Beautiful resistance

Abdelfattah Abusrour

pp. 231-234

in: Scott T. Cummings, Erica Stevens Abbitt (eds), The theatre of Naomi Wallace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

In March 1998, with a group of friends, I founded Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Society (ACTS) in my two-room family house in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. The Aida camp was established in 1950 to house refugees from over 40 villages uprooted from their homes from 1947 onwards, one of 59 camps in total in an area rented by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for 99 years. It effectively made us visitors and exiles in our country, with no right of return to our homes. The camp is located north of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, surrounded by a wall illegally built in 2002, first as barbwire and then converted in 2005 to blocks of cement eight meters high. It is guarded by Israeli snipers and surveillance cameras. Of the six thousand people who live here now, 66 percent are under 18 years old. The camp has no playgrounds or green spaces.