Urban Art Association

Why is it bothering you?


I think a lot of people went over to the hotel and met locals and tried to help where they could

Just curious as to what is at the heart of the problem here.

Is it that someone in West Bank should have employment? Is your attitude that - he lives in a fucking prison how dare he have a job.

Are the marble kitchen tops bothering you? He should be cooking on sticks and stones, what's he need marble worktops for

Is it that someone like him should want to make a little more than he does? Can't let those fuckers make more money and have better lives than us.

Is the issue the place where he is or his name that people here don't like.

I see many other people making profits no one goes after them with quite as much vitriol as some people have gone after Ahmad. He has behaved courteously and with huge amount of respect to everyone even when most you lot would be effing and blinding.
Not one person on this forum has said they lost money to Ahmad. Not one person has stated that Ahmad cheated them. Not one person who actually had any dealings with Ahmad has said he is not to be trusted. All the nasty comments have come from people who have had nothing what so ever to do with him. So what is your problem? It is disgraceful and shameful how a forum guardian has treated this member. The guardian is a disgrace to the term itself in how he has trolled this member for no other reason than hearsay. Shame on you.

Yeah they love being jailed behind a wall


You really should get on a plane and have a look before judging

I said this many times, people need to go and see this country for themselves before making judgements. 
The only time i ever called ahmad out of order was when he said the 3 guys need to spend more money. 

This man behaved like a gentleman from the start, and still does.Good luck to him and remember he is selling "original" Walled Off Hotel items, so you know what your buying 

You fancy flicking my balls huh

Oh ahmad.

Quick email 5 Min Response time
 

It is a bit hypocritical for the site to allow Ahmad to sell items like so while blocking art galleries. I understand people have personal connections to Ahmad and want to try and help him considering everything that is happening in Palestine BUT the way he is trying to sell his pieces to people is worse than any art gallery. I'm also not sure this helping anyone but his staff (his employees/friends he sets up to go the hotel and get the pieces) and himself. Doesn't sound like he's helping future customers of the hotel by taking all the best walls/towers or the hotel itself by spreading rumors about the limitation of the pieces he's selling. Unless he's paying off the employees there; I don't see how this benefits the hotel, hotel customers or most locals in the area.

He seems to change the prices on customers whenever he feels like doing so, using this site to try and find members to bid against each other and also he uses questionable and really unsafe ways to pay rather than straight through eBay or paypal for various good/bad reasons. That all seems like how Galleries sell piece or even worse. Also many of pieces are being sold through him are also being sold by his friends on eBay for extreme prices. I'm sure people had good service with Ahmad, and he might be a great guy personally, but the way he's trying to sell his items are pretty bad. At this point he's really no different than a struggling art gallery in a difficult position.... which seems like 90 percent of all art galleries out there. It feels a little hypocritical for the site to allow this guy 61 pages to sell items in questionable ways and not allow galleries to do so. Please don't allow galleries to start selling here... that's not my point.

Making all people satisfied is a goal that cannot be achieved

Ahmad - seems a bit odd why you haven't responded to any of my posts? Do you not have anything to say to my posts at all?


Ps - you say Making all people satisfied is a goal that cannot be achieved Maybe they (the Hotel) could make all their paying guests happy if you were not in there taking everything you can get your hands on.

Do you honestly think it puts the whole place in a good light when paying customers cannot get anything, when they have spent thousands getting there in the first place, and then when they get back they get quoted thousands over the shop price by you if they do want one?

Ok cool but how come your mark ups are so high!?

Paying customers who travel to get there will be helping out the disadvantaged locals a lot more than what Ahmad is. They will probably be spending more in the Hotel helping keep it open longterm, the surrounding areas, tours, taxis, food and drink etc. Ahmads employees (I doubt) won't be spending anything bar the room stay and however much merchandise they can get out of the Hotel.

Hopefully the Hotel never has to shut down due to lack of business, but I thought the whole point of the shop was to get some more art fans over to it and buy some pieces as it was struggling a bit to be sustainable? Nothing to say it won't struggle again, but if it does due to basically having no pieces available then a few people have to have a good look in the mirror at themselves.

In my opinion anyway, and will leave it at that.

Only a court order stands between Khan al-Ahmar and the bulldozers. And if it goes, the West Bank will be split in two

Oliver Holmes in Khan al-Ahmar

Sat 7 Jul 2018 17.17 BST First published on Sat 7 Jul 2018 12.39 BST
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Israeli security forces intervene as Palestinians try to save their homes from demolition in Khan al-Ahmar.
Israeli security forces intervene as Palestinians try to save their homes from demolition in Khan al-Ahmar. Photograph: Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Commuters speeding along the four-lane highway that connects Jerusalem to Jericho might not notice this tiny Bedouin village of fewer than 200 people tucked in the dip of two hills. Tents hoisted with chipped scrap-wood and sand-covered corrugated-iron shacks are home to once-nomadic families who settled after the Israeli army expelled them from the southern desert seven decades ago. Some residents work in nearby factories owned by Israeli settlers. Others herd sheep and goats on the scorching rocky terrain.

But Khan al-Ahmar’s modest appearance belies its significance to many Palestinians as the keystone of their struggle for statehood – a community whose location is so strategic that, if they were removed, it might crumble hopes for a future country.

After years of resistance against Israeli demolition orders that say the makeshift village in the occupied West Bank is illegally built, last week brought what appeared to be final preparations for its destruction.

Security forces declared the area a closed military zone and blocked journalists and diplomats from entering. Bulldozers with military escorts rumbled in and began levelling the ground.

In the upper part of the village, Tahreer Abu Dahouk, a mother of four children all under 10, stood in her kitchen. A large blue plastic barrel held water, charred pots and pans hung on wooden hangers, and the roof was blackened by the soot from a fire pit. “We sleep afraid; we wake up afraid. They are serious,” she said as border police in grey uniforms patrolled outside.

On Wednesday, when Israeli forces first entered, they wounded 35 Palestinians and arrested others, according to the United Nations. One Israeli soldier was also reported injured. “It was war here,” said Abu Dahouk, who married into the village 14 years ago.

The Bedouin villagers say they are afraid.
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The Bedouin villagers say they are afraid. Photograph: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
Outside her home is a small garden in the desert hills, a lone pomegranate tree bearing light pink fruit. “We are settled now,” she said. “We refuse to leave. Leave us alone. This is the best place for us.”

Khan al-Ahmar is one of several communities in the West Bank under threat. Since its people arrived decades ago as refugees, Israeli settlements built on occupied land – supported with water and electricity – have sprung up on the surrounding hilltops.

In contrast, the Jahalin tribe who live in Khan al-Ahmar are restricted on where they can roam with their livestock and Israeli authorities have not hooked up their homes to running water, electricity or a sewerage system. They have portable toilets, although opening their doors shows they are merely a closed box with a hole in the floor.

Homes have been ripped down in the past because their construction has been declared illegal while building permits are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain there.

Around 2km to the north is the Israeli settlement of Kfar Adumim, which has plans to extend closer to Khan al-Ahmar. On Thursday, settlers brought Israeli flags to a hilltop overlooking the village in a show of support for the demolition.

Others, a small group of people from Kfar Adumim, have gone against their neighbours and lobbied to allow the Bedouin to stay, saying the communities can coexist.

But the fight is bigger than that of two communities. The Palestinian government warns that removing the village is part of a broader push to annex the West Bank.

One of the few remaining Palestinian sites east of Jerusalem, its demise would contribute to the encircling of the holy city by Jewish settlements on one side, effectively blocking it off entirely from the West Bank. The move would isolate East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as their future capital.

Further Israeli settlement construction in the area, along a road leading to the Dead Sea, would divide the occupied Palestinian Territories in two, cutting the north from the south.

Palestinian demonstrators try to prevent an Israeli tractor from entering Khan al-Ahmar.
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Palestinian demonstrators try to prevent an Israeli tractor from entering Khan al-Ahmar. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA
There would be no continuous Palestinian land on which to build a state, already profoundly fragmented by military rule as well as Israeli-built walls, roads and settlements.

“If this community disappears, the north will disappear from the south,” said one resident, Faisal Abu Dahouk, 43. To him, the timing of the demolition is no coincidence. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been bolstered by the Trump administration, which has already declared Jerusalem Israel’s capital and cut aid to Palestinians. Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, is a hardline pro-settler lawyer.

“They gave them an OK,” Abu Dahouk said of Trump and Israel. During the past few days, there has been a wave of demolitions across the West Bank, displacing dozens of Palestinians.

The Israeli authorities say they have offered villagers in Khan al-Ahmar a relocation site, although it is just a few hundred metres from a rubbish dump, and in an urban setting with little room for sheep.

The Palestinian government says a forcible transfer of people from their homes by an occupying power is a war crime. And foreign governments warn that Khan al-Ahmar’s location makes it vital to the moribund two-state solution.


Britain’s minister of state for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, told the Commons last week that the demolition was “fundamentally wrong”. But in nearly an hour of questioning from MPs, the minister was told that repeated condemnations were not enough and further action, such as economic sanctions on settlements or measures to support Palestinian statehood, was needed.

“Before the actions of the Netanyahu government render a two-state solution a geographical impossibility … this is the time for the United Kingdom to lead the major nations of the world in recognising the Palestinian state, and to do so immediately while there is still a state left to recognise,” said Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary.

It is not clear if international pressure has worked. Late on Thursday, Israel’s high court granted a temporary injunction on the demolition until Wednesday.

The reprieve followed a petition by the village’s residents, the latest of hundreds of attempts over the years to help the community. In 2009, a school was built with EU funding out of rubber tyres and mud as a way to circumvent Israeli rules preventing building with cement. But the authorities still ordered it be shut down.

At the school last week, young children played in the astroturf garden and swung from tree branches. Some gathered at the fence and peered through at the large yellow bulldozer flattening the road outside.

Abu Dahouk sat nearby. “They suffocated us,” he said.

Noted