Nuances of Belonging #10

Since the winter of 2012 Hamody Gannam has been visiting the village of Iqrith once a month, sometime staying for a few days, capturing the place and the people living there on video and still photography.

 

In November of 1948 the residents of Iqrith were ordered by the Israeli army to vacate the village, on the promise that they would be allowed to return in two weeks. When they tried to return, they were barred by the army. On July 31st, 1951, the Israeli High Court affirmed their return to the village. The decision has not been carried out and five months later, on Christmas Eve, the army bombed and destroyed the whole village, except for the church and the cemetery. The residents have not been allowed to return since. Nevertheless, life in the village has never ceased. Over the years the expelled residents continued to maintain the church and the cemetery, where they were allowed to bury their dead.
In 2012, a group of young people, third generation to the expelled, decided to return to Iqrith, to establish some kind of a commune, to live their lives and to continue their struggle from the village itself, inhabiting old and temporary structures near the church.
In this special video column for Tohu, Hamodi Gannam observes the details which constitute Iqrith and the nuances which tie the third-generation young people to the place, to the land, to the clear air of the village.

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