A Right to Exist: A Palestinian speaks

This paper links theory with practice. It discusses original video footage of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, filmed by an all-woman crew of Western film-makers and Palestinians, which aims to challenge mainstream Orientalist discourses. The footage was shot in and around Al Aroub refugee camp in the West Bank and distributed through a variety of exhibition platforms. Western representations of Arabs are normally framed in a manner that allows little sympathy and/or understanding of their plight. Research has also shown a lack of knowledge in the West about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Focusing on "ordinary and everyday" aspects of Palestinian life, rendered often "extraordinary" by the circumstances of occupation, the footage attempts to draw connections and similarities for a Western audience and to illustrate that Palestinian daily lives are not "played out" only in opposition to the Israeli regime. The paper explores methods of enabling access to Palestinian voices in their own terms, while eliciting the empathy of audiences more accustomed to dramatised and stereotyped images of Palestinian life in Western news and current affairs footage.