Artists pursue coexistence in the shadow of Gaza

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas’s brutal attack triggered Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza, some Jewish-Arab coexistence projects have come under severe strain, with participants dropping out, tensions simmering and a sense of irrelevance threatening their good intentions.

This was not the case at the Artists in Residence Program at Givat Haviva where five Jewish-Israeli and five Palestinian-Israeli artists lived together and created side by side for three months, culminating in an exhibit of their works that is stimulating and evocative. It runs until June 7.

The works touch with varying degrees of intensity on diverse themes and symbols, including censorship, individuation from family, memory, the deeper meaning of fishing and what would strike some Jews as an explosive verse by Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish.

To their credit, the curators enabled artistic freedom in an environment in which the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of stifling expression, especially among Palestinian-Israelis.