Media coverage
Al Jazeera Net · 2013-11-04
Bayt al-Maqdis Center for Palestinian Studies, in cooperation with Pal Think for Strategic Studies, held an exhibition in Gaza featuring forty rare paintings by European Orientalist artists depicting Al-Aqsa, the churches of Bethlehem, and scenes of Palestinian life in past centuries. Organizers and visitors said the works highlight Palestine’s historical and civilizational character, affirm the Arab identity of Jerusalem and Palestine, and seek to reconnect Palestinian youth with the history of their cause amid difficult conditions and growing frustration.
Bayt al-Maqdis Center for Palestinian Studies, in cooperation with Pal Think for Strategic Studies, held an exhibition in Gaza featuring forty rare paintings by European Orientalist artists depicting Al-Aqsa, the churches of Bethlehem, and scenes of Palestinian life in past centuries. Organizers an…
The Bayt al-Maqdis Center for Palestinian Studies held an exhibition in Gaza of Orientalist drawings of Al-Aqsa and the Christian churches in the city of Bethlehem. The paintings on display highlight aspects of Palestinian life in past centuries and clearly embody the historical character of Palestine and its cities, as well as the atmosphere of political, economic, geographical, and religious life there, in addition to its civilizational standing.
The exhibition is being held in cooperation with the PalThink Center for Strategic Studies. It includes forty rare paintings by European Orientalist painters and will continue for three days.
The exhibition attracted a large number of visitors who were drawn by the artworks that depicted the mosques of Palestine and Jerusalem, embodying the country’s Islamic identity. They also highlighted Palestine’s traditional architectural identity, which clearly reflects the lineage of the ancient Arab country whose roots go back five thousand years, when the Arab Jebusites inhabited the land of Palestine two thousand years before the Kingdom of David.
One of the exhibition’s visitors, visual artist Ghanem al-Din, affirmed that the drawings reflect the extent of the Orientalist painters’ admiration for the lives, architecture, and culture of the Palestinians. He added that the drawings carry clear indications affirming the Arab identity of Jerusalem and Palestine.
He added to Al Jazeera Net: “These drawings transported me through history on a very fast train and took me to a period I did not live through. They made me feel the beauty of Palestine and the simplicity of Palestinian life with a refined aesthetic sense and a very powerful expressive style.”
Abdel Hamid Abu al-Nasr, chairman of the Bayt al-Maqdis Council for Palestinian Studies, explained that the drawings on display contain a summary of what Western Orientalists documented in their paintings about the historical and heritage character of Palestine.
He added that the drawings prove the existence of a complete Palestinian life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which refutes the Israeli claim that there was no Palestinian state or entity before their usurpation of the land of Palestine in 1948.
Abu al-Nasr believes that the paintings on display derive their importance from being visual documents that record the atmosphere of coexistence and religious tolerance between Christians and Muslims, as prescribed by the true Islamic faith and consolidated by the Rightly Guided Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab in his Umari Covenant, which laid the foundations of that coexistence within an executive framework.
He told Al Jazeera Net that the paintings are predominantly Arab and Islamic in character, but the written captions on them ran counter to this reality and were dominated by a Western or Zionist conception. For example, some drawings of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock were labeled “Temple Mount” or “the Temple’s Western Wall.”
As for PalThink Director Omar Shaban, he affirmed that among the goals of the exhibition is an attempt to bring Palestinian youth closer to the history of their cause, noting that Palestinian youth have in recent years begun to feel frustration, distress, and a desire to emigrate as a result of the difficult conditions facing the Palestinian cause.
He added in remarks to Al Jazeera Net that the exhibition’s message is that Palestine, as a society and a civil state, existed and will remain deeply rooted in history, and will flourish in the future just as it had been two centuries ago.
Text © Al Jazeera Net — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source