Yet, this curfew imposed ten days ago has halted most of the ICB’s activities. To begin with, the Dar al-Kalima school has been closed for the past ten days, leaving 204 children locked up in their homes for all of this time. Unable to go to school or even get out of the house to play with their friends, the traumatization of our children is reaching a new height. The teachers and the administration of the Dar al-Kalima school, who are prisoners in their homes as well, are communicating via telephone trying to come up with creative solutions to help the children learn while under curfew and to minimize the damage to the educational process.
The work on the construction sites, the Cultural and Conference Center as well as the Wellness Center, has stopped completely. As a result, 100 families are being deprived of their source of livelihood. The cessation of work on the Conference Center also means that we may have to delay our opening ceremony of this cultural institution, scheduled for this coming December 19, should the curfew continue. The silence in both of the art workshops and the Music National Conservatory is deafening. Three concerts planned for the past week have been cancelled, and the Bright-Stars workshops, young leadership training and volunteer-courses have been postponed.
A media consultation for foreign and Palestinian journalists, which the ICB organized to plan our latest media project, had to be moved in the last minute to Jerusalem, since the foreign journalists have arrived while Bethlehem was still under curfew. Such move meant that not all the Palestinian scheduled participants were able to attend. Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, who was supposed to be traveling to Germany this week to talk about the work of the ICB and our situation in general, was denied travel and is locked up in his house, unable to go anywhere.
The above is just a taste of what a curfew is all about and what it means to our daily lives. With the possibility of having an extended period of curfews, especially now as we are approaching the end of the month of Ramadan and the beginning of the Christmas Season, we at the ICB will continue to think and work on the finding the best ways of fighting despair and giving a message of hope to our people. For no matter how long the occupation continues to imprison our bodies, it will never be able to imprison our minds and souls.