Diaspora gather for Europe's first Palestinian art museum in Edinburgh

The Herald Scotland

18-05-2025

A small collection box inside the main entrance of the non-profit, volunteer-run gallery offers a reminder: "It's not just human lives being erased in Palestine - art and culture are also targets."
The date is significant: May 15 marks Nakba Day, when Palestinians commemorate the loss of their homes, lands, and sometimes lives in the creation of Israel.
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The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted in 1947, splitting the land into the new Jewish state and a Palestinian one.
Around 56% of what was then British Mandatory Palestine was to be allocated to Israel, despite Arabs making up two-thirds of the population and, at the time, owning roughly 90% of the land.
The plan was rejected by the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states, and its adoption led to a bloody civil war which went largely unchecked by the British.
On March 10 1948 this time Haganah, the main Zionist paramilitary group, implemented Plan Dalet to establish control of key areas by expelling Palestinians and destroying their villages.
Soldiers were given lists of settlements, along with a detailed description - access roads, quality of land, water springs, main sources of income, level of hostility - and its fate: destruction, occupation, or expulsion.
Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian, wrote: "The plan decided upon on 10 March 1948, and above all its systematic implementation in the following months, was a clear case of what is now known as an ethnic cleansing operation."
Israel declared its independence on May 14, and the following day a coalition of neighbouring Arab states invaded.
By the time of the armistice in March 1949 Israel controlled around 78% of what had been Mandatory Palestine, with more than 700,000 Palestinians forced out of their homes. They call this 'al-Nakba', the catastrophe.
A short film is shown with a timeline of the fate of more than 600 Palestinian villages.
Hamada Elkempt, Under Observation, 2024 (Image: Hamada Elkempt)
Faisal Saleh, founder of Palestine Museum, says: "To the refugees in the room, watch for your village - mine is April 25."
On the floor is a map of historic Palestine, showing the destroyed villages and the sites of close to 50 massacres. News of mass killings, such as those at Deir Yassin, greatly added to the number of Palestinians fleeing their homes.
One of the refugees stands on the map, gesturing to the north and the coast of the Mediterranean sea: "They wanted control of the farming areas. The Zionist slogan was 'a land without a people for a people without a land' and this is what they tried to create."
The Palestinians were overpowered, he says, with only one or two rifles per village. As for the Arab coalition, they were focused on stopping the Palestinians fighting.
Jane Frere, who runs a community project which sews the names of the dead in Gaza onto banners speaks after a short film about the work.
In it, the final name she places onto the banner is the husband of a woman who left for Lebanon to deliver their baby. The child's father, a doctor, was killed in Gaza.
The art in the gallery, however, is altogether lighter. A landscape painting of an olive grove, kites flying in a clear blue sky, a woman in a headscarf standing in the sun-kissed sea.
Nabil Anani, In Pursuit of Utopia, 2020 (Image: Ziad Anani/Zawyeh Gallery) On one wall are pictures drawn by children from Gaza, bright, crayon drawings.
As Mr Saleh told The Herald: "There are not a lot of gory scenes and scenes of violence whatsoever. It's just regular, the kind of art you'd see in a typical modern art museum. We are trying to show that Palestinians are human, just like everyone else.
"In general, we really are not very political."
Some things are, of course, hard to ignore.
When a speaker thanks Mr Saleh for his hard work in establishing the space he waves a hand and says: "Please, we are hanging out and having a good time - people are dying in Gaza."
This is not an attempt to bring down the mood, but rather an example of the deep connection those of the diaspora, most wearing keffiyehs and other traditional clothing, feel to the land. Many wear keys around their necks, a symbol of the hope to return to their former homes.
One of the speakers is a Palestinian woman who was forced from her village at the age of four.
Speaking in Arabic, with translation by Mr Saleh, she explains: "The Arab countries told the Palestinians, 'go out and we'll take care of everything'."
Her family left their home with little more than the clothes on their back - "like you see them now" - and fled to Gaza. There were no houses for them to go to. Initially there weren't even tents. That winter it snowed in Gaza.
At the age of 81 she's seen every year of the conflict. She recounts praying in her home as a missile shattered the window above her, the screams of her children, the deaths of friends and family. Things now are worse than she's ever known.
The diaspora, men and women, old and young, are sobbing as she tells her story.
"What you see from Gaza now is only the areas where the journalists can go," she says. "And they are killing most of the journalists."
The woman was able to leave on a visa to visit family in Scotland, and she thanks the nation for its hospitality and solidarity.
She ends with two sentences: "May God bless you. May God never show you the things we have seen."