A hush of air conditioning moves through the hall administered by the Palestine Committee for Culture and Heritage. Mr Dakwar used $140,000 (£70,000) of his own money to build his museum, a tribute to the generosity of a man who believes that history has more worth than money.The jewellery is exquisite, the necklaces a memory of an agricultural society. It comes as a shock to realise how rural Palestine was, how animals and corn and dates and olives were the centre of industry when the British marched into Jerusalem and "liberated" the city from the Ottoman empire.Mr Dakwar has even drawn a map of his own village outside Safad. "This block, marked No 2 is my own home and here" - his finger moves carefully around his property - "are our orchards and fields." There are piles of birth certificates, passes for the Palestine Police Force, land registration documents - all genuine, all worthless - and valuation notes. There is a licence to grow tobacco in Acre - 10 per cent of tithe receipts went in taxes - a cheque issued by the Ottoman Agricultural Bank and a building permit belonging to Mr Dakwar's long dead uncle.And there are the stories, of course. There is Daytime London, which arrives at work at 9am to find its offices clean, its bins empty and its carpets cleansed You know this world Its inhabitants have an average wage topping £25 an hour.
The Israelis won, the Palestinian Arabs lost and - trying to cling to 22 per cent of mandate Palestine - are still losing today More from Robert Fisk. Welcome to a Tale of Two Cities. Over the past fortnight, the hymns to London have been endless and gorgeous - but few have acknowledged that this is a megalopolis with a dirty secret: we are not one city at all. We built this hall last year so now the museum exists and anyone is welcome."And the breeze from the air conditioning stirs the papers on the big table next to the Palestine books and Mr Dakwar's map of his own village, drawn from memory in 1996, moves. "Bier el-Sheikh Bridge," it says over a stream near one of the family orchards. I went to other camps and to Europe and to America to purchase things from Palestine."The Palestinian coins I had to buy in America They were very expensive. "I bought books whenever I went to Syria, to Egypt, Arabic books, Arabic literature.
I opened my own library to teachers, pupils and others - open for all, Palestinians and Lebanese. In 1989, I visited the museum in Damascus and was very shocked that nothing seemed to represent Palestine.So, when I got back to Lebanon, I visited my fellow head teachers here and said we should hold an exhibition about pre-1948 Palestine in 1990. We filled five schoolrooms with items from Palestine and showed them to all the pupils 'This was Palestine,' I told them. All were astonished though, I'm sorry to say, we later lost some items. So I decided to build the 'Palestine Museum' outside Palestine."Mr Dakwar established a committee - that institution so beloved by the Arab world - which contained men and women with no political associations. "I put my whole library at their disposal as a public library.
