Artists examine Middle East conflict

Pomegranate Gallery launches exhibition featuring 135 Israeli, Palestinian artists' interpretations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Associated Press

One ceramic bowl contained miniature soldiers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, angels' wings sprouting from their backs. Flowers and butterflies, rather than bullets, barreled from their rifles.

Another bowl, painted with the Israeli flag, sat in a broken pile next to a broken bowl bearing the Palestinian flag.

"Flags separate us, don't they?" Robi Damelin mused as she stood in the Pomegranate Gallery where dozens of bowls were on display in an exhibit titled "Offering Reconciliation."

The show, featuring 135 Israeli and Palestinian artists' interpretations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was developed by the Parents Circle-Families Forum, a group of about 260 Palestinian families and 250 Israeli families who have lost loved ones in the violence.

Interpreting the conflict

The group describes itself as committed to promoting dialogue, tolerance and reconciliation and is supported by organizations in the United States, Britain, Germany and Israel, its Web site says. Organizers billed the exhibit as a "persuasive and moving way to understand the deep yearning for normalcy and peace in the Middle East."

"Our main goal is to stop the cycle of violence, to stop the killing," said Ali Abu Awwad, 35, who said his brother was killed in 2000 by an Israeli soldier at a checkpoint at their village. Awwad, who attended the exhibit's opening at the Pomegranate, lives in the village of Beit Ommar, near Hebron on the West Bank. "Politicians around the world — we want them to take one side: the solution side," he said.

The artists were given identical ceramic bowls — their sides 17 inches by 19 inches, and 6 inches high — as a blank palette of sorts.The bowls will be auctioned, with bids starting at $1,500 each. Proceeds will go to education programs run by the Parents Circle-Families Forum, created in 1995 by an Israeli man whose son was slain in the ongoing dispute in which thousands of Palestinians and Israelis have been killed.

The exhibit also was shown this year in Israel, at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and the United Nations General Assembly. It is on display at Pomegranate Gallery through October 18, and will move next month to Chicago.The tour is funded in part by Israel's Decorative Arts and former World Bank president James Wolfensohn.