I think Mr. Saleh has a great initiative on the idea of opening this museum, and he did a great job put together all the artworks together. He mentioned that the original intention of opening the museum is to prove the existence of Palestinian culture after the Israel government accused the legitimacy of Palestine state. Another application for this museum is to teach Palestinian American about Palestinian culture. I think this is a crucial way to maintain the connection of Palestinian descendants, who might have never been to West Bank or Gaza Strip, to get an opportunity to learn about their own culture. I think this is a great idea and can be adapted to other cultural backgrounds as well. For the video he showed us, I lost track after staring at them for ten minutes. It has nothing to do with the content, but because of its Arabic voice and English subtitles were really hard for me to follow.
I’m currently taking U.S. policy in the Middle East, so I learned a lot about Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Palestine and Israel, this will be a zero-sum game——There won’t be a neutral winner for both side, if one side wins, the other side must lose. According to the current situation, neither side will not be willing to compromise. Israel is controlling almost all Palestinian territory, territorial sea, airspace, and all ports of entry and exit. Israel also has complete control over the Palestinian economy. Palestine itself has an extremely backward and badly developed economy, heavily dependent on Israel. Israel is the Palestinians’ largest trade partner, taking on average more than 90 percent of total Palestinian exports of goods. Israeli share in Palestinian imports of goods was 70 percent, almost all Palestinian imports from non-Israeli markets still come through Israel and a large part through Israeli importers. Israel also controls all strategic energy sources such as electricity and fuel of Palestine, and 80% of freshwater that is currently being used by Palestinian. Palestine, on the other hand, has the back of the United Nations. The U.N. consisted that Israeli Palestinian must reaffirm the border based on the Green Line border created in the U.N. resolution 242. The willingness of both side to sacrifice their interests became crucial in this case: If nobody compromise there will never be a legitimate resolution.
I think the artwork in the museum was fascinating, even though I think I didn’t understand most of them. The mosaic of the girl attracted my attention as soon as I got into the room. I’ve been to Turkey and saw a lot of mosaic artworks there, so I found really familiar with this brilliant art form. After hearing the story behind the artwork, I was even more touched by the piece itself. Other artworks that I noticed were the children portraits. I think they looked like drawn by elementary school students, but some details of their drawing were scary. Lots of them had dead bodies in their works, and some even included amputated limbs. For young children like them, being able to portrait such scenes in their drawing must indicate that they have such experience in their life, which is heartbreaking.
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