CNN on Wednesday listed the Palestinian Museum, set to open in Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, in May, as one its “nine best attractions opening in 2016.”The museum’s opening is scheduled to coincide with Nakba Day, in which Palestinians mark the “catastrophe” of Israel gaining independence in 1948.The Palestinian museum is included on CNN’s list alongside Shanghai Disneyland, a film-themed park in Dubai, the new FIFA soccer museum in Zurich, San Francisco’s new Museum of Modern Art, a Noah’s Ark-inspired theme park in Kentucky, a mega-mall in Qatar, the refurbished Darling Harbor in Sydney and the UAE’s version of Paris’s most famous art museum, the Louvre Abu Dhabi.The museum is touted as a harbinger of humanitarian projects and as a vehicle for, “the empowerment of the Palestinian people,” according to the museum’s website.The museum’s creators hope the institution will also be a way of teaching young Palestinians about their heritage.Some of the Palestinians living in the diaspora are third-generation and many have little connection to “Palestine” – a fact the museum hopes to change.Diana Atallah contributed to this article.
