In autumn 2006 Juliano Mer-Khamis had originally planned to perform a play with three young people at Stuttgart’s European theatre festival, Theatertreffen (SETT). Then however one of his actors died in an Israeli attack during the war in Lebanon, another lost close relatives. For that reason he opted instead to show an award-winning documentary film, screened in Germany for the first time, about projects pursued by his mother, Arna Mer-Khamis, who was awarded the alternative Nobel Prize.¹
Arna Mer-Khamis, who was born into a Jewish family in 1929 in Palestine and later married the Secretary of the Israeli Communist Party, Saliba Khamis, set up the »Care and Learning« organisation during the intifada in 1987. She aimed to offer basic schooling to Palestinian children in the Jenin refugee camp after the Israeli authorities closed down the schools. In 1993 she used the prize money from Stockholm to set up a theatre centre for children.
The film opens with Arna leading a demonstration at an Israeli checkpoint: riddled with cancer yet full of boundless energy. A long line of cars slowly inches forward. Arna encourages the drivers to sound their horns and drive on. The soldiers call her to order. A sequence in the theatre follows. Children rehearse a play, wearing bright Oriental costumes. Who brings the sun into the palace? Yussef is the prankster in the group. Ashraf loves the theatre. We had a marvellous time, he says later. Something of the quotidian violence of their environment is manifested when the children act out scenes with Israeli soldiers or in their English class. Little Alaa sits amidst the rubble of his family’s house, looking completely devastated. Arna encourages him to express his feelings in the psychodrama group. He just can’t do it. However the painting group offers him a way to work through his experiences.
Arna is always right in the thick of things. She gives advice, organises, makes coffee. »Only two things could stop me from carrying on«, she says: »Either the project will kill me. Or I will die before it’s concluded.« Juliano picks her up at the hospital for her last visit to Jenin. He asks her about her life. She was wild back in her days as a Palmach fighter, she says, but she has no regrets. Then she becomes thoughtful: the one thing she has on her conscience is that they drove out the Bedouins. Then Juliano picks his mother up at the hospital again – in a coffin. Two years later the theatre closes. As Mer-Khamis explains later in conversation in Stuttgart, he didn’t want the project to be taken over by local officials.
In 2002, at the height of the Al-Aqsa intifada, Mer-Khamis returns to Jenin. The ruins of what were once houses are everywhere. The theatre has been destroyed. Tanks roll through the streets, children throw stones. This is no feature film – it’s reality. »How do you still manage to laugh?«, asks Mer-Khamis. »We don’t want to live like this«, a woman bursts out, »It’s horrific. The children are full of rage.« Ashraf has been killed, fighting with handguns against tanks. Alaa is the leader of an Al-Aqsa brigade. He’s asked if he isn’t afraid the Israeli army might destroy his parents’ house - and replies: »It wouldn’t be the first time.« He sets explosive devices, prowls around with a machine gun at the ready. »Freedom or death«, says Alaa, just a few days before his death.
Yussef ended his life with a suicide attack. He took his leave in a video, before setting off in a jeep with his friend Nodal and firing into the crowd. At the scene the camera pans round onto the victims. A severely wounded woman is lying on a stretcher. Majdi tells Yussef’s story. A tank shot a school to smithereens. Yussef was enough of a daredevil to go inside. He found a nine-year-old girl, bleeding, her head hanging down over her back. She died in his arms on the way to hospital. »Since then he’s stopped laughing«, says Majdi. »Who would have believed that. And he was always the clown in the group.«
Juliano Mer-Khamis very nearly lost his own wife and daughter when 29-year-old Hanadi Jaradat blew herself up in a café in Haifa on 4th October 2003, taking 21 other people to their deaths along with her. But he knew the suicide bomber too: Jaradat had studied law in Amman. As a lawyer she provided significant support to her family, as well as to residents in the camp. But she had seen a lot of suffering. Her story appeared in the Israeli daily »Ha’aretz«: a turning point in media reporting, in Juliano Mer-Khamis’ opinion.²
When Jaradat was 21, her fiancé was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Tragically the story was repeated later. Three days before her brother’s wedding, the whole family was gathered together when a white car drove up; soldiers got out and shot not just her cousin, who was wanted as a combatant, but also her innocent brother. When she flung herself on her brother, who was still alive, the soldiers shoved her aside and finished him off.
The last straw came when she finally managed, after submitting countless applications, to take her father, who had cancer, to a hospital in Haifa, only for the senior consultant to refuse to treat him. Various organisations were reluctant to give her a belt with explosives, as Mer-Khamis explains, because she was more important to them as a lawyer. She intended to blow up the hospital in Haifa. For some reason she changed her mind and went to the café, passing Mer-Khamis’ wife and daughter in the doorway. Minutes later 22 people were dead and 52 were injured.³
In 2005 Mer-Khamis began to reconstruct the theatre in Jenin.⁴ Now it’s back in operation but the director is still looking for better premises. There’s a computer centre for children funded by an American sponsor. The foundation set up by eBay’s first CEO, Jeffrey Skoll, is among the donors. The Board of Trustees includes Etienne Balibar, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, Mahmoud Darwish, Elias Khoury and Avraham Oz, who was the founder of Haifa University’s Theatre Department and taught Juliano Mer-Khamis. His involvement had its consequences: Oz lost his post as director of Haifa’s university theatre in 2003. By his own account Mer-Khamis, formerly a successful Israeli actor, doesn’t get any acting jobs nowadays.
The children in Jenin forget their oppressive reality for a few moments when the Boomchucka Circus or the Pedal Powered Clowns from England perform in the Freedom Theatre. However, a programme shown recently also addressed corruption and nepotism. One of the theatre’s key objectives is helping children and young people to come to terms with their traumatic experiences, so that they can be self-confident in working towards a better future.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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