Majd Al Krum, 1948 areas: Their goal is to win Arab Idol, the Arab world’s premiere television song competition.
But the journey Manal Mousa, 25, and Haitham Khalaily, 24, have taken from their villages in 1948 areas of Palestine to the competition in Lebanon could comprise a television drama of its own - featuring travel to an ‘enemy’ country, Israeli security interrogations.
The two singers are competing for more than just fame: they want to be a part of the cultural world that has been largely off limits to them because of the decades-long Israeli occupation.
“This is a chance for Haitham,” said Waheeb Khalaily, Haitham’s father, in his home in Majd Al Krum, a village in the Galilee, in the northern part of the 1948 areas. “For the Arab world and the whole world to hear him and say that he represents a Palestinian people that clings to its land.”
Palestinians who remained in Israel after its creation in 1948, and their descendants, today make up 20 per cent of the population. Most identify as Palestinians rather than Israelis, watch Arab satellite television and dream of travelling throughout the Middle East. But their Israeli citizenship bars them from most Arab countries because Israeli passport holders are prohibited entry.
That includes the Lebanese capital of Beirut, where many Arab stars are born.
When the show held its first-ever auditions in the West Bank in March, the lure of making it big was too tempting for Mousa and Khalaily to worry about borders.
They, and other young Arab singers in Israel, drove past Israeli military checkpoints to stand in line with hundreds of Palestinians for videotaped auditions. Mousa, Khalaily and two dozen others advanced to the next round in Beirut the following month.
The Israeli-Lebanese ceasefire line is sealed, so the two used their Israeli passports to cross into neighboring Jordan where they boarded a plane for Beirut. At the Lebanese airport, they presented travel documents that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank issued them especially for the trip, a Palestinian interior ministry official said.
In Beirut, they passed all three rounds of auditions and were chosen to be among the 26 final contestants from around the Arab world - the first time Palestinians fron 1948 areas have ever been selected for the show.
After Mousa and Khalaily returned to Israel in May to wait for the show’s taping, Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service summoned them for interrogations about their travel, their families said. Their Israeli passports were confiscated and they were told the passports would be revoked for up to three months, the families said. Through the help of rights groups, their passports were returned within days, Mousa’s family said.
Israel has sentenced Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in the past on charges of traveling abroad to conspire with militant groups for attacks against Israel or to fight alongside rebels in Syria.
The same month the two singers traveled to Lebanon, Israel arrested a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist returning from a conference there. Officials initially thought he was recruited by militants but later dropped the suspicion.
Travel to Lebanon is punishable under Israeli law by four years in jail or paying a fine, said Aram Mahameed, a lawyer from the Arab-Israeli rights group Adalah, whom Khalaily’s family consulted after the contestant was interrogated.
“It is a law against the Arabs in Israel to disconnect them from other Arabs in the Arab countries,” said Mahameed.
Mousa and Khalaily are now in Beirut taping the show, which is airing weekly on the Arab satellite channel MBC. Show producers said in a statement that contestants were unavailable for media interviews due to “exhausting preparations and tight production deadlines.”
Last year, Lina Makhoul, a Palestinian from 1948 areas, won on the Israeli TV singing show The Voice, but her success has been confined to Israel. By contrast, when Mohammad Assaf, a Palestinian from Gaza, won Arab Idol last year, he catapulted to fame, and he continues to perform before Arab audiences throughout the Middle East, the United States and Europe.
Mousa’s sister, Sabren, said her family feels “100 percent” Palestinian.
“We live in Israel that was originally Palestine. I feel very proud ... that we did not give up our lands,” she said from their home in the Galilee village of Deir Al Assad in northern parts of the 1948 areas.
Though some fans in the contestants’ home base know by word of mouth that they live in Israel, viewers wouldn’t know by watching the show.
Banners on the screen label them as hailing from Palestine, and the show makes no reference to their connections to Israel.
In a recent episode, Mousa sang a Palestinian ballad wearing dark red lipstick, a traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, and a headband of dangling coins.
“I salute the Palestine inside you,” said Lebanese singing heartthrob Wael Kfouri, one of the judges.
“You’re telling people that the voice of Palestine will reach the whole world,” said another judge, Egyptian composer Hassan El Shafei, as the studio audience applauded and Mousa’s eyes filled with tears.
