Israelis experience Palestinian home life through virtual reality

For the past few months, Israelis have been given the chance to visit the living quarters and see the home life of Palestinian families – through virtual reality.

The unique art exhibition, located in the youth wing of the Israel Museum, is part of an exhibition that explores human encounters which was directed and put forward by the artist Daniel Landau.

The room in question, labelled “visitors”, is split down the middle with one side decorated like an Israeli living room and the other side like a Palestinian living room. With the virtual reality goggles that visitors are given, they can witness the home and family lives of Palestinians by having a 360-view of the homes and listening to the stories from the family members.

“On the surface, the exhibition is not threatening, it’s almost even naive. But I think the under-layer is very tragic, disappointing,” Landau observed.

Over 200,000 people have already visited the exhibition over the past three months, and according to Landau, much of the feedback from the Israeli visitors is embarrassingly naïve. “The initial response is that they say: ‘I’ve never been into an Arab house. I’ve never met Arab people. I’m surprised to see how family-like they are.’”

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If there is one thing the exhibition has revealed, it is that the physical divide between Israeli society and Palestinian society – even Palestinians who live in Israel – is sharper than ever. After two intifadas, countless Israeli military crackdowns, and violations of Palestinian land and religious sites, the division is seemingly irreconcilable and there have even been calls for complete separation.

One of the Palestinian men, 55-year-old Raji Sebteen, who allowed his home and family to be filmed for the project, admitted that the exhibition was a “good way to ask others to believe in peace”.

“It’s a good feeling,” he said when asked about the thousands of Israelis who had now witnessed the inside of his own home.

“You have to understand that people are fearful. They are scared because of the situation…because of mistrust planted inside them, it is not easy,” Sebteen said, adding that any Israeli is welcome to visit his home in real life.