The Palestine National Orchestra performed for the first time in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel.
The orchestra gave its debut performance in Ramallah, and then performed in eastern Jerusalem over the weekend. It performed in Haifa on Sunday night.
"Today an orchestra, tomorrow a state," Suhail Khoury, director of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music named, wrote in the program, according to AFP, the French news agency. Said, a Palestinian-American and an advocate for the Palestinian cause, was a professor at Columbia University until his death in 2003.
"Today we are witnessing the birth of the Palestine National Orchestra at a time when the Palestinian struggle for independence is passing through one of its most critical and difficult moments," he wrote. "We musicians truly believe that a state is not only about buildings and roads, but most importantly it is about its people, their values, their arts and their cumulative cultural identity."
Each concert began with the Palestinian national anthem, according to AFP.
