NOVANEWS
Asma Jaber explains the concept behind PIVOT, which will allow users to view pictures of specific locations in Palestine through time. Staff photo D. Sprusansky
When Asma Jaber was a child in South Carolina, she would sit in the back of her father’s taxi and listen to him tell vivid stories about pre-1948 Palestine. She cherished his anecdotes, as they were her most intimate way of connecting with her Palestinian heritage.
When her father died two years ago, Jaber was devastated. Her link to the past was gone. The reality of his departure became particularly real while she was driving from Jerusalem to Nazareth and could not turn to him with questions about the depopulated Palestinian villages she was passing. Without her father, she no longer knew what was below her feet.
Jaber did not let this feeling of despair prevail. Rather, she transformed her longing for the old into an opportunity to create something new. Her father’s stories and other sources of Palestinian history had to be preserved in a way more accessible and timeless than the spoken word, she realized. The answer, she decided, was to turn to technology.
On Oct. 7, Jaber appeared at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC to discuss her new technological innovation: an app called PIVOT, which will allow Palestinians and others around the world to look at a specific place through a tunnel of time in order to explore its history.
For instance, a person traveling in Palestine with the app downloaded on a smartphone will be alerted when arriving at a “PIVOT” point, such as a destroyed village or an historical site. The user will then have access to the name of the site and be able to flip through images of that location over time.
Jaber views her app as a form of cultural resistance. “The old will die as my father did,” she acknowledged, but—despite Israel’s wishes—“the young will not forget.”
PIVOT will initially target the tourism industry, Jaber explained. In addition to helping independent travelers better understand their surroundings, she hopes the app will help tour guides enhance the experience for their clients. For instance, Jaber said, tour guides would be allowed to design specialized tours for different groups of travelers.
While some have raised concerns that the app will hurt tour operators by making their expertise dispensable, Jaber noted, she insisted that the app will allow them to supplement their income. For example, a West Bank tour guide could design and sell a tour experience in Israel even if he or she is not permitted to enter Israel, she explained.
Jaber believes PIVOT will help expand Palestine’s small but economically important tourism industry. While only 3 percent of Israel/Palestine tourism revenue lands in Palestinian hands, the industry employs a significant number of Palestinians, she pointed out, and is particularly important to many living in Bethlehem.
The PIVOT team is working with institutions such as UNRWA, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress and the Institute for Palestine Studies to obtain photos and data of important sites in Palestine. PIVOT would also eventually crowdsource photos from the public once it has a mechanism to determine the authenticity of documents, Jaber said.
Recalling the early days of her idea, Jaber said she had doubts whether American investors would support her pro-Palestine initiative. To her delight, however, she misjudged. PIVOT won the 2014 Harvard innovation-Lab’s Dean’s Cultural Entrepreneurship Challenge and was able to attract private investors. “Times are changing because we are now slowly entering an era when we can and should speak up about human rights abuses,” she said.
Currently in the testing and development stage, PIVOT is not yet available to the public. However, Jaber invited interested individuals to visit www.pivottheworld.com to help test the app and provide feedback.
Once the app launches, Jaber hopes to expand it beyond Palestine to other countries where cultures and histories are threatened.
