Hebron, my home

On a dark, chill Autumn night, Tel Aviv’s normally quiet College for Geographical Photography is abuzz with activity. Spotlights illuminate the trees in the courtyard; tables are loaded with bottles of red wine and snacks. Children thread their way through the congregated people, laughing and pushing one another. But, despite appearances, this isn’t a family event, a wedding or a birthday party. The boisterous children, a mixture of Jewish and Muslim kids from the southern West Bank town of Hebron, are in fact the stars of the opening night of the college’s photographic show, “Hebron, My Home.”
The exhibition is the culmination of an 18-month collaborative project between French news agency AFP and two of its photographers, Israeli Menachem Kahana, and Palestinian Hazem Bader. The two photographers chose a group of fourteen neighbouring Hebron children, aged between 6 and 18, with no previous experience of photography, to capture, in images, their everyday lives. What makes this project unique, however, is that half of the kids are Israelis living in two small orthodox Jewish enclaves of the city; the other half, though just across the street, are Palestinian Muslims.
Each group of seven children was provided with digital cameras, instruction on how to use them, and then sent off to photograph the world as they see it. Every week throughout the period, Kahana and Bader met with the kids, setting them fresh targets and challenges in order to truly distill the essence of their lives into a series of pictures. The resulting exhibition, now running in Tel Aviv until December 31st, displays the outcome of the project: 60 photos of life in Hebron, selected from the total 5000 the children shot during the year and a half period.
Hebron, home to approximately 120,000 Palestinian Muslims, a handful of Christians and a small Jewish enclave of roughly 500 people, has been a place of contention ever since the 1994 murder of 29 Muslims at a local mosque by Jewish resident, Dr. Baruch Goldstein. To the Israeli religious right, Goldstein remains a hero, whose grave inscription speaks of a “martyr” who died “sanctifying God’s name.” Not only is Hebron considered to house these most radical factions of the Israeli religious right, but it is also seen as the main West Bank centre for the fundamentalist Islamic Hamas movement.
Nowadays, approximately 80% of Hebron is administered by the Palestinian Authority; the other 20% is under Israeli control, with international observers continuously monitoring the city. And whilst today, incidents of violence are scarce, the city remains a potential ‘flashpoint’, where Jewish/Muslim tensions run high. The ‘Hebron, My Home’ project, therefore, provides one of only very few points of connection between the children on either side of the conflict.
Looking a little closer at the crowds thronging the entrance to the gallery, it’s clear that it is not the typical sophisticated Tel Aviv gallery crowd. An ultra-orthodox Jewish man, in black traditional dress, stands examining one of the first pictures in the series: a photograph depicting a classroom full of Palestinian kids midway through a lesson. Near him, two Palestinian women in headscarves discuss another of the photographs, depicting a group of Jewish children splashing happily in a waterhole.
A tour around the exhibition, photos grouped together in twos and threes, reveals incredible parallels between the seemingly opposing lives of Hebron’s two populations. The photos cover all areas of the children’s’ existence: home life, religious routines, recreation. In one, a Jewish mother blesses the meal she is preparing in the kitchen; in another, a Palestinian mother does the same. A Palestinian father prays with his children; a Jewish father, again, does the same.
Moreover, the children’s’ photography not only depicts their own experiences, but also encompasses the daily lives of those around them. A candid shot of a Jewish bride on her way to her wedding is set next to a posed picture of a Muslim bride before the ceremony. In both, the anxiety and trepidation of the wife-to-be is equally apparent. A photograph depicting a group of young Jewish boys playing snooker on a makeshift table is set against a shot of a group of Palestinian boys improvising games on a rooftop. The boys’ youthful energy and delight in their games is equally apparent, despite their different ‘worlds’.
At one end of the gallery, Noam Federman, controversial spokesman for Hebron’s tiny Jewish population, surveys the scene. Federman, with a history of arrests and incarceration for his suspected right-wing extremist activities (including his 2002 arrest on suspicion of plotting to bomb a girls’ school in East Jerusalem) seems an unlikely guest at such an event. Near him, two middle-aged Palestinian men talk heatedly to a young English-speaking man, wearing a yarmulke. But despite the potential for conflict – at least of a verbal kind – the exhibition’s spirit is one of peace, hope and tolerance. Whilst not exactly mingling freely, these very different groups of adults share the same room, examining the works of their children, able to co-exist over a drink and an amicable discussion.
And in amongst them, the children photographers themselves are busy documenting the gallery opening. They dodge between the crowds, linger in corners, taking photographs and then consulting their colleagues on the results. They are, after all, recording the only event during the entire 18-month period where both sides of grown-ups have briefly met. One small boy with a camera takes a photograph of two women being photographed in front of one of the exhibition’s photographs. Through participation in the project, these very young children have developed a sophisticated eye for composition, which would put many professional photographers to shame.
The joint instigator of the project, Menachem Kahana, explains that through viewing the results of the project, he hopes that both ‘sides’, as well as the wider public worldwide, will be afforded a fresh glimpse into the lives of the children of Hebron. “As a photographer, I’m always looking for new ways to portray a situation, and I hope this exhibition achieves that, in showing the conflict from a different angle,” he says. There are now plans to transfer the show to several places worldwide, including Paris and South America, as well as to Ramallah, where it would be exhibited to a largely Palestinian audience.
Perhaps the most telling pictures in the exhibition are a pair showing a child from the ‘other side’ photographing the person taking the picture. Both thus depict a child, pointing his or her camera at the viewer, from behind a heavy fence. These two images seem to capture the spirit of the exhibition: a reminder to adults everywhere that you just can’t ignore your neighbours, no matter how much you might want to.

This article, written by Amelia Thomas, was first published in the Middle East Times on December 7, 2004 (direct link).

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