JULIANO Mer-Khamis, an Israeli film director and founder of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp, was shot dead on Monday April 4th after leaving the theatre, according to witnesses and security sources.
The 52-year old actor and director was shot five times in yet unknown circumstances.
Prime Minister Salam Fayyad strongly condemned the killing, calling it a heinous crime and against Palestinian customs and traditions.
He called for the immediate investigation into the killing calling to bring the killer to justice. He also said he will not allow a return to lawlessness.
Jenin’s governor, Qadra Musa, also condemned the murder saying: ‘I strongly condemn the murder of Mer-Khamis, who showed solidarity with the Palestinians.’
Musa stated that Mer-Khamis’s body was handed to the Israeli authorities at Al-Jalama crossing north of Jenin.
Mer-Khamis, a pro-Palestinian political activist, was born in Nazareth to a Jewish mother, Arna Mer, a peace activist, and a Palestinian father, Saliba Khamis, who was a senior leader of the Israeli Communist Party.
Mer-Khamis visited Jenin’s refugee camp in 2002 with his mother who worked there and documented the visit in his film ‘Arna’s Children’ in 2003.
His last directed play was ‘al Karasi’ (the Chairs), which had its debut on Sunday at the opening of Al-Manara Theatre Festival at Al-Kasaba theatre in Ramallah.
He lived in Jenin refugee camp where his mother worked with camp children to help them escape the violence of the First Intifada.
The Freedom Theatre became one of Jenin’s cultural centres since its establishment in 2006.
Juliano Mer-Khamis was buried on Wednesday, following three funeral processions in Haifa, Jenin and Ramallah on Tuesday morning.
Hours after the artist was gunned down in his car outside the theatre, some 50 Palestinian artists and actors gathered in Ramallah’s central square to protest against the killing.
They held up signs saying Mer-Khamis’ murder was ‘a loss for Palestine’.
Bilal Assaadi, chairman of the theatre board of directors called on all the Palestinian factions to condemn the shooting.
Friends and associates were in shock, with Zakaria Zubeidi, a former top militant who was close to Mer-Khamis and a supporter of the theatre, telling reporters he believed the shooting was a professional ‘hit’.
He said: ‘The people behind this murder either belong to a powerful organisation or a state. This cannot be the work of people who were angry with Juliano or with the theatre.’
Khaled Abu al-Hijah, a board member at the theatre who was also close to the family, said Mer-Khamis had felt safe living in the camp.
Al-Hijah said: ‘Juliano was a resident of the camp. He lived here with his wife and children, who were always hanging around at the theatre. If you’re afraid, you don’t bring your children here.’
Mer-Khamis, who was born and grew up in Nazareth, never referred to himself as an Arab Israeli, Hijah said.
‘He used to say: “I am both Palestinian and Jewish. I cannot divide myself between my mother and my father”.’
Theatre students released a statement on Tuesday morning, saying: ‘Juliano, your mother’s children have passed away, your mother Arna has passed away and so did you.
‘But your children are going to stay, following your path on the way to the freedom battle, and we will go on with your revolution’s promise, the Jasmine Revolution.
‘The Revolutionary message will not pass away.
‘It will come storming the yellow sands and the mountains covered by almond trees, blowing the Jasmine Revolution out of the freedom fighter’s hands, from here, from the Freedom Theatre’s stage, where men were and are made to be free and engaged in the cultural revolutionary battle for Freedom.
‘In thousands of silences only one violin is playing, and in thousands of silences only one voice is raising up, it’s the freedom fighters’ voices, to whom you taught how to carry the cultural gun on their shoulders.’
The statement was signed, ‘Juliano’s Children’.
Mer-Khamis’ mother, Arna Mer, was an Israeli Jewish activist who founded the first theatre in the camp, the Stones Theatre, which opened during the First Intifada in the late 1980s, and closed during the Second Intifada.
In 2006, Mer-Khamis, whose father was a Palestinian from Nazareth, opened the Freedom Theatre after filming the documentary, ‘Arna’s Children’, which catalogued his mother’s struggle to open and maintain the project.
A group of popular committees organising weekly protests against Israel’s separation wall issued a statement ‘expressing our deep sadness’ over the death, calling the act ‘part of the escalation exercised by the Israeli occupation’, and blaming the tense political situation.
‘It is what permits such horrific acts,’ the statement said, adding that the groups ‘hold the Israeli occupation responsible’ for the death.
‘We are not against Jews in the world. We are against the occupation and our goal to live in freedom and dignity like the rest of the world.’
The committees said that they believed the ‘killing of Juliano only serves Israeli interests’.
Palestinian investigators were instructed by West Bank Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to work around the clock to locate the gunmen.
Initial reports were unclear as to whether one or two armed individuals carried out the attack.
Freedom Theatre officials said Mer-Khamis was in his car with his son and the child’s nanny when he was stopped, and shot through the windshield.
The murder of the 52-year-old theatre director sparked grief and outrage in the northern West Bank refugee camp, where he had lived for the last seven years.
‘I cannot believe it, it’s like a nightmare,’ said Samia Steti, director of programmes at the theatre, who said she had been speaking to Mer-Khamis just minutes before he was murdered.
‘We met at 3:30 for about 15 minutes to prepare for a meeting about “Alice in Wonderland” but then he left to take his baby son home with the babysitter,’ she said.
‘About two minutes later we heard shooting and everybody started joking that they had killed him,’ Steti added, saying Mer-Khamis himself had always made a point of joking around that one day he would die in the camp.
Then they went outside and realised what had happened.
Police and medics said the gunman had fired five bullets at Mer-Khamis, one of which hit the babysitter’s arm.
His ten-month-old son, who was sitting on his lap at the time, was unharmed, friends and co-workers said.
In the alleyway leading to the theatre, dozens of pictures of the murdered actor lined the walls among swathes of black cloth in a sign of mourning.
Inside, everyone was wearing black, and many had eyes red from weeping.