European Orchestra to Perform in Gaza Strip

This is good news, hope the people of Gaza get to enjoy this concert, I am now thinking the only place in Gaza equipped to host the orchestra is the Rashad Al Shawa Center, in the heart of Gaza city.

The Islamic University of Gaza has some nice halls where this event can be held, but not sure if these guys would be happy about a concert on their campus. This is a very bold move that helps bring the plight of the people of Gaza and Palestine to a totally new audience.

By JOSHUA MITNICK

Tel Aviv—Daniel Barenboim, a renowned Israeli conductor and Palestinian rights activist, will bring an orchestra of European musicians for a performance in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The concert, coordinated in secret with the United Nations until invitations were distributed Sunday and Monday, would mark a rare solidarity visit from a major international cultural figure to the blockaded Palestinian territory since Hamas' takeover in 2007.

The performance comes on the eve of the signing of a reconciliation accord in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah, the other leading Palestinian faction in the West Bank.

Mr. Barenboim's visit is likely to enhance the already raised expectations for the end of Gaza's years of isolation, a possibility that has stirred Israeli worries about a threat to its security.

Enlisting musicians from orchestras in Berlin, Vienna, Paris and Milan, Mr. Barenboim has an assembled an outfit dubbed the "Orchestra for Gaza."

The group plans to fly from Berlin to Egypt and then cross the border into Gaza for a brief visit that will include a concert at a cultural center outside of Gaza City.

Just last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Al Araby said he plans to remove restrictions at the Rafah crossing at the border with Gaza within days, a shift in policy that could lift a several-year-old blockade that has prevented most of the 1.5 million Palestinians from leaving the tiny coastal strip.

Israeli officials responded that the decision could free up the flow of militants and weapons across the border. Jerusalem is worried that the decision is a sign of a thaw between Hamas and Egypt, which shunned the Islamic militants under former President Hosni Mubarak.

The visit Tuesday by Mr. Barenboim will violate an Israeli ban on its citizens from entering the Gaza Strip. A spokesman for Hamas wasn't immediately available to comment.

Mr. Barenboim, an Argentine native who was raised in Israel, is a controversial figure in the Jewish state. A decade ago he led an orchestra which performed music by Richard Wagner in Israel, despite public disdain for the composer over his anti-Semitism.

Over the last decade he has become an outspoken advocate for Palestinian statehood and a critic of Israel's military occupation in the West Bank. A former director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Barenboim was awarded an honorary passport from the Palestinian Authority in 2008.

"We are very happy to come to Gaza. We are playing this concert as a sign of our solidarity and friendship with the civil society of Gaza," said Mr. Barenboim in a statement released by the U.N.