RAMALLAH: Ramallah’s Contemporary Arts Festival, one of the largest in the occupied West Bank, began on Monday for the first time since the war in Gaza shut down most cultural activities there.
Khaled Aliyan, the festival’s director, said that the festival had returned “after a forced-two-year suspension due to the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.”
Aliyan said the festival, previously limited to contemporary dance, had expanded to include Palestinian artists from all fields.
Art, theater, and film festivals that had previously been held in Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank came to a halt amid escalating violence, Israeli military raids, and attacks by Israeli settlers after October 2023.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
