Current 
Programme
Programme Programme Please Note our Festival is broken into four sections this year, Films, Bold Words & Conversation, Music, and Multimedia installations. Information for these sections are found by clicking on the tabs to your left. The Voices Forward Festival this year focuses on the city of Hebron. Hebron: In The Eye Of The Storm is a condensed view of the conflict through a variety of stories, artwork and films by Israelis and Palestinians. Why Hebron? The city of Hebron, or El-Khalil as it is known in Arabic, is the second largest city in the West Bank. The most famous historic site in Hebron sits on the Cave of the Patriarchs, held sacred in both Islamic and Jewish tradition as the burial place of four Biblical couples (Adam and Eve; Abraham and Sarah; Isaac and Rebekah; Jacob and Leah). The name derives from Haver, or ‘friend’ in both Hebrew and Arabic. For many centuries Jews and Arabs lived peacefully in beautiful Hebron. In 1929 a massacre of Jews by Arabs shook this relationship. Then, in the 1948 war, when Jordan took over Hebron the Jewish community was evacuated from the city. After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, a small new Jewish settlement was immediately established in the old part of the city. Today it is the only Palestinian city with an Israeli settlement in the middle of its old city, amidst Palestinian homes. In 1994 Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler armed with an assault rifle, entered the Mosque in the old city and massacred 29 Muslims at prayer. The first ever Palestinian suicide bombers exploded in Tel Aviv few weeks later. In order to protect the 600 Israeli settlers living in Hebron, crippling military restrictions have been imposed on the Palestinian population in H2, the Israeli controlled sector. Palestinians are forbidden from walking on the main street or driving a car; their shops and markets have been closed down; and they are subject to frequent military checkpoints and searches.These policies have turned H2 - once the city’s commercial center – into a ghost town. It has become the site of daily violent incidents, a hub of Two Nations, living under two different sets of rules and laws. The separation principle imposed by authorities on the city mandates legal and physical segregation between the Israeli and Palestinian community. |
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