Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
What can the Internet bring to a culture that has been scattered across the world?
Aug 24, 1999 | The word "Palestine" bounces back and forth across a computer monitor in this refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem; the screen saver symbolizes one desire that a new computer center might fulfill for the residents of the camp's makeshift houses: words that can travel, between Palestinians wherever they live.
Dheisheh is the first Palestinian camp to go online, with a Web site -- and basic computer training for the camp's residents. The program is the first building block in an ambitious Internet project undertaken by Birzeit University's Across Borders Project, which promises to give a voice, a meeting place and a window onto the world to several million displaced Palestinians -- and perhaps open their minds to new ways of thinking.
The Across Borders Project aims to bring the Net to Palestinian refugee camps across the Middle East, to promote connections among the refugees, as well as provide a repository for Palestine news and history.
"When you're unable to go to picnics, unable to go to the sea, unable to go to movies in Jerusalem, it's like being in a prison cell. Your world becomes very limited," says Muna Muhaisen, a 39-year-old Palestinian-American journalist who is one of the project's main architects. She was born in Jerusalem but lost her residency rights during her parents' exile. An American-trained journalist who came back to the West Bank in 1988 to cover the intifada and live in Dheisheh with her husband, Muhaisen faces deportation to the United States by Israeli authorities if she ventures out of the small territory under Palestinian control. The camp itself measures less than one (over-crowded) square kilometer. The Internet provides her with a way out -- and a livelihood: Muhaisen is now an armchair reporter who gathers information on the Web.
The Web's wealth of information is key not only for journalists like Muhaisen, but for many Palestinians, given that local media is still heavily censored by the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of Gaza and the West Bank. And, in a culture that has been dispersed across vast distances, the Web may offer the chance for refugees to make their voices heard in a coherent and organized way. "People are not happy about what is happening to them, but they need information," said Muhaisen.
Bookmarks on the Dheisheh computer center's machines link to a wide range of Arabic newspapers online, representing all sorts of political opinions -- including opposition to the Palestinian Authority. Muhaisen sometimes jokes with her husband that "they will come arrest me and put a bullet through my head." But her teasing sounds extremist. So far the Palestinian Authority, unlike other authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, has not tried to block or filter access to the Internet.
The camp, however, may not be eager to have its site turned into a virtual battleground -- with Palestinians and Orthodox Jews exchanging the same bitter invectives that have caused so much real-world bloodshed. The camp Web site, therefore, may filter some content itself. According to Adam Hanieh, Muna Muhaisen's partner in the project, the camp can decide what do with unpleasant messages and whom to communicate with. "We're just giving them skills," he says. In Dheisheh, Webmaster Jamal Abdulkareem, a bearded serious-looking 33-year-old Palestinian who studied at the University of Portland, will decide what goes on the bulletin board and what doesn't. It will not be possible to post messages directly on the site's bulletin board.
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