A West Bank theatre trains young Palestinians in the dramatic arts, and offers an alternative to a life of violence

JENIN CAMP, WEST BANK — Perhaps the last place on Earth you would expect to find live theatre is the Jenin refugee camp at the northern tip of the Palestinian West Bank. The district of Jenin is better known for its cemeteries than for live performances.

This is where Yasser Arafat first hid out after Israel's 1967 conquest of the area; where his Fatah movement's Black Panthers launched attacks against Israel during the first intifada in the late 1980s. It's the place that produced more suicide attackers than any other area during the second intifada, and it's where the crushing 2002 Battle of Jenin took place that left more than 50 Palestinians and 23 Israelis dead.

Yet, walk down the unpaved lanes of the camp, past the many posters of martyrs and the banners to Saddam Hussein, and you'll find The Freedom Theatre – a drama school in its third year and a budding acting company that just staged its debut show: a production of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

The play, with a distinctly Palestinian flavour, drew more than 2,000 patrons in its two-week run, and more than its share of controversy. Some said it shamed the Palestinian Authority, accusing it of collaborating with the Israelis; others said it shamed women by allowing them to perform with men. Some people took enough exception to set fire to the adjacent music school last month, and burned the theatre's front door last week, in apparent attempts to burn the place down.

But if the play itself, with its power-corrupts message, seems high drama, the mere existence of this theatre company is a Shakespearean drama of its own.

The scene is 1989, the second year of the Palestinian intifada. Stone-throwing protests against Israeli occupation have spread throughout Gaza and the West Bank. In Jenin, the youthful protesters are joined by older militants who carry out armed attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers. The Jenin camp's schools are closed; its children have nowhere to turn.

Enter Arna Mer, a 59-year-old Jewish peace activist who had been born in a northern collective farm, fought as an 18-year-old to create the state of Israel, joined the Israeli Communist Party and married an Arab-Israeli activist. Since 1967 she had protested against the Israeli occupation and, by 1989, was determined to help the children of Jenin.

On the top floor of a house owned by a local widow name Samira Zubeidi, Ms. Mer opens a children's drama school. Aided by her actor son, Juliano Mer Khamis, she forms a small troupe and provides an artistic and educational outlet for dozens of children, including Ms. Zubeidi's sons, Zakariya and Daoud. For her efforts, Ms. Mer was awarded an alternative Nobel prize in 1993 and the prize money went to create a proper school facility.

The school would survive Ms. Mer's death from cancer in 1996, and Mr. Mer Khamis's departure – until 2002, that is, and the violence of the second intifada. It was destroyed when Israeli bulldozers levelled a section of the camp.

That's when Mr. Mer Khamis would return and make an extraordinary film called Arna's Children, using old and new video footage to show what had happened to those original young children his mother had nurtured.

Thirteen years after joining Ms. Mer's company of children, all but one of the original troupe were dead: One had been so affected by the killing of a young girl, he launched a suicide attack on the Israeli town of Hadera; two had perished in the Battle of Jenin, killed in the theatre school's rehearsal hall from where they had fired on advancing Israeli forces. One had become the Jenin leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militant group and was hunted down and killed.

Only Zakariya Zubeidi had survived. Imprisoned for throwing rocks, and again for throwing Molotov cocktails, he had been released after the 1993 Oslo Accords and joined the Palestinian police. He left the force, as a sergeant, disillusioned, he said, by the corruption he encountered.

In 2002, his mother and brother were killed when Israeli forces moved into Jenin camp. Once again, Mr. Zubeidi picked up a weapon.

He survived the intense battle in Jenin and, somewhat reluctantly, succeeded his friend as the leader of the al-Aqsa militants.

Mr. Zubeidi, his face still badly marked by a bomb of his own making, said in an interview last week that he did not approve of suicide missions, only military attacks on Israeli soldiers and settlers. High on Israel's most wanted list, however, he somehow survived several assassination attempts.

In 2006, Mr. Zubeidi approached Juliano Mer Khamis, his old drama tutor and, by that time, an award-winning filmmaker, and urged him to reopen the theatre school.

Mr. Zubeidi, by this time a husband and father, said he wanted the next generation to find a better way to express itself.

“I was fed up with the fighting,” he said. “It didn't get us [Palestinians] anywhere.”

Mr. Mer Khamis rose to the challenge: A number of international donors were found; volunteer teachers from several European countries stepped forward; an old UN warehouse was secured, and The Freedom Theatre rose from the ashes.

Mr. Mer Khamis and Mr. Zubeidi made an interesting pair: the Israeli-born child of Jewish and Arab communists, and the wanted Palestinian militant.

The school is thriving today, providing not only lessons in acting and filmmaking, but also drama therapy for young people in a still traumatic environment.

Mr. Mer Khamis, ever the quintessential director, rules with something of an iron hand. Mr. Zubeidi, however, must stay away. Though recently granted a conditional amnesty by Israel, in exchange for renouncing violence, he is still is seen as a terrorist by many, and his presence “might scare donors away,” Mr. Mer Khamis said.

Mr. Zubeidi is required to spend every night at the headquarters of the Palestinian security forces. Sitting recently in his wife's apartment, with his two young children clambering over him, he says that if things had been different – if his family had not been killed, if he had not taken up the gun and leadership of the militants – he would have liked to have been a teacher.

“I want these kids to learn so much more than they can see in this place,” he says.

Watching the young actors ply their craft in Animal Farm, you can see what Ms. Mer and Mr. Zubeidi were seeking.

Clover, the young romantic horse, is played by 22-year-old Rabe'a Turkman, a former fighter with the al-Aqsa militants, whose sister was killed when Israeli forces came looking for him. He could easily have turned into a suicide attacker, the way others did before him. Instead, he too renounced violence and turned to acting, an artistic intifada.

Zina Zaarour, 20, who plays Snowball, the idealistic sow, is performing in the theatre over her family's objections – they don't believe women and men should perform together. Ms. Zaarour is determined to follow her dream.

Slipping away from the final performance, Zakariya Zubeidi knows he's played his part.

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