meeting the mayor of Ramallah

At noon I had a meeting with the new mayor of Ramallah, Mrs Janet Michael. She has been voted in as mayor of Ramallah since January thanks to the support of Hamas. She is not a member of Hamas though. She was leading an independent list and got 6 out of 15 seats in the municipal council. Fatah had 6 and Hamas 3. Thanks to a coalition with Hamas she was elected as the new mayor of the city. It was good to meet this lady and get a very different image of what Palestinian politics can be about. Hamas has chosen to support this person, who is a woman and a christian. The reason which Janet Michael gives for this is that she was a popular person, as she has been for 20 years the head mistress of the Ramallah Secondary School for Girls, which is considered as one of the best schools of Palestine. I went to see her together with Ictus-cellist François Deppe and started by discussing about music, about the music educational projects we have been since 2002 involved in in Ramallah (Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, Barenboim-Said Foundation and now Al Kamandjati). It was really easy to talk about this with her, because we quickly found out that her niece Doja is one of the talented young cellists whom we have worked with and came across over the last few years in different places such as the Conservatory, in the Summer course in Jordany, the Young Palestine Chamber Orchestra and even at the Sevilla orchestra course of the Barenboim-Said Foundation. As her aunt, she knew all about all these music initiatives, and clearly supports them warmly. Then our conversation went on about politics and about the reasons which made many Palestinians chose for Hamas as an alternative to the corruption of the ruling Fatah and to the deadlocked peace negociations and ongoing occupation of Palestine. It was interesting for me to hear her say in reply to our questions concerning the blockage of money transfers to the Palestinian Authority, that the outside world should understand that the Palestinian people are not interested in having to eat and drink, but are more and more in priority interested in their freedom and in the end of the occupation, and ready to make sacrifices for that. This meeting strenghtened me in my idea that we should never follow any logic of boycot and always try to meet people wherever we can at whatever level, even if these people seem somehow related to extremist ideas. If Yitzhak Frankenthal, the father of Arik, who was in 1996 kidnapped and killed by Hamas, is the last months able to go and see members of Hamas (this last week even a cabinet minister of Hamas), then anyone should be able to do the same at different levels of society. Only through meeting and dialogue can we change minds and perspectives, our own as well as the minds of those who are strange or hostile to us. I wanted at the end of this voyage to Palestine and Israel introduce this very special man, Yitzhak Frankenthal (Arik Institute for Reconciliation, Tolerance & Peace) to the musicians and the luthiers, but unfortunately his agenda did not allow him to meet us. Next time maybe.