By: Jillian Kestler-D\’Amours

Published in:The Electronic Intifada Jerusalem 10 April 2012

JERUSALEM (IPS) – Actors, musicians, activists and friends gathered in various locations throughout Palestine over the past week to commemorate the life of actor and theater director Juliano Mer-Khamis.

Mer-Khamis was shot and killed on 4 April 2011, while he sat in his car in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank.

“It is a sad reminder of the reality of the present situation here, of the fear in our part of society here. It is a reminder of how thin the border is between life and death here, and how little is in our control,” Jonatan Stanczak said. Stanczak, a Swede, co-founded the Freedom Theatre along with Mer-Khamis and Zakaria Zubeidi, the former West Bank commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

An Israeli citizen born to a Palestinian father and a Jewish Israeli mother, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in 2006 as a way to encourage Palestinian youth in the refugee camp to express themselves, and to use creative expression as a method of resistance.

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