Following Israel’s decision to close its embassy in Dublin, a Palestinian museum is inquiring about the possibility of leasing the space to open a new branch.
The Palestine Museum US is located in Connecticut, USA, since it opened its doors in April 2018. Its mission is to “tell the Palestinian story to a global audience”.
Though based in the States, the museum has held exhibitions around Europe, most recently in Bantry, Co Cork, where a free exhibition called Art Under Fire was shown at Marino Church. The exhibition was also shown at the Venice Biennale and at the P21 Gallery in London earlier this year.
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Palestinian American businessman Faisel Saleh, who founded the museum, said turning the former Israeli embassy into a Palestinian museum would be “a political statement”.
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“We’re just making inquiries at this point. We thought it’d be a good idea because we’d been looking for places to have a permanent space, and it’d be good to have a presence in Ireland,” he said.
“It’s a lot more efficient if you had a permanent space. But it would also have to make sense financially for us. We are still waiting to get some information. If it happened, we would open it as a museum with permanent exhibitions.”
Israel’s ambassador to Ireland claimed there was “an anti-Israel obsession” in the State and said the decision to close its embassy in Dublin was “the correct move at this juncture”.
Responding to the news of the embassy closing in Ireland, Mr Saleh said: “Good riddance. Who wants to have the presence of a genocidal state in their country? It’s horrific what they’re doing, and Ireland is one of the very few countries really supporting the Palestinian people.”
“We’re very thankful to the Irish people for the stance they’re taking, and when we put the exhibit on in Bantry, we received tremendous support. It was beyond our expectations,” he said.
“There are a lot of forces trying to erase our story, but Ireland is on the other side of that and we’re very grateful for that.”
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