Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

Medical Aid for Palestinians, the New Statesman and Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine are jointly presenting a Fringe Meeting at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Birmingham. The venue is the  Novotel Hotel, Burne-Jones room. Monday 19 September 6.15 – 7.30 pm

1. Chair – Mehdi Hasan (New Statesman)
2. John McHugo – Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine
3. Sir Menzies Campbell MP
4. Professor Illan Pappe (Exeter University)
5. Simon Hughes MP

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Our annual AGM is being held on Monday 19 September at 2.30 pm in the drawing room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel at the party’s autumn conference in Birmingham. (This is a non-secure zone: no pass required) all those who have been members for one year are free to put themselves forward for election to the various offices.

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On Sunday 29 May at The North Wall Arts Centre there will be an evening of fundraising with all proceeds going towards bringing young people from Gaza and Ramallah to Oxford in July 2011 when they will participate in an international festival at the Pegasus Youth Theatre.

The evening is organised by Oxford Ramallah Friendship Association who shall be making an AV presentation about Oxford Ramallah Friendship Links.

Pegasus Youth Theatre will perform The Gaza Monologues and the Jen Marlow film, One Family in Gaza will also be shown.

The bar opens at 6:30pm and the presentations start at 7pm. Tickets are £10 each and can be purchased from The North Wall Arts Centre website.

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Politics cannot be far absent from a father and son meeting in a military cemetery in Israel.  But those who go to Doug Watkinson’s new play ‘The Wall’, at the New End Theatre, expecting only Middle East politics, may be disappointed.

The central issue of this often moving play is the father – son relationship, and its absence, caused  by death in war.

David, a middle aged man coming to Jerusalem for a veterinary conference, decides to visit his father’s grave:  killed in British Mandate Palestine in 1947 by members of the Stern Gang.  On finding the grave, he breaks down in sobs: enter his father, Ralph, a young and chirpy soldier.  Middle-aged son gets over the surprise apparition and attempts to fill in the missing years.

Parallel to this runs the story of Israeli land expansion: the war cemetery is beautifully tended by Palestinian Mahmoud, an old man now in his eighties, but whose life is made increasingly impossible by the Separation Wall.  Ralph begs his son to campaign to have the Wall taken down.  Initially reluctant, David then experiences for himself the checkpoints, delays and ritual humiliation Mahmoud must endure and comes up with a good activist plan.

If the storyline is somewhat uneasy, the dialogue is swift, often humorous and mostly convincing.  The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan hover in the background:  the muddle made by untimely death, the  difficulties of living with a missing generation  (‘’I had no-one to follow’’ ) the myths of heroism  are all examined.

But there is a second dynamic which every visitor to Palestine will recognise.  David at first is uneasy with his father’s anger.  But when he visits Mahmoud’s  home,  and experiences for himself  the  realities of occupation,   he changes  instantly. Challenged by his father in the first scene to feel ‘outrage,’ in the second scene he boils with fury, and is with difficulty prevented from assaulting a female Israeli soldier. (The play follows the useful Greek convention of all violence being reported rather than seen)

The resolution and much of the interest lies in David’s personal journey:  the play arose from the author’s same experience of being overcome with grief in the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Ramleh .   The political issues are raised, but wisely left unanswered.

Good performances from Eric Carte as David, and Duncan- Clyde Watkinson as Ralph, and an imaginative set design.  The tree stumps which represent the gravestones, both recall the Homeric imagery of young heroes cut down, and will remind anyone familiar with the Holy Land of amputated olive trees.

Worth seeing, and you can get an excellent pre-theatre supper down the road at the Old White Bear.

Sally Fitzharris

The Wall: New End Theatre, 27 New End, Hampstead, NW3 1JD, showing until 6 June.

Tuesday – Saturday 8.30 pm  Saturday and Sunday 4.45 pm

Tickets £16 (concs £14)

Telephone: 0870 033 2733

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Got any arts reviews on Palestinian issues? Send them to info@ldfp.eu.

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On Sunday, June 12 2011, Ride to Gaza with support from Tyneside PSC, Tyneside Stop the War Coalition and local councillor Dipu Ahad are holding a Gaza Awareness Conference with all proceeds going to Ride to Gaza who will use this to provide kindergartens in the refugee camps of Gaza through a partner there, Help Initiative (HI).

The event will include guests Lowkey, Jody McIntyre, Yvonne Ridley, Bamo MC and many more, who will be speaking to you about the ongoing crisis faced by the Palestinian people.

Tickets for this event are £10 and many have reserved tickets already so please be quick to book your place to avoid disappointment.

For more information, check the Facebook page for this event.

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On Saturday 14 May 2011 the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) have organised a protest vigil to commemorate the Nakba and to demand the Government act to end the seige on Gaza.

Assemble at 12 noon opposite Downing Street, on Whitehall, SW1A London.

For more information visit the PSC web site.

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London Fashion Week offers a rare glimpse into art and culture with a firm Palestinian heritage:

To mark London Fashion Week, the Mosaic Rooms will showcase a new collection by one of the most promising young designers to recently emerge from the Arab world, OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury.

Silk Thread Martyrs was conceptually inspired by the history and contemporary realities of the designer’s homeland, Palestine. Structurally and technically, the work draws inspiration from the traditional costumes and fabrics of that region and specifically the work of traditional Palestinian embroiderers, many of them refugees living in Lebanon or Jordan, who have maintained and developed the ancient skills of their lost homeland. Nasser-Khoury was inspired by the wonderful quality, rigorous detail and dedication of their work and, whilst creating his own collection, worked closely with them and with other local artisans and craftspeople. The result is a unique collection of outfits for men and women reflecting Palestine’s traditional and contemporary culture and its people: the farmer, the fighter, the martyr, the social worker, the refugee and, above all, the individual. Silk Thread Martyrs creates a new, transformed and subverted look that explores gender, duty and social constraints.

The collection features 22 individual garments, each unique in construction and design and made with the minimum use of machinery: embroidery, fabric, colouring and dyeing is carried out by hand, using natural materials such as indigo and tea. The design and production process of each garment will be explored through the exhibition.

OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury was born in Al Quds (Jerusalem) in 1988 and grew up in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. His experiences of living under occupation and the restrictions imposed on his family and community have profoundly influenced his work. After finishing school in Ramallah, he went to the UK to take a foundation course in art and design at Camberwell College of Art before completing a BA degree at the London College of Fashion in Fashion Design and Technology.

The exhibition is running until 9th March 2011, more information and images are available from the Mosaic Rooms.

You can also hear OmarJospeh talking about the inspiration behind his exhibition on the BBC World Service arts programme, The Strand. Particularly striking is the description of a collar, which OmarJoseph acknowledges is not nowhere near practical, but which, in his words is “an oppressive collar inspired by an oppressive wall”.

Photograph by Tarek Moukaddem

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Liberal Democrat life peer Lord Andrew Phillips OBE will be the Chair at a seminar titled ‘The Palestine Papers Under The Spotlight’ organised by Middle East Monitor and the Federation of Students Islamic Societies on the leaked Palestine Papers.

The papers, which were previously secret, were jointly released in January by the Guardian and Al-Jazeera and contain revelations which have serious implications. The papers span an entire decade and contain records of secret meetings and private e-mails and memos between Palestinian, Israeli and American leaders.

In addition to Lord Phillips, there will be a panel of experts offering their own analysis and insights into the contents of the papers and what they could mean for the future. More information is available on the MEMO website.

Venue: Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Date: Tuesday 22nd Feb

Time: The event will start at 4.30pm at Senate House with registration starting promptly at 4pm.

(Image of Lord Andrew Phillips created by Keith Edkins and licensed under Creative Commons)

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LFDP will be hosting “Talking to Hamas: the need for long-term regional security” at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in March, featuring Lord Alderdice and Gabrielle Rifkind, Oxford Research Group Director of the Human Security in the Middle East programme. Chairing the event will be Stephen Williams, MP for Bristol West and Treasurer of the Britain-Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group.

The event will take place from 18.15 until 19.30 on Saturday 12th March at Suite 8 in Jurys Inn, Sheffield. Venue information can be found here. Please note that Conference passes will not be required for this venue: all are welcome. For any questions about the event, please contact info@ldfp.eu.

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Palestine Solidarity Campaign is holding a Winter Concert on Tuesday December 7.

It will be an evening of theatre, poetry and music compered by playwright and journalist, Victoria Brittain.

For more details on the Winter Concert, check the PSC website.

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