Palestinians Exhibit Photos of Camps

Three young Palestinian photographers exhibited photos of their home in a Palestinian refugee camp last night, in an attempt to raise awareness of the living conditions resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The teenagers and their stories, attested to by the moving photographs that flashed on the screen behind them during a presentation at the Center for Goverment and International Studies (CGIS), were part of a six-city U.S. tour organized by Picture Balata, a West Bank-based group dedicated to teaching the youth of the Balata refugee camp about photography.

The exhibit, which will remain on the ground floor of CGIS North until April 21, highlighted the plight of the refugee camp, the largest in the West Bank, according to information on the United Nations Web site. In the photographs, emaciated children stare at the camera intensely and what buildings exist are discolored and in disrepair.

“We use our photography as a form of resistance,” said Sabreen, 17, one of last night’s speakers and photographers.

According to the mission statement posted on its Web site, Picture Balata aims to put “the camera into the hands of children born and raised inside the Israeli occupation of Palestine” so they can “photograph their situation as they live it.”

The Balata camp, founded in 1950, is the home of 21,903 registered inhabitants, according to the U.N. It houses nearly 700 families designated as hardship cases, and was especially active during the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising that occurred from 1987 to 1993.

In front of a room overflowing with spectators, two girls—Sabreen and Tahreer, 15—and a boy, Taha, 16, each recounted a different aspect of their experience in the camp through an interpreter.

During her presentation, Sabreen described how her grandmother was forced to leave her homeland and how the older generations “left everything because they felt for sure they were going to return.”

Tahreer told of the strength of Palestinian women and of her aunt who has had three of her sons captured and one injured by the Israelis.

Taha spoke about the children: “They have no playground, no places to play... because of the occupation.”

The reaction to last night’s show was overwhelmingly positive.

One man looking at the photography, Said Ghorayeb, said, “I know what this is about. I am from the area, Beirut. This is great. This might be these kids’ only chance to be something other than fighters.”

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, a second-year graduate student in comparative literature who organized the event, lauded the fact that it gave Palestine a voice in the U.S.

“In the U.S., the Palestinian experience is invisible. And when it is present, it is portrayed as destructive. The greatest thing about [Picture Balata] is that it affirms the Palestinian reality in a creative, positive way.”