Freedom Theatre In Jenin Refugee Camp

Rami Awni Hwayel, a third-year acting student at the Jenin Freedom Theatre, aged 20, was seized at the Shavei Shomron checkpoint (“roadblock”) between Nablus and Jenin, on August 6. He was on his way back from Ramallah — where he has been in rehearsals for the leading role in the Freedom Theatre’s production of “Waiting for Godot” — and heading for a Ramadan visit with his family.

He is the third person connected to the Freedom Theater, located in the Jenin refugee camp, to be taken into Israeli custody. During a traumatic pre-dawn raid on 27 July, two officials were taken into custody after some 50 or so IDF soldiers, who arrived in jeeps, reportedly hurled rocks and pieces of concrete at the theater building.

The Freedom Theatre’s Juliano Mer-Khamis — an Israeli citizen born to a Jewish mother and an Israeli-Arab-Palestinian father from Nazareth, both members of the Israeli Communist Party — was assassinated by an expert marksman outside the Theatre some three months ago. Juliano lived part of the time in Haifa, and the rest of the time in a house near the Jenin Refugee Camp that was being leased to him by Palestinian ex-militant Zakaria Zubeideh.

The Palestinian Authority has been put in charge of the investigation into Juliano’s murder [with some assistance from Israeli investigations], but no progress has yet been reported. [See our most recent earlier post on this here].

In an email received from the Freedom Theatre this morning, and via Israeli journalists on Twitter, it was mentioned that the IDF had put a “gag order” on Hwayal’s arrest.

Continue reading Post-dated post: IDF arrests Jenin Freedom Theatre acting student, 3rd arrest within 10 days, no explanation given

In these days of deep morning — and there is so much to mourn here these days — here are two interviews with Juliano Mer Khamis, assassinated last Tuesday in Jenin refugee camp, buried last Thursday on a hilltop plateau in the Israeli Galilee, next to his mother in Ramot Menashe.

The first was done in the U.S by the Detroit-based Mideast Broadcast Network, MBN [Youtube posting caption: Jenin Freedom Theater director Juliano Mer-Khamis interviewed by Detroit Palestinian activist, Hasan Newash on MBN-TV – Mideast Broadcasting Network – April 4, 2005] – h/t and thanks to @imuthaffar via Twitter:

It’s interesting — you here how much he sounds like an Israeli — from his way of speaking English, the deeper and full baritone pitch of his voice, to many of his expressions, his ways of thinking.

As a Palestinian he sounds like … a Palestinian from here, from inside, who didn’t really know what it was like to be a a refugee living in very precarious and dangerous exile, who has no idea of the trauma experienced by (and also created by) the PLO in its years “outside”. “At least 150,000 Palestinians were dropped on us from Tunis … they were busy making money…”

Not totally fair — he blames these people for not preparing the Palestinians for the Israeli crack-down and reinvasion of Palestinian cities after the outbreak of the second Intifada (with snipers firing with rifles whose range could not reach the target from the edge of Bethlehem to the Israeli settlement of Gilo, and with Palestinian suicide-bombing attacks in Israeli cities)… The Tunis crowd believed that the Oslo Accords would succeed, would have to succeed, that there was no other choice — though they didn’t argue this very well. And no one ever predicted what was to follow… Though it is true that no preparations were made for such an eventuality.

Continue reading More insights – Juliano Mer Khamis, self-explained