Palestinian dance festival defies Israeli closures

By Wafa Amr

RAMALLAH, West Bank, (Reuters) - Palestinians hope an international dance festival this month will send a message that Israeli checkpoints cannot stop them building bridges with the world, the festival's director said.

Khaled Elayyan, director of the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (RCDF), said the event in April would host local Palestinian groups and 14 dance troupes from Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

"In addition to strengthening cultural exchange with the rest of the world, the dance festival aims to reiterate that despite the hardships of occupation, we will remain on our land, and that we have a life," Elayyan told Reuters.

Palestinians say their children have grown up seeing soldiers, checkpoints, walls and barbed wire surrounding Palestinians areas in the West Bank and Gaza.

But organizers of the festival say they want to celebrate local and international culture despite the effects of Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Israel says its network of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank are needed to keep suicide bombers away from its cities, but Palestinians call them collective punishment.

The event, which starts in April and will be the third of its kind, coincides with the 60th anniversary of what Palestinians call the "Nakba", or "Great Catastrophe" of Israel's birth, on May 15.

While Israel celebrates independence, the Palestinians mourn the day when some 700,000 people fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the state of Israel.