Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba

Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba

By Hala Khamis Nassar

In such trying times and in the face of eradication, there is an urgent need to counter the Israeli-settler colonial hegemonic narrative. This article demonstrates how Palestinian theatre in recent years adamantly organized site-specific festivals to reclaim Nakba stories. These selected sites, all built before 48, have their own stories to tell, albeit ones that accentuate remembrance of the past. Concerning such site-based performance, McAuley writes, “the site becomes the dominant signifier rather than simply being that which contains the performance, as the theatre building does in traditional theatre practice. Site-based performance engages more or less deeply with its chosen site and as a result tends to be drawn into engagement with the social and political issues that seem inseparable from place” (McAuley 2005: 30).  The combination of a Nakba story with pre-1948 sites evokes and highlights the Palestinian past, reminding the audience of its uninterrupted lineage.

On the Palestinian stage, enactments of the Nakba and its ongoing significant repercussions are being revisited, dominating the cultural scene. A very recent example is al-Harah's experimentation with Site-Specific Theatre in Beit Jala. Site-specific theatre is not new to the Palestinian context. The late Iraqi director Awni Karumi introduced it to Palestine at the Palestinian National Theatre Festival in 1993. Ashtar Theater, based in Ramallah, embarked on experimenting with sites and produced Richard II in 2012 at Hisham Palace in Jericho.^[1] In July 2021, Al-Harah Theatre, in cooperation with Grid Iron Theatre in Edinburgh and supported by leading EU countries, organised its first Site-Specific Theatre Festival in Bethlehem and Beit Jala^[2]. Grid Iron Theatre conducted two weeks of rigorous workshops for aspiring young playwrights and directors in the winter of 2020. After the final selection, five plays were picked and developed into a performance under Grid’s mentorship.^[3] In the festival’s First Edition, the play Dar 13 reflected the ongoing resistance against the Israeli eviction orders of Sheikh Jarrah residents; Al-Hosh lamented about destroyed sites and dispersal of its inhabitants due to 1948 War; The Perfect Crime investigated a murder that still hovers the corridors of an abandoned house; The Port recalled a lost culture and a country, and Buldozer shed light on Israeli house demolition orders in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The festival also included storytelling, some based on fairy tales, others like Animal with Plague subtly narrating the Nakba. 

Scouting locations in Beit Jala and Bethlehem, Dar-al Sabbagh Center played a crucial role in selecting sites for the festival and in performing the plays. ^[4] The chosen sites reveal their own stories. Some sites are already abandoned, with their inhabitants in the diaspora; others are dilapidated or being restored and renovated as part of Bethlehem’s two-thousand-year-old Cultural Heritage.^[5] Yet, the selected buildings in the old cities reveal a unique style of pre-1948 architects. Large spacious houses, with cathedral windows, carpet design floor tilings, high ceilings, and green courtyards in the midst where there is either a well or a water fountain; a fitting atmosphere, and a space to tell a story. 

The plays in the festival portrayed life before and after 1948, the brutality of Israeli occupation, and the threats to Sheikh Jarrah residents against the backdrop of the Israeli onslaught on 10 May 2021, when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip lasting eleven days. While Hamas called the ensuing conflict the Sword of Jerusalem Battle, the IDF officially dubbed the military campaign in the Gaza Strip Operation Guardian of the Walls. The aggression on Gaza comes after Hamas’s ultimatum to Israel to remove its security forces from the Temple Mount complex and from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. In this charged atmosphere, storytellers, independent artists, directors from the West Bank and Israel, and the Freedom Theatre were the main participants in the festival.

The 2^nd Edition of the Bethlehem Site-Specific Theatre Festival took place from the 26^th to the 30^th of July 2023 in the cities of Beit Jala, Bethlehem. This time, it expanded its participation to the southern part of the West Bank, including the city of Hebron. Grid Iron Theatre in Scotland conducted a training workshop for a new cohort of aspiring directors and playwrights. However, the performances in the Second Edition of the festival were “based on personal stories of older people in Bethlehem and Hebron governorates being documented by the researcher and storyteller Sally Shalabi” (al-Harah Theater, 2023 Playbill). Shalabi collected memories and narratives by interviewing older people from different backgrounds and rewrote them in the form of stories. Through the Capacity Building Program for Young Artists implemented by al-Harah Theatre in collaboration with Grid Iron, six directors and three storytellers presented their productions during the festival in the three above-mentioned cities.  On 26 July 2023, the old alleys of Hebron hosted the performances of The Almond Flower and Heaven Door is Open, and the storytelling of The Qazzazin Neighborhood Boy, and Struggle and Success based on interviews with refugees from the 1967 War with Israel. In the old hosh/alley compounds of Beit Jala, the plays and stories from Hebron were also performed in addition to the play Equivalent and storytelling of Boqja. As for Bethlehem and at the Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation, two other performances were added: The Freedom Fabric and I Was There.  It is worth noting that at the end of each festival day, the interviewees were acknowledged by Al-Harah Theatre and presented with the theatre’s logo, carved from olive wood.

One major difference between the first and the second editions of the festival is that the latter aims to “shed light on the importance of historical and heritage spaces in the old cities to show the richness of these cities that are full of stories since thousands of years” (ibid.).  Nonetheless, one cannot overlook the fact that the most outstanding plays in both festivals are storytelling monodramas documenting Palestinian life pre- and post-1948 and 1967. The discerning illustrations of such enactments are biographical plays, for they never cease to be relevant, nowadays more than ever. Al-Harah’s Site-Specific festivals document memory accounts of the Nakba survivors. In Masalha’s words, “compiling and recording oral history and encouraging annual commemorations [is] designed to preserve the memory of the catastrophe, while emphasizing the link between refugee rights, collective identity, and the challenge to return” (Masalaha 2012: 254).

The biographical stories Buqja and The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness draw the audience “into engagement”^[6] with life under occupation. The stories document the Zionist aggression on historic Palestine, resulting in the erasure of entire villages, depopulating them and displacing their inhabitants, making them internal refugees or forcing them to migrate outside the geographical borders of Palestine. They document Palestinian life before 1948, the ramifications of refugee displacement, and the Judaization of the Palestinian landscape, villages, towns, and cities, particularly Jerusalem. The above selections delve into the collective memory of Palestinians and use it as a political weapon in the process of a national struggle when wars and peace agreements have proved to be ineffective. It also aims to remind, educate, politicize, and inform the public that the Zionist project is ongoing (Nassar 2023)

Buqja

Buqja (Bundle)^[7] is based on the life of my mother, Faiza Tawfiq Nasser Nassar (Um Hanna), interviewed by the well-known Sally Shalabi and performed by Majeda Subhi. The performance took place on 26 July at Ma’an lil Hayat/L’Arche Bethlehem, and on 30 July 2023 at Khalilieh Arch/hosh in the old city of Beit Jala.

The play begins with the narrator welcoming the audience and explaining that she is going to tell my mother’s story. Seated on the old hand-carved stone stairs in the Kahlilieh Arch Compound in the old city of Beit Jala, the narrator points to my mother in the audience, thanking her for agreeing to be interviewed and for the chance to tell her story. Subhi starts narrating, telling the audience that she wanted to tell Um Hanna’s story as she is also from the suburbs of Jerusalem.  Um Hanna, born in Nazareth, grew up in an upper-class landowners’ family. Her father then relocated to Jerusalem to become one of the personal guards to the commissioner of the British Mandate in Palestine. They lived in what is now known as West Jerusalem on Saint Julian Street, a couple of streets down from the YMCA. In 1948, British forces started to withdraw from Palestine.^[8]  Um Hanna’s father, Tawfiq, received orders to deploy to Cyprus with the remaining British troops, which he flatly refused, insisting that Palestine “is my country, I live and die in it!”^[9] fully knowing that his pension benefits would be stopped, and his British passport revoked (al-Harah 2023). The last troops left Palestine on 15 May 1948. On that day, “they heard a lot of shooting in Jerusalem and the Jewish loudspeakers telling the Arabs to surrender” (ibid.). Out of fear, they remained inside the house and comforted themselves with the fact that there were enough provisions to sustain them for some time. After “two days, the Stern and the Hagenah gangs come and surround the neighbourhood […] Faiza does not forget what they looked like” (ibid.). The Stern separates men from women. They blindfolded the men, loaded them into trucks, and drove away to an unknown destination. They tell the women to go home. Many families, at this point, start abandoning their houses and streets. Teta Christina, a neighbour, comes and stays with them. A month passes confined in the house then the gangs come again.  Hearing the commotion in the house yard, Teta Christina asks Faiza’s mother, Haneh, “What are we going to do now?” Haneh responds, “sssh, pointing with her fingers to the mouth, be quiet, do not stir, let us wait it out” (al-Harah 2023).

While they are standing silently against the wall, the gangs storm in through the door, they turn the house upside down, throw the oil and wheat on the expensive imported hand-made woollen Iranian carpets, gather the remaining food from the pantry, and force them to lock the door with clothes on their back and take the keys with them. They blindfold the women, load them onto trucks, and drop them off at Piccadilly Square in Jerusalem at 10 o’clock in the evening. The families are asked to ride the trucks, and after driving around for some time, they are again dropped off at the YMCA and into the gymnastics hall. Haneh is shocked to see so many people, some she knew, others not, from different backgrounds. Scared to death, she does not get a wink of sleep that night and hugs her three children until morning. The next day, trucks come to carry the families to locations outside Jerusalem, which will constitute the nucleus of refugee camps in the West Bank. As for Teta Christina Shiber, since she descends from one of the affluent families of Jerusalem at that time, the Red Cross arranges for her to join her family in Lebanon, leaving behind vast wealth and real estate all over the western part of the city only to be confiscated by the new state of Israel. Haneh asks Mr. Miller, the YMCA director at the time, to help her go to Nazareth to stay with her family, only to be told that Nazareth has fallen.^[10] Relentless and depending on her social connections, Haneh manages to relocate to al-Jawzi’s office in the YMCA with her family, thereby evading relocation.

The narrator, Subhi, takes a deep breath and continues to tell us how Haneh and her three children remain hidden in the YMCA. Then, she decides to go and check on her home. Haneh informs Mr. Miller, who refuses her request multiple times and forbids her from leaving the compound. Haneh is still anxious about the fate of her home, and she attempts to sneak out. Fire S     hots are heard in the surroundings, but she decides to keep walking towards the house, only to be stopped by people running away while the body of Count of Wisborg, Folke Bernadotte is ushered into the YMCA.^[11] Undeterred, Haneh secretly attempts a second dangerous venture towards home. There are shots fired; nevertheless, she makes it, collects whatever she can carry, and wraps everything in a bedsheet, making a bundle. As she is about to leave, she notices the sewing machine lying on the floor and picks it up.  Walking in Jerusalem is dangerous as the city is already divided into zones, and one cannot cross from one to another without having the proper papers. “The more she runs on the streets towards the YMCA, the more gunshots are fired. As she is about to reach the YMCA, she counts eleven bullets aimed at her, but makes it to the front entrance. Her daughter, Faiza, sees her and runs to Haneh, screaming, ‘Mama mama.’  Faiza is hit with a bullet that scratches her arm” (al-Harah 2023). 

At this point, Faiza stops the storyteller, corrects her, and tells her: “It was not me, it was my older sister Aida who was shot” (ibid.). Such is an example of how the spectators engage with the site as the story is being told. As McAuley asserts when discussing Segments from an Inferno, “the way performance can impact upon a place, activating memories and permitting the past to resonate in the present, and of the way the spectator’s experience may exceed what the performer’s intended” (McAuley 43).  Incidentally, Faiza was the only spectator who interrupted the performance and corrected the storyteller in the festival’s performances! Hence drawing the attention of the other spectators to the then and now, when the “aesthetic experience of the performance is always, for good or ill, embedded with the social reality,” (ibid 47) where the individual spectator, in this case, Faiza, experiences the performance in the company of other audiences. Being in the performance, Faiza becomes part of the performative experience, where “the aesthetic is enmeshed in complex ways within the social, the fictional within the real; but in site-based work […] the social reality is foregrounded” (ibid.). After Faiza’s correction, Subhi continues the story. Witnessing the incident, Mr Miller shouts at Haneh and says in a hoarse voice, “What if something happens to you? Who is going to take care of your children!” (al-Harah 2023). 

Subhi, as if reading from a book, continues to chronicle Faiza’s life story to a very attentive audience and describes how the Red Cross starts to collect the Christian families from the YMCA and distribute them among the churches in the Old City of Jerusalem. Faiza’s family is put up in the Lutheran Church. After spending six days on the benches of the church with little to nothing to eat, they are eventually given an empty room in the German Hospice in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Faiza recalls how humiliating and painful it is to fall from grace. From a spacious multi-room in a two-floor villa, with lovely furniture, abundant food, beautiful clothes, and a private German school, to an empty room with no furniture, no food, and rags for clothes.  She also recalls how her mother, Haneh, puts the sewing machine to work, making shirts for the refugees. “It did not pay much as all of us are now refugees and our pockets are empty” (ibid).

In site-specific theatre pertaining to -Nakba, the engagement among the narrator, the audience, and the interviewee is immersive; the site and the story become one and the same. Subhi, at this point in the performance, looks towards my mother, Faiza, among the attentive audience, as if seeking approval to continue. She then recounts how the family receives a word through the Red Cross to go to the Mandelbaum Gate crossing.^[12] Life of struggle, poverty, displacement, and survival continues in the storytelling of the play, as Subhi tells us another trauma in Faiza’s life: Tawfik’s return from detention. While they are standing at the checkpoint under the scorching sun, a tall skinny man appears, much like a vagabond with buried eyes, long hair, and a beard.  Aida and Haneh run toward the man, but Faiza does not. When Tawfiq approaches her and says, “I am your dad, you do not want to hug me?” Faiza shrinks away, screaming, “I do not know you; you are not my dad!”  Faiza recalls how Tawfiq squeezes her in a way only a father and daughter know; only then does she welcome her father’s hugs. Living in poverty and deprivation continues for Faiza, and it reaches a turning point in her life when the Lutheran Church offers to send one girl from each newly refugee family to a German boarding school, run by the nuns: Talitha Kumi in Beit Jala. Faiza cries her eyes out but is forced to go, as Aida, the older sister, is helping Haneh with the sewing. Also, Yoel is born in that lowly room, and Faiza’s departure leaves space for the newborn to be fed. Despite the harsh treatment, cold dormitory, measly food, strict nuns, and unkind teachers, Faiza studies hard, passes her GCE, and becomes a teacher at the same school. There, she meets the electric engineer Khamis from Beit Jala, and they marry.

Another chapter of displacement occurs in the life of the key characters. Faiza’s story continues as her husband gets a job offer as the head of engineers in a newly built chemical factory in Amman, Jordan. The couple move to Jordan with their baby boy. During that time, they travel every month back and forth between Amman and Jerusalem until the 1967 War, when traveling over the bridges becomes too dangerous. Unable to visit her family in Jerusalem, Faiza is sad and anxiously waits for news. Political tensions between the Palestinians and the Jordanians escalate, leading to the bloody events of Black September in 1970. As the Palestinian fedayeen militant’s stronghold is in Zarqa, the Jordanian army runs house-to-house to search for them. Khamis and Faiza send the two older children to Aunt Angail’s house, and with the two younger ones, they stay with their neighbors, hiding in the basement under a table as the battle rages on outside.  Faiza describes the screams of the fedayeen as they are being slaughtered in the streets. Afraid of being expelled from Jordan with the PLO, thus becoming, yet again, refugees in Lebanon, they remain in hiding until the Jordanian army discovers and interrogates them. Life becomes unbearable for the new family in Jordan, and they decide to move back to Palestine. Moving back home has not been easy since the 1967 Israel occupation of the West Bank, and they need a family reunion military permit, which is hard to obtain. After four years, the permit is issued, but for the West Bank only, while Faiza’s request to join her family in Jerusalem is denied. Such a denial of entry makes Faiza angry as “she always has held Jerusalem in her heart” (al-Harah 2023).

As Edward Said eloquently describes, the Palestinian story is “not a narrative… but rather broken narratives, fragmentary compositions, and self-consciously staged testimonials, in which the narrative voice keeps stumbling over itself, its obligations and its limitations” (Said 1986, 38). Like many Palestinians, Faiza always defines her life in terms of major political events overshadowing Palestine since the Nakba of 1948. During the first Intifada of 1987, Faiza’s husband’s work deteriorates, and, as the children are already scattered across the Americas and Europe, Khamis decides to try his luck this time in Honduras. Reluctantly, Faiza is uprooted once again and goes to Honduras. Still, she studies Spanish and becomes a citizen. In 2009, due to Khamis’s declining health, they return to Beit Jala, only to witness the impact of the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993: the Separation Wall, the bypass road carving the landscape to make safe roads for Israeli settlers, the checkpoints, and the need for permits to move between zones A, B, and C. Refusing up till this moment to issue a biometric identity card and apply for permit to go to Jerusalem or Nazareth to visit her family, Faiza prefers being smuggled into Jerusalem. Up until now, Faiza refuses to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel. Her act of defiance is loudly articulated when a priest in her Lutheran Church gives a sermon about forgiveness and reconciliation. When asked if she is willing to forgive someone, Faiza stands tall and says: “I will never forgive or reconcile with the Zionists. They have deprived me of my childhood, and they have expelled me from my home more than once. My family has led a harsh life of poverty, and as refugees because of them. During my lifetime, I will never forgive them.” Faiza’s parents lived and died in that room in the German Hospice, now turned into a hostel.  They never went home. The keys to the house on Saint Julian Street are still with Faiza.

My mother’s story is one of thousands of stories of Palestinians, who were driven out of their homes by force, with only the clothes on their backs. No trace of my mother’s parents’ house can be found today. 

Palestinian Nature and Settlers: The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness 

As Buqja documents the steadfastness against the Zionist aggression and Judaization of Jerusalem, The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness is hitherto another testimony of the ongoing Nakba in the southern regions of historic Palestine.

In its Second Edition, al-Harah Theatre contributes to al-Makhrour’s festival and presents the biographical storytelling The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness, performed by Nicola Zreineh and Sally Shalabi about the life of Carlos Barham, Abu Saliba. It is a fitting choice, not only as a striking example of employing site-specific theatre but because al-Makhrour’s land is constantly under threat of being cordoned off to the adjacent settlement of Har Gilo, which is also built on illegal confiscation of Beitjalian’s lands and, as a consequence, strangling the town.^[13] Inad Theatre in Beit Jala has organised its Second Edition of Al-Makhrour Festival to begin on 7 September 2023. The three-day program usually takes place after the harvesting of Al-Makhrour’s almonds, apricots, plums, pistachios, and grapes, and before the start of olive picking in late October. Al-Makhrour is a vast valley, and the peaky green hills belong to the people of Beit Jala. Since the Oslo Peace Accords, the area has been carved under Israeli control as it is surrounded by the large settlement of Har Gilo, hence confiscating Beitjalian’s fertile agricultural lands. Celebrating the harvest in Al-Marhrour and even with an Israeli settler seizing the highest hill, the festival’s program usually includes musical shows, stand-up comedians, theatrical performances, workshops, camping, guided walking tours, and storytelling.

“The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness” is site-specific theatre in the strict sense of the word, given its location in al-Makhrour, for the storytelling “emerges from a particular place and engages with the history and politics of that place, and with the resonance of these in the present” McAuley, 32). Carlos’ story exists in the site where it is produced and performed. Shalabi starts telling us the story by saying, “If you search for Carlos, you will find him in his castle amidst the valley surrounded by the beautiful nature and accompanied by cats. From there, Carlos reminisces” (al-Harah 2023).  Carlos remembers the good old days before 1948, when the townspeople of Beit Jala started the journey to al-Makhrour on the 5^th of May after celebrating Saint George’s Festival in the nearby village of al-Khader, named after the saint.  The townsfolk bring furniture, bedding, food, and herds and remain in the green valley and hills until the first rain and the petrichor fill the air. Only the sickly and those who cannot walk to al-Makhrour stay back in town.

Carlos recalls how every clan in Beit Jala owned at least a plot of land, which they planted with olives and fruit trees, including grapes, figs, almonds, apples, and plums. Such a tradition lasted until 1967, and to this day, Carlos can name the owner of each piece of land in the valley. In the summer, al-Makhrour is buzzing, as the townspeople build a small Qaṣr (a castle) to spend the season in the green valley. Usually, the castle is built out of hand-carved stones; it has two floors and a window called Ṭāqa. The family occupies the upper level, and storage and the livestock are kept at the lower level. Back then, families would put a lantern in the window so people in the valley could see the light and come over to visit during the cool summer nights. Remembering, Carlos stresses the fact that in the old days, the sky was full of stars, and you could even read the Milky Way. Now smog is filling the sky, and you can hardly spot any stars even on a clear night.  Carlos enthusiastically explains how the remaining green area surrounding the city of Beit Jala is named al-Makhrour. It is due to the steepness of the valley connecting to the village of Batir’s valley and the abundant water springs, where you could hear the gurgle of the running water seeping loudly in the valley to Jaffa and into the Mediterranean Sea. Lamenting, Carlos says, the springs and groundwater have dried up, and the climate has changed; however, once the rain comes down, it fills some of it, and you can still hear the purl of water. Here, Carlos does not mention how the adjacent settlement of Har Gilo has installed water pipes in the valley and pumps the water all year round up into the settlement. 

Still evoking the past, Carlos spends time telling us how his grandfather built the Qaṣr and says, “We are a chain of a longer one. He built it and lived in it, my father did too, and I am only a caretaker of the land and trees, leaving it to my children… such is life” (al-Harah 2023). Since the signing of the Oslo Accords II in 1995, the city of Beit Jala has been divided into ABC areas.^[14] Al-Makhrour is part of the C area; thus, Israel maintains full control of the valley and its hills. Therefore, it is forbidden to restore a ruined castle, a stone hedge, or even a well of water, since you need a special Israeli military permit for construction in the valley. Nonetheless, Carlos maintains the well and the small pond near the spring, which his father built. In the past, they used to water the trees and the plants from the spring. Now it has dried up. Although there is no electricity in the castle, and the well is only full of rainwater, Carlos prefers to stay on his land, taking care of the trees, running away from the hustle and bustle of Beit Jala and its congested air. At a young age, Carlos’ father not only taught him how to take care of the land, trim the fruit trees, harvest the olives, and sew all kinds of plants, but also how to use a hunting rifle.  Pondering, Carlos recalls how Beit Jala’s residents used to hunt birds, and how the grandmother would wrap them in dough and cook them over a fireplace. Now, the “Israelis, if they spot you holding a slingshot, you are immediately arrested, so how about owning a hunting rifle? Decades ago, the skies were full of migrating birds; now we hardly see any” (ibid). Carlos sighs and says, “The country that loses its birds, loses its blessings” (ibid).

Taking over the narrative from Shalabi, Zreineh tells us that in 1966, Carlos is drafted into the Jordanian reserve army. He is taken to Nuweihmeh Camp in Jericho for training. In 1967, and still in the training camp, Israeli aircraft bombs the trainees, and everything goes ablaze. After the airplanes fly away, Carlos notices something still glittering on the ground. He touches it and it burns his finger. He instantly realizes that they have been hit with Napalm bombs. Once the West Bank of the River Jordan falls from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan int Israeli hands, Carlos’s family starts to worry about their son’s fate. Zreineh keeps narrating Carols’ fate in Jordan. The family sends word to Hanna Salman to find Carlos. Salman moves from one camp to another until he finds himself in the city of Zarqa’s military camp. Once spotted, Salman tells Carlos to take off his military uniform, then rides in the car pretending to be a labourer. Salman hides Carlos in Amman; however, his name is on the list of the deserters. Later, he is moved to Madaba to avoid arrest. Although the fighting has stopped, the bridges between the two banks of the Jordan River are either closed or destroyed due to the 1967 War. Carlos’ uncle drives him to the border to be smuggled by a Bedouin, who carries people on his back and crosses the Jordan River. Zreineh, as the narrator, tells us it is an arduous journey and full of danger, as the river’s water is rapid, and if you do not know how to swim, you can easily drown. Carlos makes it to Jericho, seeks the Greek Orthodox Church, and hides. With the help of Orthodox clergymen, Carlos arrives home to Beith Jala, meets his friends and family. His father cries as he hugs him (al-Harah 2023).

Zreineh continues narrating as Carlos. He goes back to the land after changing jobs, getting married in 1971, and building a family home. More than once, he is offered a job in Israel, as Carlos is known in Beit Jala for having a green thumb, but he always declines. Nothing deters Carlos from al-Makhrour, no siege of area A and B, or curfews imposed on Beit Jala and Bethlehem, nor the first intifada of 1986, the second intifada of 2001, or Covid -19, he always walks through the old alleys of the city, down the valleys of Beit Jala and up the mountain to go all the way to his castle. Now and then, the Israeli soldiers stop Carlos and ask for an identification card, his response to the occupation is always the same “Look at my grey hair, this is my identity, why would I need to carry one when I am going to my land” (al-Harah 2023). The soldiers always let him pass to al-Mkahrour. As I am writing this article, Carlos is still seen walking towards al-Makhrour. He recalls that now the road is paved and wide enough for cars to drive on, while before it was a narrow dirt pathway barely wide enough for one donkey to pass.

Intervening in the narrative, Shalabi sighs and tells us that Carlos thinks “Oslo” has caused a lot of damage in terms of the land swap with Israel. Al-Makhrour is under Israeli control, area C, and “there is a settler, who seized a fertile plot of land on the top of the mountain four years ago, watching everyone’s movement.  You cannot build, renovate, or even dig out the oak or fir trees, and if you leave your land unworked for five years, the occupation confiscates it under the absentees’ law of 48” (al-Harah 2023). To Carlos, the land is wealth as is his children to whom he taught the love of the land. Carlos conjures his father’s words “if you would ask the land how are you doing? The land could answer: I am doing well if you visit me. If you will stop visiting me, then there is woe!” (ibid.).

The above performances, with storytelling and dramatic play, are based on interviews with elderly Palestinians who witnessed, survived, and are resisting the impact of the 48 Nakba and the 67 War.  Additionally, experimenting with Site Specific Theatre and performing in spaces that predate 1948 is revealing as the Palestinian sites themselves also have stories to tell, and in the words of Pierre Nora (1996), the ‘site of memory’ (lieux de mémoire) is a site of trauma, dispossession, and anger.^[15] Accordingly, the chosen locals are powerful stimuli to memory. For in site-specific performances, “telling and retelling stories of our own lives and of the lives of our forebears, telling the stories official society does not want told, listening to other people’s stories are foundational acts in the creation of personal and social identity” (McAuley, 49). Thus, in the Palestinian context, the political consequences of such Nakba storytelling are immensely profound because the settler colonial project is aware of the impact of memorialising the Nakba and is unwilling to let it find its own level.

On the surface, Palestinian theatre might appear to be “trapped” in the Nakba narrative. Israeli settler colonialism’s enduring systematic appropriation of land, demolishing houses, expelling people, indiscriminate detentions and imprisonment, destroying infrastructure, academic institutions, and research centres, and denying people the right to enter Jerusalem to worship in the religious sites, are all measures to make life intolerable and to drive people to seek safety and refuge elsewhere. However, as I have argued elsewhere, those biographical monodramas also reflect the oral history and collective memory of Palestinians, who use it as “a political weapon in the process of a national struggle when wars and peace agreements have proved to be ineffective.  It also aims to remind, educate, politicize, and inform the public that the Zionist project is ongoing” (Nassar 2023). Site-specific stories of the already-displaced refugees in historic homes and on lands facing ethnic cleansing have become a necessity to combat whatever the future may hold for Palestinians, who simply resist just to exist.