It's hard to believe, but Palestinians in the West Bank have been enjoying something of a cultural renaissance in recent years, hosting a growing number of festivals for film, theatre and literature. But two months ago, liberal Palestinians got a terrible shock when one of their cultural heroes, a Jewish Palestinian theatre director, was murdered in the street, Amos Roberts reports.
REPORTER: Amos Roberts
Palestinians are used to mourning their martyrs. This could be the first time they've grieved publicly for a Jew.
CROWD (Translation): Juliano, we are not going to rest until we find your killer.
Juliano Mer-Khamis was Israeli, the son of a Jew and a Palestinian Christian. He lived and in April this year, died for the Palestinian cause.
CROWD (Translation): Crowds, gather together, juliano sacrificed his blood.
But it was a Palestinian who murdered the celebrated actor and director, an act that could signal the start of a deadly conflict over culture.
REPORTER: What sort of impact does this murder have on people who want to work in the theatre in Palestine? Are people scared?
AMER HIEHEL, ACTOR: I think most of them, yes. Most of the people are scared and there's a good reason to be scared.
Juliano became famous as an actor in the 1980s but he played almost as many roles in life as he did on stage and screen. His mother's family were well-known Zionists while his father was an Arab intellectual and prominent communist. Once a paratrooper in the Israeli army, Juliano played Arabs and Jews with equal ease. He tackled everything from a seedy drug dealer to a sexy Bedouin.. In the award-winning Palestinian film, Salt of This Sea', he played an Israeli teacher.. But Juliano's sympathies - and those of his Jewish mother - lay with the Palestinians.
These are scenes from Arna's Children', an award-winning documentary Juliano directed and featured in. Arna was his mother and the film told the story of her work with Palestinian children in the Jenin refugee camp. In 1989 Juliano helped her establish a theatre for the kids and taught them drama.
BOY (Translation): We thought, he is Jewish, he has come to spy on us….. to spy for the occupation.
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS (Translation): Are you talking about me? You thought I was a spy for the occupation?
The theatre project was abandoned after Arna's death from cancer, but Juliano returned during the second intifada to find out what had happened to the children. Some of the fiercest fighting took place in Jenin, where the Israeli army flattened much of the refugee camp. Many of the former actors had become militants.
Years after this boy appeared in Juliano's play, he was killed during a suicide attack inside Israel. Another was killed fighting the Israeli army during the Battle of Jenin. And this boy later became one of the leaders of the resistance. He too died a violent death.
Now Juliano has become Jenin's latest martyr. His poster adorns the wall of the Freedom Theatre, which he started after the success of his documentary. He saw the theatre as an alternative to the armed struggle that claimed so many of his students' lives. And in March this year he was brimming with optimism.
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS (Translation): The atmosphere of the Arab revolution taking place in Libya, Egypt andTunisia has entered the Freedom Theatre.
On April 3 Juliano was at another theatre, in Ramallah, for the opening night of a play he'd directed. He was excited and a little mischievous.
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS (Translation): The most important thing is the message was delivered, the message of the play was delivered. Ask me what it is, what is the message?
The following morning Juliano was gunned down in Jenin as he drove home from the Freedom Theatre. Hearing gunshots, one of his students, Rabe'a Turkman, rushed outside.
RABE’A TURKMAN, ACTOR – FREEDOM THEATRE: Everybody he shout, I tell him wait, I think Juliano he died. Because a lot of blood.
The killer was masked and disappeared into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp.
WOMAN: They killed him. We don't know if they are from the camp or if they are outside the camp. Yeah, for sure. I am also in the shock because I feel as if the killer is between us. Maybe this guy or that guy or that.
Two weeks later, staff and students at the theatre are still being interviewed by a constant flow of foreign journalists. There had been threats to the Freedom Theatre before. In 2009 their production of George Orwell's Animal Farm' sparked controversy, partly because of it's veiled attack on the Palestinian Authority. But mostly because some conservative Muslims were offended by the actors dressing up as pigs and dogs.
JENNY, JULIANO’S WIFE: At the time they tried to burn down the theatre, twice, and there was also some direct threats against certain people at the theatre - including Jul.
Juliano's wife, Jenny, pregnant with twins, fled to the Israeli city of Haifa on the day of his murder. Originally from Finland, Jenny also worked at the theatre.
JENNY: We always try to push the boundaries a little bit. Not too far, not to be obvious, but an extra step.
REPORTER: Did Juliano have a good sense of where the line was at any given point?
JENNY: That's what we thought at least.
Jenny says that after the backlash to Animal Farm', Juliano talked about the possibility of being killed.
JENNY: It started at that time of the threats and then it became more of a joke.
After his murder, Israeli television broadcast footage of Juliano's grim prophecy.
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS: We have I'm telling them how I'm going to end my life. A bullet, from a fucked-up Palestinian, who's going to be very angry, that we're in Jenin, with this blonde, coming to corrupt the youth, of the Islam, and he's going to ---- and she's going to find me dead on the doorstep.
Juliano described the Freedom Theatre as part of a third intifada or uprising - a cultural intifada. He taught his students that actors could be just as dangerous as militants.
RABE’A TURKMAN: One day he tell me, if you want to be star, just give me one month. I make you big star in the world. Not just in Palestine. Just one month. But Rabiah, I don't want you be star, I want you be freedom fighter with art. Art revolution.
Rabe'a Turkman, who's starred in several of Juliano's productions, knows a lot about revolution.
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS: Rabe'a is a very good student. You know that Rabe'a Turkman, he was a freedom fighter. And he decided to put down the weapons and take up the stage.
REPORTER: How different would your life be now if you hadn't joined this theatre?
RABE’A TURKMAN: Maybe now I'm in prison. Maybe I'm die. Maybe in the prison, maybe in the God.
REPORTER: So the theatre has saved your life.
RABE’A TURKMAN: Yeah.
In the Freedom Theatre's latest production, Alice in Wonderland' - Batool Taleb played Alice. At first, her parents tried to stop her from acting. Many in Jenin still disapprove of a young woman on stage.
BATOOL TALEB, ACTOR – FREEDOM THEATRE: It's like, oh you're going to the freedom theatre, what are you going to do there? Oh, here comes the theatre girl and you know I was the first girl in the acting school and it was very, pressure.
Jenin is a conservative place and a scene like this can shock people here. Batool says bring it on.
BATOOL TALEB: We're not here to make people just love us, we want to make people like, to, you know?
REPORTER: Provoke?
BATOOL TALEB: Yeah. For them to express themselves.
REPORTER: Would any of you have considered dressing up as a pig in front of your neighbours before you met Juliano?
BATOOL TALEB: No, I didn't think like this before. But you know Juliano was also part of our dream. Like I came here with a small dream, like I want to be on stage, it was simple, it was nothing to do with the revolution, nothing to do with the occupation it was just a dream, small dream. And when I came here I found out that it's not just about being a star, now I don't want to be a star. I want to be a freedom fighter.
After Animal Farm' the controversy around the theatre seemed to fade away. There were no more attacks or threats. Almost 10,000 people went to see Alice in Wonderland'. But in its own way this children's story was no less subversive. The Palestinian Alice visits Wonderland after rejecting an arranged marriage.
JULIANO MER-KHAMIS (Translation): It’s a message of equality between men and women, a message of liberation for Palestinian girls from social complexes and social suppression.
REPORTER: Do you think, looking back, that maybe it wasn't a wise thing to do? If it comes at such a cost, if it maybe even costs you the theatre?
BATOOL TALEB: You know, I would do Alice even if I knew that will happen.
Jenin remains a dangerous place for actors. There are two fliers circulating here now written by militant groups no-one's ever heard of. One group calls itself, ‘Your Religion's Zealous Sons', the other,’ Free People of this Earth'. One flier says
"We call upon the parents in the refugee camp not to send their sons and daughters to this suspicious theatre, whose only goal is to spread corruption and western culture"
REPORTER: Are you hopeful that they'll find the killer?
JENNY: Not very.
REPORTER: Really?
JENNY: He was killed in the middle of Jenin refugee camp in broad daylight. It's impossible nobody saw the killer. It's impossible nobody knows who it is.
For now, the theatre is closed, although many students still turn up. Some have parents who wish they'd stay away.
REPORTER: So your mother's very worried about you coming here?
BATOOL TALEB: Yeah, she doesn't want, she's not just worried she doesn't want me to come here. Like, she feels that the one who killed Jul, he will kill everyone has a relationship with Jul and to the theatre. I wish that I can die like Jul died, really.
REPORTER: What do you mean?
BATOOL TALEB: Yeah, he didn't die for nothing. Like he was fighter, he was an artist and really I don't want to die like in car accident or something. I want to die like him. Really, I'm thinking of this all the time. If I have to die I want to die like this, I'm sure.
Reporter/Camera
AMOS ROBERTS
Producer
ASHLEY SMITH
Fixer
NIDAL RAFA
Editors
MICAH MCGOWN
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
Translation/Subtitling
DALIA MATAR
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
Film Excerpts
Salt of this Sea, Philistine Films, 2008
Zohar, Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), 1993
Berlin Jerusalem, Agav Films, 1989
Kippur, Agav Hafakot, Canal+, 2000
Arna's Children, Pieter Van Huystee Film and Television, Trabelsi Productions, 2004
God's Sandbox, Open Doors Films, 2004
Additional footage courtesy of Mohammed Staiti and Palestine TV
12th June 2011