Sunday, June 22, 2014

Live from #Bethlehem





Justin Butcher at the Separation Wall

Live from Bethlehem – June 19th 2014

Justin Butcher blogs from the second Bet Lahem Live Festival in Bethlehem.
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I’m sitting in a square in Bethlehem, at the top of Star Street, the beautiful Ottoman-era street which winds all the way from Manger Square to the top of the city. It’s the opening night of the second Bet Lahem Live Festival and the atmosphere is humming. Last-minute sound checks on the big open-air stage mingle with the hubbub of the gathering crowd, and the air is alive with enticing smells – kebabs and corn cobs sizzling on barbecue stands, kernels puffing into popcorn and the fragrant scent of a dozen narghile pipes drifting across the square. Up and down Star Street, all the old shop booths, deserted in recent years due to the strangling effect of the Wall on Bethlehem’s economy, have been opened up to become art galleries, music venues, cafes and creative hubs for drumming workshops, dance classes and film screenings. Lamps and lanterns glow against the beautiful blonde stone of the ancient street. Small children and grandmothers and everyone in between – Muslims, Christians and international visitors – are heading up Star Street for the opening ceremony.
It’s an interesting time to be in Bethlehem. Palestinian prisoners due for release as part of the failed peace talks are on hunger strike, Mahmoud Abbas has invited Hamas in from the cold to form an alliance with Fatah, and, last week, three Israeli teenagers disappeared, presumed kidnapped, while hitch-hiking from the settlement of Gush Etzion, provoking a massive military lock-down in the Hebron area. On Monday, The Times of Israel hoped that Sami Awad, director of Bethlehem’s Holy Land Trust, would “do the right thing and cancel the festival”. On Tuesday, my group visited Aida Refugee Camp, two hours after the IDF. A little girl showed me a tear gas canister which they’d fired and posed for a photograph.
Back on mainstage, Bethlehem’s mayor Vera Babun is opening the festival. “We are here,” she proclaims, quoting the motto of the children’s charity Caritas Bethlehem. “We are here – in our tradition, identity, history and culture and in our love. Let us hope that this Star Street, which brought the news of peace and love to the world, will bring immediate peace to Bethlehem, and all of the Holy Land.” As Sami ascends the stage, my mind goes back to the opening ceremony of Bethlehem Unwrapped last December, when we broadcast his inaugural message from Bethlehem on to our Wall installation in front of St James’s Church. Whenever I mention Bethlehem Unwrapped here, faces light up, followed by a flurry of handshakes, hugs and back-slapping. Everyone’s heard of it – and they loved it. “It was so beautiful,” they say. “It really made me happy. It made me cry.” I’m meeting this weekend with Vera Babun, Sami and others to discuss a possible follow-up concert at the real Wall, maybe with Nigel Kennedy and friends, a reprise of “The Bridge” concert at St James’s.
“The Bet Lahem Live Festival is not a party,” says Sami, “it is a message – from the city of peace and from this Holy Land, saying that the Palestinian people love life … even more, as the famous Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah says, “We teach life”, and on this day, we remember the Palestinian prisoners who have chosen through hunger strike to teach us life, for life is worthless without freedom. We are named Holy Land Trust because this land is holy for the three monotheistic faiths, and those who live in this land have been given a responsibility as trustees to take care of it and make it become a light of love and peace and justice to all corners and nations of the world.”
I wish all my friends from Greenbelt Festival and St James’s Piccadilly could be here tonight, to share the wonderful atmosphere as dabke dancers pour on to the stage and the crowd goes wild. Whatever tomorrow brings, tonight the streets of Bethlehem are alive with the carnival spirit of “beautiful resistance”.
Justin Butcher

Bethlehem Live Festival