Introduction

In their book Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard write:

In community cultural-development work, community artists...place their artistic and organizing skills at the service of the emancipation and development of an identified community...it [community cultural-development work] is community focused, aimed at groups...so that issues affecting individuals are always considered in relation to group awareness and group interests (Adams and Goldbard, 2001, p. 61).

This paper depicts the story of Mohammed Sawalha, a Palestinian cultural worker, and analyzes his vision and practices as a community leader who seeks to develop and emancipate his own community. Sawalha is the founder and director of the Palestinian House of Friendship (PHF), a non-profit organization located in Nablus, Palestine. The organization’s main goals are to strengthen Palestinian democracy, work for peace within Palestinian society and between Palestinians and Israelis, and respond to the social, cultural, and educational needs of the community. The analysis of Sawalha's unique vision and work is based on two phone interviews I conducted with him in February and March 2007. The first part of the paper depicts the interviews themselves and the second part focuses on the analysis of Sawalha's work in the light of theories dealing with cultural work and peace building. 

As an Israeli, it was important for me to interview a Palestinian cultural worker who deals with the social, cultural, and political implications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli occupation in a non-violent and creative way. The last time I had the opportunity to discuss these issues with Palestinians was during the Oslo talks, after the first Intifada; the new discourse of peace and reconciliation, which led to the promising negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, enabled people from both sides to break mental and physical walls, and to open themselves to "the other." As a teenager at that time and as a member of "Hashomer Hatzair" (an Israeli socialist youth movement), I had the opportunity to meet, for the first time, Palestinian teenagers; we shared the same desire to talk with the enemy and to get to know him or her as a human being. It was a momentary opportunity – the Oslo Agreement failed, Israeli right-wing governments deepened the occupation, Palestinian terrorism intensified, and both societies rebuilt the mental and physical walls between them. The image of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers talking, eating, sleeping, and hanging out together in Jerusalem and Beit Jallah for two weeks is now a utopian vision. From a promising stage of peace talks, the conflict deteriorated to stages of constant confrontation and severe crisis.

The phone conversations and emails with Mohammed enabled me to recreate relationships with someone from the other side of the wall, and to learn about his fascinating, difficult, and sometimes frustrating work with his suffering community. Between our first and second conversations, the Israeli army enforced a curfew on Nablus. Arrests and investigations of suspects led to the de facto imprisonment of the entire Nablus population. This time the routine report on the Israeli news website became personal – someone I know was locked in his house, someone who seeks to create a better future for his society was forced to lock his community center and stop his activities until the curfew was over. The following pages depict Sawalha's story based on our two conversations and express his voice for democracy, liberty, and equal opportunity that aims to subvert the voice of curfews, barriers, and conflict.

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