EDMONTON — A decades-old rift in the Middle East has reared its head at the 2018 Edmonton Heritage Festival.

The Canada Palestine Cultural Association is considering filing a human rights complaint against the Edmonton Heritage Festival Association after the CPCA was rejected from setting up a pavilion at the popular annual food and culture festival set to take place at Hawrelak Park from Aug. 4 to 6.

Representatives of the Palestinian association say Jim Gibbon — the executive director of the festival — told them they were ineligible to receive a pavilion because Palestine is not a state.

Festival organizers insist the Palestinian pavilion was rejected solely due to space constraints.

The Palestinian association says it is the second year in a row their application has been rejected. Last year, organizers said there were too many applicants, but the reasons given by festival this year were “bothersome.”

“One of the excuses that was given was that we only give tents to countries or states,” said CPCA spokesperson Mousa Qasqas.

The Palestinian association was formally notified in February that their application had been rejected because there were too many applicants. This prompted a representative to call Gibbon to ask why their application had been rejected after they were told they stood a good chance of getting a pavilion.

Randa — who didn’t want to give her last name because she fears repercussions for speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian association — personally submitted the application to Gibbon.

“We were one of the first applicants and he told me, ‘You have a really good chance to get in,’” she said of the initial application.

Once she found out their application had been rejected, she phoned Gibbon looking for answers. Randa said Gibbon told her over the phone that their application was rejected due to a lack of space. When she pressed further, she says he told her that “only countries are accepted.”

“This is when I was really upset and I told him you need to correct your information, and he said, ‘Palestine is not a country,’ and I said it was a recognized state by the United Nations,” she said, referring to a 2012 move by the U.N. General Assembly to recognize the sovereign state of Palestine.

“He said OK, let me Google it, and he did Google it that moment when I was with him on the phone,” she said, adding the conversation ended shortly after when Gibbon told her they could meet in person to discuss the rejection in more detail.

The Palestinian association — hoping it could still receive a pavilion — exchanged several emails with the Edmonton Heritage Festival Association over the course of the next two months. The festival organizers wrote back with links to its website outlining application requirements. Wishing to meet with the organizers in person, the Palestinian association sent Gibbon a final email in April requesting time for a meeting but never received a response.

While he says he “doesn’t remember the conversation” with Randa, Gibbon reiterated the group was rejected solely because of space constraints.

According to him, the festival steers clear from politics.

“We try not to be involved in the political side of things,” he said. “We try to just bring a bunch of people from Edmonton together to show how wonderful the people are that come to this city, so to say that something may be politically motivated, I don’t know how to respond to that,” he said, adding he is willing to meet with the Palestinian association to discuss its grievances in the fall.

Palestine has recently been in the news because Israel approved a controversial piece of legislation last week that defines the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

The decades-old conflict between Israel and Palestine arose with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Since then, Israel has fought several wars with its Arab neighbours while Palestinians across the country have expressed frustration with Israeli settlements in the West Bank — a move they say makes it increasingly difficult to negotiate a two-state solution with Israel.

According to the festival website, Israel will have a pavilion at this year’s festival. Last year, the festival drew over 450,000 attendees over the August long weekend.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Randa says the association “never thought” they’d be rejected a second time.

“We have our children who (would’ve) performed the traditional dance, which is the dabke, and they were very excited, and we were training, thinking that we would be part of the Heritage Festival,” she said. “All the kids were disappointed because they were training for that.”

With files from the Associated Press.

Read more about: