UNESCO and RIWAQ: reconstructing fragmented realities through cultural heritage. A social-economic tool for the Quasi-State of Palestine

Abstract

This work tries to summarize the challenges UNESCO and RIWAQ NGO face in order to preserve and enhance Palestinian identity and social community through the particular frame of cultural heritage. Its main goal is to analyze how these organizations operate for the re-unification of the Palestinian fragmented identity, victim from almost a century of different kinds of colonization and occupation, in order to strengthen Palestinian community and offer solid bases to the creation a new political identity. The main question of the entire work attempts to foresee what kind of state would it be the future State of Palestine, and on what premises it currently relies upon. The first part of the work deals with the theoretical reconstruction of the legal framework of cultural heritage in Palestine and in the world, with a brief historical summary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and an examination of Israel’s Architecture of occupation. The central chapters concentrate instead on the one hand on the work the UNESCO’s office in Ramallah is doing in order to improve Palestinian living conditions in West Bank and in Gaza through massive education and cultural policies. On the other hand, the second central chapter analyzes the efforts RIWAQ is taking since more than ten years to improve the social-economic conditions of Palestinian with simple acts of restoration of the historic centers, through interventions of restoration as well as promotion of international cultural and artistic events like the Biennale. I assume with this work that both organizations are practically involved into politics, despite their statutes, through their simple act of resistance against the annihilation of Palestinian identity. A first result is the discovery that the same term “politics”, in this case, does not deal anymore with political parties, but instead concerns a renovated communication among the different parts of this geographical fragmented Palestine, in order to create a new, strong and self-aware community, independent as much as possible from international humanitarian help. In the conclusion, I review the last achievements in terms of international recognition of the State of Palestine and I try to foresee the future of this Quasi-State.