Name/Title
Artwork of Palestinian Prisoners in Ansar Prison, South Lebanon (1982-1984)Entry/Object ID
2024.10.14a-dTags
On View, 2024Description
a) wooden comb
b) pendant on rope
c) stone sculpture
d) beaded necklace (not on view)
e) New Yorker comic clipping with note, perhaps from the maker (not on view)
After the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the occupation forces built a prison camp outside Ansar (Arabic: أنصار; also spelled Insar) in southern Lebanon. The prisoners lived in small tents surrounded by 4 meter high barbed wire fences. Ansar was not a traditional detention camp, known for its abusive treatment of prisoners including torture, rape, and starvation. 12,000 detainees passed through its gates; the youngest was twelve; the oldest was eighty-five. Nearly 90% of which were civilians.
In 1984, the Palestinian Prisoners Committee was formed in Damascus, Syria documenting facts and descriptions about the situation faced in the prisons, including a detailed tracking of organized strikes by the prisoners on a per facility basis. They released a booklet titled “Palestinian Art Behind Bars” that cited a primary form of resistance in the prisons involving “cultural activities.” In detail, “...the prisoners... pursue literary activities: writing, poems, novels and stories with themes of the Palestinian cause, the sufferings and sacrifices of the Palestinian people; others make paintings, sculpture and handicrafts using the available resources of empty match and cigarette boxes, empty tooth paste and shaving cream tubes, domino and chess pieces etc...” The booklet also notes that in 1980, the National Guidance Committee in the occupied territories declared April 17th each year as the day for solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, which is still commemorated today.
Fatah military commander, Salah Ta’amari, who was imprisoned in Ansar reflected that; “The Israeli decision makers and policymakers have succeeded in destroying many Palestinian and Lebanese families. They have added a few more thousand graves to the cemeteries of Lebanon. But they have failed to make our people lose hope in humanity and their future. Those Israelis who thought that they could destroy the possibility of coexistence between Arabs and Jews by deepening the grudge and bitterness have failed. Coexistence is possible and inevitable. Our love for our homeland is greater than our hatred for our enemies.” (1985)
The donor, Marcia Stone, was a nurse for the International Rescue Committee and served in Lebanon, on the edge of Ein el Helweh camp. Between 1982 and 1985, Stone was an American nurse who volunteered to serve in a private hospital in Nabatiyya, a southern Lebanese provincial town then under Israeli occupation. She wrote letters every few weeks to her friends in the United States, and copies are held in the Hoover Library at Stanford University that may provide insight into her experience in South Lebanon. The objects were given to the donor by members of our staff at the IRC IHCU (Intermediate Health Care Unit). They were healthcare workers who had been held at Ansar and whom were hired after their release.
While the museum is unable to identify the makers of these artworks there are some clues that could help. The comb is etched with images of a home and cedar trees on one side, and the initials of the maker’s children on the other. The pendant seems to have been made by the same person, with a portrait that appears to honor their martyred child.
Additional images available for research purposes.
