GAZA CITY: A local businessman on Wednesday seized the Gaza Strip’s only grand piano, claiming he owned the instrument, just days after it made its public debut in a landmark concert following a complicated international restoration effort.
Sunday’s recital provided a lucky audience a rare opportunity to see a live concert in Gaza, whose cultural offerings have greatly dwindled since the Hamas militant group seized power in 2007. The Edward Said Conservatory, which sponsored the concert, had proudly showed off the piano, hoping to make it the centerpiece of Gaza’s only music school.
But the fanfare over the piano’s revival was short-lived. The instrument is now locked up in storage amid a bitter property dispute, inaccessible to the young students who had hoped to practice on it.
“The piano should return to the conservatory for the benefit of all students,” said Ismail Daoud, the director of the music school.
It was the latest twist in a long saga for the piano. Japan donated the black Yamaha 20 years ago — when Gaza was governed by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. It was housed in a theater at the Al-Nawras resort in northern Gaza.
Business slowed after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule in 2000. After Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority in 2007, the resort eventually closed. The piano was nearly destroyed in Israeli airstrikes that badly damaged the theater during wars in 2008 and 2014.
The Belgian charity Music Fund sent foreign experts two times to Gaza, which is blockaded by Israel and Egypt, to renovate the piano. The mission finished last month. Gaza is a densely populated territory of 2 million people.
On Sunday, 300 fans filled a Gaza hall to watch Japanese and Palestinian artists perform around the piano.
Fayez Sersawi, the Culture Ministry official who received the Japanese gift in 1998, told the crowd Sunday that the piano “is returning to where it should be — the Edward Said Conservatory.”
But on Wednesday, local merchant Saed Herzallah took the piano from the conservatory and brought it back to the abandoned resort.
Herzallah said he bought the property in 2011 “with everything on it, including the piano.” He said he is renovating the resort and plans to put the piano in a wedding hall where students can come play on it.
Daoud, the music school director, said the resort is far away, hard to reach for students and its humid conditions will damage the piano.
Sersawi, whose ministry is still controlled by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, accused the businessman of “threatening” staff of the business school and committing “piracy.”
“We don’t accept this. This is an immoral act,” he said. “The ministry will do everything possible to bring the piano back.”
Days after concert, Gaza’s grand piano seized by merchant
Days after concert, Gaza’s grand piano seized by merchant
- The instrument is now locked up in storage amid a bitter property dispute, inaccessible to the young students who had hoped to practice on it
Syria gunman who killed Americans was to be fired from security forces for ‘extremism’: ministry
DAMASCUS: Syria’s interior ministry said on Sunday that the gunman who killed three Americans in the central Palmyra region the previous day was a member of the security forces who was to have been fired for extremism.
Two US troops and a civilian interpreter died in the attack on Saturday, which the US Central Command said had been carried out by an alleged Daesh group (IS) militant who was then killed.
The Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding “extremist Islamist ideas” and had planned to do so on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba told state television.
A Syrian security official told AFP on Sunday that “11 members of the general security forces were arrested and brought in for questioning after the attack.”
The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the gunman had belonged to the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra.”
Palmyra, home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins, was once controlled by IS during the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.
The incident is the first of its kind reported since Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and rekindled the country’s ties with the United States.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations when the attack occurred, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol.”
US President Donald Trump called the incident “an Daesh attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” using another term for the group.
He said the three other US troops injured in the attack were “doing well.”
