in the shadow of Chatila
Driven from their lands, 750,000 Palestinians fled their homeland in 1948.
Today, the United Nations counts 5,201,419 Palestinian refugees living in unacceptable conditions, crammed into 59 camps scattered across the Middle East:
Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan…
In Lebanon, almost 500,000 Palestinians (over)live in 12 official camps with no civil or political rights.
In “à l’ombre de Chatila”, Tarek Charara offers us a tender and unusual picture of the inhabitants of Lebanon’s best-known Palestinian refugee camp. Leaving aside differences, Tarek Charara concentrates on what brings people together, slices of life which, against a backdrop of tragic misfortune, contain all the elements of an almost “normal” everyday life.
38,00 €
Additional information
| Dimensions | 24 × 24 × 1,9 cm |
|---|---|
| Auteur | Tarek Charara |
Two-color process | |
| Pages | 160 |
| Éditeur | Étincelles éditions |
| ISBN | 2-9523871-0-9 |
100 in stock
In the light of Chatila
No place in Palestine, no Palestinian refugee camp in the world means as much to me as Chatila. It was there that I took my first steps as an activist when, in 1968, reacting to the defeat of June 1967, I decided to join Fatah, the Palestinian national liberation movement. I saw the first Intifada break out in 1969, putting an end to the harsh reign of General Security and the Lebanese army's 2nd bureau, and handing over management of the camp to the PLO and the popular committee set up by the refugees themselves. It was a huge celebration.
It was also in Chatila that I first came face to face with the soldiers of the Israeli army, which invaded Beirut in September 1982 and organized the massacres1 of the civilian population that I witnessed with Jean Genêt.2 It was an immense tragedy.
For all these reasons, it was with great emotion and pain, but also with joy, that I rediscovered Tarek Charara's sober, dignified images of the inhabitants of Chatila. For these same reasons, Chatila was a place of light in the long journey of the Palestinian people. To read Leila Shahid's preface in full, click here.
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