the story of the museum itself is a microcosm of the type of hollow peace activism the coexist image has come to represent.
the coexistence exhibition at the museum on the seam "brings the universal message of diversity and acceptance of the other to the world community." the museum, located at the edge of occupied east jerusalem, was originally built in 1933 as the home of palestinian architect andoni baramki. it was seized by zionist forces when the family fled jerusalem during the nakba of 1948, and was subsequently turned into a military outpost. andoni's daughter, laura baramki khoury, has written about her experience fleeing jerusalem.
"In April of 1948, when everybody was leaving in the wake of the Deir Yassin massacre, and no place seemed safe enough, we left our home in Jerusalem, taking nothing with us except some of our clothes, thinking that it was a temporary period. That is why we took refuge in Birzeit, a town north of Jerusalem, so that we would be close by to return when all would be well again. But it was never well again. My family and I never saw again the Jerusalem we knew and had lived in.
After living in Gaza, then Beirut for a few years, we eventually returned to Jerusalem in 1953. What we found was a destroyed city, a city with its soul gone. Our families and friends were no longer there. Our homes were full of bullet holes, all run down and neglected."
when the family attempted to return, they was barred from doing so after the state of israel appropriated the house under the absentees' property law.
"The Israeli army had no more need for the house as a post, so the Baramki family felt their quest to reclaim the House could finally come to fruition. Alas, the family’s request was denied by the Israeli authorities under the racist Absentees’ Property Law of 1950, which was used to pillage the property of Palestinians ethnically cleansed during the Nakba and even those who were internally displaced and declared as “present absentees.” This infamous law recognizes the presence of internally displaced Palestinians as “residents or “citizens” of the state of Israel, but “absent” as far as their own individual property is concerned."
despite decades of attempts to assert their legal title, the family has not been able to reclaim the house.
"Unlike nearly all other Palestinian refugees exiled in 1948, the Baramki's had the double-edged privilege of glancing at their home from atop certain locales on the hilly terrain of Jerusalem's east side. Risking sniper fire, family members would occasionally visit locales contiguous to the borderlands in an effort to peer at their home and assess its condition. One family member, at the time a young man having just returned from his studies in Beirut, remembers ascending seven floors of steps to the top of the East Jerusalem YMCA on the edge of the frontier with his architect father. From this vantage point they would gaze down at their property across the divided landscape."
"One Baramki family member described the lengths the Palestinian owner and architect of the home went through to win back his property after the wall dividing Jerusalem was brought down in 1967. He also relates the humiliation that accompanied efforts to contest the mechanisms of exclusion enshrined in Israel's Absentee Property Law: You know, this question of being defined "absent" or "absentee" by the Israeli Government is unbelievable. Imagine, my father at the time [1967], a 70 year-old person going to the Israelis and telling them that "here I am now and I want my property" and them telling him that you are an "absentee." And he would tell them "how am I absent? I am present!" He could not understand how he was absent and present at the same time. The Israeli Government never did permit the owner and architect of the home to step foot in his house after 1948, and the elder Baramki died an exile."
in 1999, after being used as a military outpost and then a military museum, the house was ironically converted into a museum of tolerance, with the mission of promoting "dialogue, understanding and coexistence." laura baramki khoury notes:
"And to add insult to injury, the Israeli curators of the museum never acknowledged the fact that the building belonged to my father. All they mentioned was that the house, with its special architectural beauty, was constructed by Mr. Andoni Baramki, omitting by intention the fact that it was owned by Andoni Baramki."
the museum's director was asked about the building's history in a 2012 haaretz interview. he did not support returning the house to the baramki family, instead suggesting that using it for art served some kind of higher purpose.
Etgar, not surprisingly, primarily views the situation through an artistic lens. He concedes locating the museum in the building may have been nave. “But the history of the building reflects the history of the city,” he says.
He argues that returning the building to the Baramki family would not erase the contradictory and conflicting histories of the city. More to the point, he says the building fulfils a larger function by providing an evocative historical backdrop for the art it houses. “Context is as important to the work as presentation,” he says.
the dismissal of the family's legal claims in favor of "dialogue" echoes the liberal response to the bds movement in recent days. the prioritization of discourse over everything, the insistence on changing hearts and minds but balking at efforts to change the facts on the ground... it's all a tacit acceptance of the occupation as indelible history, rather than grappling with it as an ongoing process that can and must be stopped.
andoni's son, gabi baramki, not only worked to reclaim his family home but was an avdocate for the bds movement. in a 2012 statement commemorating gabi, the bds movement spoke against the museum directly.
"The story of the Baramki House is only one of thousands of similar stories; but this particular case exemplifies the wider injustice. In August 2012, Gabi Baramki passed away, leaving behind a rich legacy of struggle for Palestinian rights and for developing Palestinian educational institutions. The struggle for freedom, justice and equal rights, to which Gabi dedicated his entire life, continues.
We in PACBI see this Museum as an embodiment of Israeli criminality, hypocrisy, property theft, colonization, oppression and persistent denial of the Palestinians’ very presence and the rights that go along with it. We demand that international law be implemented, and the Baramki House be returned to its legitimate Palestinian owners, the Baramki family."
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