Cultural Expression

Ibdaa means "to create something out of nothing."

When our families were uprooted from our villages and expelled to this refugee camp, they took our land but not our hearts. We had nothing left but our fractured families, our cultural traditions, and our committment to justice.

Arts: At Ibdaa we encourage youth and families to draw on the strength of our culture to get through difficult times. Our dance troupe uses traditional Palestinian Debke dance to express our struggles to the world. The Women's Committee's Tatriz (traditional Palestinian embroidery) Project preserves this craft while providing the international community with an opportunity to express solidarity. In the Ibdaa main building, art and murals line the walls, telling the story of our history.

History: Ibdaa helps youth grow up with a strong sense of themselves and their community. Our youth participate in an oral history project, interviewing the older generations about their lives in their villages before the Catastrophe in 1948, about their resistance to the invasions and occupation, and about their hopes for future generations. Because Palestinians living in the West Bank are not permitted to travel to their original villages, most youth have only dreamed of these places. The project has been able to take youth across the checkpoints and barricades into the distroyed and occupied villages of their families for the first time to see for themselves what their grandparents have described to them.

Manar, Ibdaa dancer, in her family's destroyed village