In West Bank art centre, Palestinian children paint hopes beyond checkpoints

JERUSALEM, Sept 25 - On the outskirts of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian woman has transformed her home into an art centre where children use drawing to process their experiences of settler violence and Israeli military raids.

Artist Sarah Abu Madi says she founded the centre - Rommana, meaning pomegranate in Arabic - in 2020 to give local children a place to express their feelings and talk about what they had experienced.

The centre's work has taken on greater urgency as violence by Israeli settlers has surged in recent years amid a major expansion of Jewish settlements in the territory.

"If a settler or a soldier does something, we ask: 'How did that make you feel? What did it make you think about? How does that affect you?'," Abu Madi said. "If there is a raid on a home, we ask: 'What did that make you feel? What do you think? How does that affect you? What do you wish there would be?'."

This week, the children were asked to sketch the things most important to them. Talia Sabah, 10, drew a picture of birds flying from a cage, saying it represented freedom.

"I feel freedom is the most important thing in life," Sabah said.

"I wish the military would stop being in our lives and there would be freedom, and we could do what we want with life."

Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 and since then the territory has been under Israeli military occupation. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jewish settlers have moved to the territory, with settlement expansion accelerating rapidly under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The United Nations and most countries regard the settlements as illegal under international law governing military occupations. Israel disputes that interpretation and says the territory's status is disputed.

The Rommana studio is located in Wadi Al-Samen, a Hebron quarter isolated from the rest of the city by six military checkpoints, according to Abu Madi. The area sees frequent military raids as well as incursions from nearby Israeli settlements and settler outposts.

Children spoke about encounters with Israeli settlers and soldiers with a familiarity unusual for children their age.

"My grandfather on my mother's side owns land in the mountains, but the settlers established a settlement there, and anyone who goes up to the mountain gets arrested," said Karam Sabah, 11.

When Rommana first opened, it consisted of a few carpets laid on the floor of an old storage room. Today, children sit around low plastic tables beside colourful murals they helped paint.

Their artwork has begun travelling beyond the West Bank, with one exhibition held in Canada and another planned in Mexico, Abu Madi said.

Around 600 children attend the centre, she said. Her goal is to expand the project so that all 3,000 children living in the neighbourhood can take part.

One of the paintings by the children showed three children sitting on the back of a winged horse, representing a dream of being able to fly freely, no longer trapped behind checkpoints.

"Art also creates a space that tells them: you can dream. You can imagine and build a reality different from the one you're living in," said Abu Madi. REUTERS