Press Releases
10 April 2012-BADIL Resource Center, as one the most significant Nakba-64 activities, BADIL officially launched the new 'Ongoing Nakba Education Center' in Bethlehem.
The Ongoing Nakba Education Centre (ONEC) highlights the forced displacement that Palestinians continue to suffer and struggle against today as they have done for more than 64 years as a direct result of the Zionist settler-colonial project. The main focus of this work is the production and dissemination of rights-based multi-media advocacy tools. A new photography exhibition was opened at the launch event and a series of new short films were screened documenting the ongoing displacement of Palestinians across different areas of historic Palestine.
The ONEC incorporates the photographic gallery, regular public events including film screenings, exhibitions and lectures, a well-stocked public library, and the new project-specific bilingual website - www.ongoingnakba.org - through which all multi media advocacy tools are accessible online. It is open to the public from 9-5 Monday to Friday at BADIL's Bethlehem headquarters on Al Karkafa Street. The ONEC website is user-friendly and based on an interactive map of historic Palestine which is divided into the historic governorates. Each governorate contains the cities, villages or communities whose residents have been forcibly displaced or under threat of displacement. The unique feature of the ONEC, as a data base of ongoing ethnic cleansing, is that the territory covered includes all of historic Palestine, the occupied territory, what is now the state of Israel and Jerusalem.
BADIL welcomed the attendees at the launch event that included people from many sectors of Palestinian civil society. BADIL focused on the significance of this project as a tool for highlighting the ongoing struggle against displacement as well as tying together the different tools and mechanisms used across historic Palestine by the colonial project both historically and today. It appealed for widespread Palestinian participation in the project and invited people to contribute work to the ONEC in order to build the resource. Following introduction, BADIL presented the new photographic exhibition and short films to the guests. Although launched by it, BADIL stresses that the ONEC is a project for, by and with all Palestinian people of the world.
The enrichment of the ONEC with accurate and current documentation materials will be a continuous process; inputs for the center will not only be provided by BADIL staff, but civil society is encouraged to contribute to the site. BADIL would like to publicly and globally, appeal to all Palestinians, or people working to help publicize Palestinian stories, to contribute to the ONEC by submitting work either as audio pieces (oral histories, testimonies etc), photographic work, or film-based work, relating to displacement from any period of Palestinian history. Work can be submitted in either English or Arabic.
