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Amman:
The horrifying illusion of a journey through prison
confronts anyone visiting the first extensive exhibition
on the separation wall that Israel is building on
occupied West Bank land. Combining photography, sound
effects, replicas of the Israeli-built double walls,
medieval-style observation towers, and barbed wire
ripping through seized land, the Stop the Wall exhibition,
which opened in Amman on Saturday, triggers feelings
of pain, anger and claustrophobia. And it is precisely
these emotions that Mary Nazzal, 24, the lone organizer
of the event, seeks to invoke among the visitors,
in her quest to raise public awareness, to help mobilize
the first effective grass-root campaign against the
barrier in Jordan, before moving on to other Arab
countries.
said
Nazzal, Jordan representative for the Anti-Apartheid
Wall Campaign, a Palestinian-based international network
of web-connected activists."But by recreating the
experience. I deliberately want people to get uncomfortable
and angry, in order to mobilize and move," she told
The Daily Star on the sidelines of the exhibition,
held at the Darat al-Funun - the Khalid Shoman Foundation
- in Amman.
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The
Jordanian of Palestinian origin, who has been campaigning
against the wall since construction began in 2002,
had been toiling for weeks to create the overpowering
atmosphere of a large prison, or a detention camp,
the key result of the planned 700-kilometer separation
wall, snaking through occupied Palestinian lands.Ê
Nazzal's husband, Aysar Batayneh, her Anglo-Indian
mother, and scores of other sympathizers, worked equally
hard to transform the beautiful interiors of the historic
building housing the gallery, into a suffocating box.
And they all took turns in writing multi-lingual graffiti
on the walls. "Where are the Arabs?" asked one. "Stop
the wall," "justice will not be silenced," "right
is might," and "we want to live," read others. The
Amman exhibition clearly shows the horror brought
about in the course of controlling people and land.Ê
Like many activists in the region, Nazzal faces an
uphill battle in being able to mobilizing the masses
across the largely autocratic Arab world, where civil
society remains marginalized, weak and ineffective.
But she is bent on succeeding in her campaign to stop
what she feels is the most "black or white" issue
in recent history."We want to introduce people to
the idea of what it means to be trapped, to feel suffocated.
These people wake up every morning, facing this wall
while their movement is restricted," said Nazzal,
who earned her postgraduate degree in political science
from Columbia University in New York in 2001.
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