Building the Palestinian Museum

Perched on a hillside alongside the renowned Birzeit University near Ramallah, a large construction site has been growing steadily since 2013.. The low level design and landscape sculpturing contrasts sharply to the growing number of soulless high rises sprouting up across Ramallah, but the significance of the project goes a long way beyond architecture alone.

As described on the project website, the idea which led to this development was first mooted by the Welfare Association in 1997 when it “recognized the need to establish a modern historical museum in Palestine dedicated to preserving and commemorating the Palestinian past, in particular the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948”.

From those initial ideas, the development of the Palestinian Museum is now progressing at pace towards an official opening in 2016.

A huge project, the Palestinian Museum is being funded by Palestinian themselves, mainly those in diaspora, and sees itself as a project for Palestinians and by Palestinians. Its accurate and politically significant usage of the word ‘Palestinians’ refers to all Palestinian people in the world. In doing this, it carefully rejects the fragmentation of identity that terms such as ‘Israeli Arabs’ are so keen to enforce.

The museum is being constructed according to international LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) guidelines, and will be ‘the first energy efficient green building’ in Palestine. These regulations will reduce water and energy consumption by an impressive 23%. Such plans again pay due respect to Palestine, its land and resources.

The Palestinian Museum will host regular exhibitions by Palestinians and about the Palestinian story which itself stretches far from the remnants of Palestine that are today’s occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).

Rana Anani, the museum’s Media and Communications Manager  believes the museum has a significant role to play for Palestine:

“We hope that the Museum will act as an agent of empowerment for the Palestinian people in a time of political uncertainty and fragmentation. The Palestinian Museum is an antitheses to what we’ve been witnessing in Palestine from ghettoisation to fragmentation and dispossession.”

Images by MEMO Photographer Rich Wiles. This item was updated at 00.48 GMT on February 27th, 2015 to correct the name of the museum to “Palestinian Museum”.