Eternal city

Palestinian Minister of Culture Tahani Abu Dekkah says that even under occupation, Jerusalem could be the capital of Arab culture, Dina Ezzat listens

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Palestinian mourners at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound carry the coffin of Mohamed Al-Kurd, father of an Arab family evicted from their house in east Jerusalem

"In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls; I walk from one epoch to another without a memory to guide me." Thus wrote Palestine's political icon Mahmoud Darwish. The poem was "In Jerusalem".

And it is in Jerusalem, said Palestinian Minister of Culture Tahani Abu Dekkah, that Arabs should assemble on 20 January next year to celebrate the occupied Palestinian capital as the capital of Arab culture in 2009.

"This time it will surely be different. To have an occupied Arab capital, Jerusalem, as the capital of Arab culture is really different," said the Palestinian minister of culture, who is tasked along with a team of Palestinian intellectuals to make an immediately daunting task possible. "But Jerusalem is different anyway and celebrating Arab culture there would be something that all Arabs would have to work jointly for," she added.

It is on 22 January that Abu Dekkah would join a group of the residents of the city of Jerusalem and, as the Palestinian official said, she hopes "intellectuals from and representatives of all Arab countries" will "jointly remember Jerusalem as an Arab capital and to announce it as the capital for Arab culture."

It was in 1996 that Arab countries, in coordination with UNESCO and under the supervision of AELCSO, started a new tradition of celebrating a capital of the 22 member states of the Arab League for Arab Culture. Cairo was the first in 1996. This year, it has been Damascus. Next year, as Arab ministers of culture proclaimed during a meeting in the Syrian capital earlier this month, it would be Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority has no control over even a centimetre of Jerusalem. Its officials need a special permit to get into the eastern part of the city, which was occupied by Israeli forces during the 1967 war, and which they hope would be the capital of their independent state one day.

The Israeli imprint on all types of travel documents for individuals wishing to enter the holy capital is off-putting for many Palestinians who are not Jerusalem residents. For Arab citizens, even from Egypt and Jordan, who both have peace treaties with Israel, the Israeli stamp is anything from illegal to unbearable. Some Arab countries, like Algeria on the very Western end of the Arab world and Syria -- whose Golan Heights are still occupied by Israel -- prevent their citizens from seeking an Israeli visa even if just to get into the Palestinian occupied territories. Even ignoring the visa headaches, Muslims and Arabs are traumatised by thinking about the Israeli occupation of Arab territories and of Israeli brutalities against Palestinians under occupation.

The Arab Union of Writers, among other Arab cultural syndicates and groupings, has already declared its opposition to the participation of its members in any Jerusalem-based activities to mark the city as the capital of the Arab culture. For these Arab cultural groupings, as for many individual intellectuals, going to Jerusalem with an Israeli visa is an act of normalisation that should not be allowed under any pretext.

For Abu Dekkah, however, going to Jerusalem on 22 January is not at all about normalisation with Israel. It is rather, she said, about remembering Jerusalem whose Arab identity is threatened by Israeli acts on the ground and at risk of being "wiped off the map" by the insidious campaign to make a united Jerusalem "the eternal capital of Israel".

"We, all of us, need to remember that Jerusalem is ours. We need to tell the world that we are there and that our history and future are also there. We need to defy those who say that we do not belong to Jerusalem and that Jerusalem does not belong to us," Abu Dekkah said. The Palestinian minister of culture wants a strong Arab presence in Jerusalem that gives the image of an Arab not Israeli city. She wants Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be there surrounded with leading cultural Palestinian figures -- she certainly wishes that Mahmoud Darwish was there. She wants Abbas to be surrounded by top Arab intellectuals "whose mission should always be maintaining the Arab face of Jerusalem" and Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa "whose words should be heard on that day on Jerusalem from Jerusalem."

Abu Dekkah is already planning a sequence of video conference statements to be addressed by concerned Arab figures who might not find their way to the old city, for one reason or another. She is also planning for Palestinian diplomatic missions overseas to join the celebrations that she said should last for three weeks. "But throughout all of 2009, Jerusalem will remain as the capital of Arab culture and as such it should figure in a series of cultural events that the Arab ministries of culture should organise for the entire year," she suggested.

"We cannot give up on Jerusalem," Abu Dekkah said. She added that those who do not make it to Jerusalem, either because they won't deal with Israeli authorities or because the Israeli authorities won't deal with them, should also join ranks in celebrating Jerusalem as the capital of Arab culture on 20 January. "In every Arab capital there should be at least an hour dedicated to celebrating Jerusalem. Every book that was written on Jerusalem should be reprinted, reviewed and translated. Every TV channel should run a special programme on Jerusalem -- in addition to a live coverage of the celebrations that will take place in the holy city -- and every school and university should also have a role in telling its students who are too young to remember that Jerusalem is an Arab capital," she suggested. She added, "we want to see new cultural productions dedicated to the story and the cause of Jerusalem. We want new songs and new plays. We want photo galleries that depict the history of a strong Arab presence in the city and crafts exhibitions that detail the Arab links to the history of art in Jerusalem."

Even when the world is busy with the inauguration of the new US President Barack Obama, Abu Dekkah argued, a strong and coordinated Arab celebration of Jerusalem from within the walls of the city and those of every other Arab capital is bound to find a space in the international media so that "the whole world would remember that Palestinians and Arabs do belong to Jerusalem".

The choices are tough and the questions remain unanswered, simple as they may seem to be for Abu Dekkah. "I was walking down the hill and thinking to myself: How the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone!"