Rania Elias is a fierce trailblazer who has founded, shaped, and directed some of the most significant cultural organizations and events in the Jerusalem arena of recent memory, against all odds.
Origins and Early Years
Rania Elias was born in 1971 in Kuwait, and she was raised and grew up in Bethlehem, where she attended St. Joseph’s School.1 She grew up in a family of musicians. Her maternal and paternal uncles were singers and played instruments, and the extended family as a whole actively participated in cultural events.2 At the age of five, Elias performed for the first time on stage, with her brother and sister, singing “I still have trees that grow on my land.”3 After that, Elias joined local dabke groups and other music or art programs.
While at school, she was active in community service, especially during the First Intifada. The events of the First Intifada ushered in Elias’s early forays into humanitarian work. Her high grades would have gotten her accepted in universities abroad, but she refused to leave Palestine during this turbulent time. She enrolled at Bethlehem University and spent the first two years there studying chemistry before she switched to community service and psychology.4 The latter allowed her to devote more time to what she was naturally inclined to do: volunteering and participating in cultural events.
Rania Elias, speaking to Hazar al-Hark during a podcast for al-Arabi al-Jadid. April 20, 2024.
Credit:
Screen captures by the Jerusalem Story Team
Career
When Elias graduated from university in 1995, Palestine’s Ministry of Culture was just being formed in the wake of the Oslo Accords. One of its aims was to establish festivals that celebrated Palestinian culture in Bethlehem. To this end, Elias was offered the role of director of the ministry’s newly launched Bethlehem International Festival. She accepted the position, and the appointment launched her career in cultural activism. As director, she coordinated Palestinian music, film, and dance performances.
That same year, Elias was appointed as director of Riwaq—Center for Architectural Conservation, an organization that focuses on preserving Palestine’s architectural heritage.5 She moved to Ramallah and worked for the organization until 1998.
Then, in 1998, Elias moved to Jerusalem to serve as director of the Yabous Cultural Centre and its Jerusalem Festival.
The center was established in 1995 by entrepreneurial Jerusalemite artists and musicians as an NGO dedicated to Palestinian arts; it was named Yabous after the original city which the Jebusite Canaanite tribe built 5,000 years ago in what is Jerusalem today.6 Among the founders was Suhail Khoury. (Elias and Khoury were married in 1998.) The Yabous Cultural Centre is now one of the most important cultural centers in Palestine, reviving its cultural life and preserving Palestinian identity.
The front doors of the Yabous Cultural Centre, al-Zahra Street, East Jerusalem
Credit:
Yabous Cultural Centre Facebook Page
When the Yabous Cultural Centre was first established, the Jerusalem Festival was the only event for the year. It was planned as a single festival that included musicians, artists, authors, comedians, and other performers. As the organization’s director, Elias organized more events throughout the year and made the Jerusalem Festival an annual event. By the time she retired from her role in 2022, the center was organizing 230 events annually. Elias worked tirelessly to organize festivals and programs, and that role entailed an endless struggle against obstacles imposed by the Israeli occupation, especially in East Jerusalem—everything from spreading the word about an event to obtaining permits for the participants.
After the Second Intifada, in 2001, the Yabous Culture Centre was one of the few organizations that survived closure (see Jerusalem: A Closed City). In response to a Western journalist’s questioning why efforts were spent on holding concerts while people were being killed, Elias responded:
Because it’s part of our struggle . . . Our struggle is not just political or economic. It’s a cultural struggle, too, to exist in Jerusalem, to be here as Palestinians; to give Palestinians something bright and enjoyable. There are no other places to go in Jerusalem, no cinemas, no venues, no cultural centres. We are human beings—in the end we want to enjoy our lives like any other person.7
Under Elias’s leadership, the organization purchased an old crumbling cinema built in the 1950s, formerly known as Cinema al-Quds. The building had been abandoned, because Israel increased the taxes on the building and restricted activity in East Jerusalem after the First Intifada. Yabous had no funding to even start renovating the place, but Elias saw the importance of establishing a cultural space in a city that was historically the center of cultural life in Palestine. She explains:
[Jerusalem] is the place where at 5pm there is no life. Everything is closed, shops are closed, people go to their homes. You don’t have a cultural life in the city . . . There was a dream to have a cultural center in the heart of Jerusalem, trying to revive the cultural life, preserving Palestinian cultural identity, as well as having a place for people to go out and enjoy their time.8
The center now owns a cinema, workshops, theaters, halls, and coffee shops throughout East Jerusalem. These avenues are used to express and share Palestinian culture in the city daily.
Elias described the difficulty of fundraising for cultural events in Jerusalem, which has many immediate and critical needs. Potential patrons are often concerned with funding initiatives that distribute food and rebuild houses; culture is not even a secondary thought. “Approaching them with something called ‘culture’ is like talking Chinese. They don’t understand it.”9
Elias retired from Yabous in 2022.
Award
Rania Elias was awarded the Keychange Inspiration Award in 2023. The Oslo World statement on her achievements commented on her role:
She oversaw the renovation and transformation of Yabous from an abandoned old cinema into the largest and most important cultural center in Jerusalem. She did all this despite the obstacles that Palestinian organizations in Jerusalem face.
She has remained steadfast in her commitment to feminist and human thought in the face of adversity. She has dedicated her life’s work to girls and women in Palestine, defending their social, political, and economic rights and their right to self-determination. She has witnessed the violations inflicted on many women and girls by the Israeli occupation and their detention and in July 2020, she was arrested. She faces continuous persecution and restrictions because of her work and activity in the cultural sector and her role in reviving cultural life in Jerusalem and preserving the Palestinian identity of the city. But still, she persists and in this, she is truly a role model to us all.10
Social activist Rania Elias was the recipient of the 2023 Keychange Inspiration Award.
Credit:
Oslo World
Elias described the importance of cultural events:
Organising cultural events, especially festivals, is very important on different levels. It’s a political statement, and it’s a social issue as well because you try to get different messages through organising these cultural events. You have hundreds of festivals and organisations working in culture, but if you don’t have a vision or a mission it’s not going to be unique or special.11
To defend Palestinian rights and culture, Elias had to overcome many obstacles, the most debilitating of which has been fear. She says:
A place like the Jerusalem Festival, the weekly concert series, or the Arab Film Festival, or whatever we are organizing is a place for the people to socialize . . . We fight against letting people stay at home . . . afraid to leave their houses, sitting at home watching what’s happening on television. It is part of our struggle to give hope to the people to continue their lives in Jerusalem. Even our presence in the streets is a form of resistance.12
Arrest in 2020
Elias and her husband, Suhail Khoury, director of the Jerusalem Society for Music Teaching and Research (the Jerusalem branch of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, ESCM), were arrested by Israeli forces from their home in the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina, East Jerusalem, on July 22, 2020.13
This was not Elias’s first arrest; she has been summoned throughout the years for random interrogations. On this occasion, the Israeli forces confiscated documents and some property, locked Elias’s children in one room, and took Elias out of the house—all without giving a reason. They first took her to the site of the Yabous building, which they had obviously broken into and infiltrated, and demanded that she unlock the office doors. They then proceeded to collect all the organization’s documents and computers. Only much later were Yabous and Elias accused of “promoting Palestinian culture and funding terrorist organizations”—even though at the time of the arrest the Yabous Cultural Centre had already been closed due to the coronavirus pandemic for more than three months—“and speaking too much English.”14
The interrogation lasted for a continuous 12 hours and, despite having all the organization’s documentation proving its activities and transactions, the questions all pertained to the cultural events and funding of Yabous. None of the accusations could be proven, and Elias and her husband were released on bail, but Yabous continues to be harassed. Elias herself, who was born in Bethlehem and carries a green Palestinian Authority (PA) ID, had her stay permit revoked, which means she is no longer allowed to reside in East Jerusalem where her husband and children (who carry blue Israeli permanent-resident IDs) live. The case continues to drag on in the courts, with hearings every two months at which, according to Elias, they decide again not to renew the stay permit that was revoked. She currently is able to live in East Jerusalem only because of a court order that states that she cannot be deported from the city until a final decision is made on her case.15
Therefore, she is not allowed to drive or travel through any Israeli military checkpoints, meaning that she cannot go, for example, to Bethlehem where she grew up or anywhere else outside the municipal boundaries of East Jerusalem. “They are putting me in a place where I cannot move,” she said on a recent podcast for The New Arab.16
Defending Jerusalem and Palestine
Elias’s work has revolved around public relations, project management, lobbying, and fundraising. Her social work and activism continue to empower and give voice to Palestinians whose rights have been violated, especially women and girls. The various positions she has held and events she has organized have greatly promoted Palestinian culture and heritage.
Throughout her remarkable career as a cultural preserver and promoter, Elias has worked tirelessly and with laser focus to safeguard human rights, revive Jerusalem’s cultural life, and preserve Palestinian identity.
After her most recent battle with the Israeli occupation, one interviewer asked Elias, “Haven’t you despaired of Jerusalem?”
Elias responded:
That never occurred to me even once. The more pressure and strict measures they put on me, through their different machinations, the more my determination, love, passion, and continuous work to serve this city increases. Whenever they would take me in for questioning, I’d return home with more energy, because I want to do more. I want to invest every day in the city; every day I want to organize an event. I will continue to be a burden on them, I will remain in this city. My country, land, home, husband, children, belongings—everything is here. My love for Jerusalem grows more.17
Elias has been a member of several executive committees, including al-Quds—Capital of Arab Culture, Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and Riwaq–Center for Architectural Conservation.18 She continues to assert her presence and that of Jerusalemites in Jerusalem, resisting the occupation through culture.
[Profile photo: Keychange]
Sources
al-Hark, Hazar. “Rania Elias: ‘The Occupation Has Forced Me to Be My Son’s Jailkeeper.’” [In Arabic.] al-Arabi al-Jadid, April 20, 2024.
Mafarjeh, Noelle. “Jerusalem Festival 2022: For Yabous Cultural Center, It’s Mission Possible,” J24, August 2, 2024.
Morgan, Andy. “Music under Fire–There’s Nothing More Revolutionary than Joy,” Andy Morgan Writes, June 2004.
Nazmi, Jubeh, Rana Barakat, Khaldun Bshara, and Yacoub Odeh, Lifta: Register of a People, History, Cultural Heritage, and Struggle (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 2020).
“Rania Elias: Director of Yabous Cultural Centre and the Jerusalem Festival,” The Festival Academy, accessed September 17, 2024.
“Rania Elias Is the Recipient of the Keychange Inspiration Award 2023,” Oslo World, November 2, 2023.
“Rania Elias Khoury,” All4Palestine, accessed September 17, 2024.
Suarez, Tom. “Rania Elias: Palestinian Cultural Figures Arrested in Occupied Jerusalem.” Mondoweiss, July 23, 2020.
Notes
1
“Rania Elias Khoury,” All4Palestine, accessed September 17, 2024.
2
Hazar al-Hark, “Rania Elias: ‘The Occupation Has Forced Me to Be My Son’s Jailkeeper’” [in Arabic], al-Arabi al-Jadid, April 20, 2024.
3
al-Hark, “Rania Elias.”
4
al-Hark, “Rania Elias.”
5
“Rania Elias: Director of Yabous Cultural Centre and the Jerusalem Festival,” The Festival Academy, accessed September 17, 2024.
6
Noelle Mafarjeh, “Jerusalem Festival 2022: For Yabous Cultural Center, It’s Mission Possible,” J24, August 2, 2024.
7
Andy Morgan, “Music under Fire–There’s Nothing More Revolutionary than Joy,” Andy Morgan Writes, June 2004.
8
Mafarjeh, “Jerusalem Festival 2022.”
9
Morgan, “Music under Fire.”
10
“Rania Elias Is the Recipient of the Keychange Inspiration Award 2023,” Oslo World, November 2, 2023.
11
“Rania Elias: Director of Yabous.”
12
Nazmi Jubeh, Rana Barakat, Khaldun Bshara, and Yacoub Odeh, Lifta: Register of a People, History, Cultural Heritage, and Struggle (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyya, 2020).
13
Tom Suarez, “Rania Elias: Palestinian Cultural Figures Arrested in Occupied Jerusalem,” Mondoweiss, July 23, 2020.
14
al-Hark, “Rania Elias.”
15
al-Hark, “Rania Elias.”
16
al-Hark, “Rania Elias.”
17
al-Hark, “Rania Elias.”
18
“Rania Elias: Director of Yabous.”