Location: Ramallah, West Bank
“In the summer of 2011, the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations was making headlines around the world. But the idea of a national identity is nothing new to Palestinians themselves. I spoke with Khaled Jarrar, an artist from Ramallah, about his passport stamp project.” --Sarah Glidden
I first became aware of Khaled Jarrar while following of the graphic novelist Sarah Glidden whose How To Understand Israel in 60 Days has won many awards and was very close to my first experience of Israel-Palestine in the summer of 2008. Glidden wrote a piece about a Ramallah based graphic artist Khaled Jarrar, who, having become frustrated with the way Israeli authorities treated those who openly declared they were traveling in the West Bank, decided to create a passport stamp http://sarahglidden.com/state-of-palestine/. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are stateless. They do not belong to a country or have an official passport. They have ID cards issued to them. Some have official refugee status which is very important because it signifies the possible right of return to the property their families had to leave behind in 1948.
Currently, Jarrar is wrapping up a documentary film about Palestinians living in the West Bank who illicitly travel into Jerusalem over barriers and through sewer pipes to work. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/6155823/Israels-illegal-Palestinian-workforce.html . Doing this, they risk armed border patrols, detention, and prison. “Around 21,600 Palestinian laborers hold Israeli work permits, but between 35,000 and 40,000 undocumented workers enter illegally, according to the Palestinian Workers' Union.”
I traveled to the West Bank city of Ramallah to meet Jarrar in his studio-offices. The logo-symbol he created for his stamp is pictured in the center of the collage at the top of this page. He designed it himself, using the Palestinian sunbird (think hummingbird) which traditionally has represented the Palestinian people. Around the bird, he created a garland of words in Arabic and English which say “State of Palestine.” He also made a stamp and has used it many times at festivals all over the world: Cairo, Amman, Belgrade, Brussels, Rome, London, Paris, and even at his local Ramallah bus station.
He began stamping right before Palestine asked for statehood status at the UN. So far, he has stamped over 250 passports. Israeli officials have had a mixed reaction to the appearance of these stamps on the passports of people leaving Israel through Ben Gurion airport. At first they were flummoxed and allowed the passports and the people to slip through. More recently, they have cancelled a passport or two.
And yes, I did get a stamp(s), not on my passport but in a small notebook which also has the notes for this project and another inside the cover of David Grossman's The Yellow Wind.
An Artistic Stamp for Palestine
Video of Khaled Jarrar without Dialogue
Picasso in Palastine