Changing man

[LeftishBrit]

http://www.newstatesman.com/music/2008/07/palestinian-barenboim

Changing man
Rachel Aspden

Published 31 July 2008

Nine years after founding the boundary-breaking West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim tells Rachel Aspden that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem must be cultural, not political


Daniel Barenboim is waiting for an urgent message. "We have a problem," he says, glancing at the mobile phone lying beside him on an apple-green chaise longue in his office at La Scala opera house in Milan. "Next week we play our first concert of the year, and it's difficult to get some of the musicians there."

The conductor's problem goes beyond the logistical difficulties presented by any orchestral tour. Barenboim's West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is made up of roughly a hundred young musicians from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. At a more mundane level than any talk of peace and reconciliation, this fact is extraordinary: the Divan exists in defiance of the world's most perverse and convoluted border controls. With very few exceptions, Israeli passport-holders may not enter the Palestinian territories, and vice versa; Lebanese and Syrians may not travel to Israel or the Palestinian territories; citizens of either, or even those who have passed through, are denied entry to Lebanon and Syria. Thanks to an "ice-cold" peace agreement, Israelis and Jordanians may in theory visit each other's countries, but Palestinians in the West Bank need Israeli military permission to reach Jordan by way of the Allenby Bridge border crossing -and permission is often withheld or severely delayed.

(More at link)

[LeftishBrit]

1. Posting this now, because I've just been listening to the Proms on television..

And listening to the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra playing Brahms was an inspiring experience - musically *and* from a human point of view.