Visualizing Palestine (VP) creates spectacular hybrids between conventional infographics and street signs to show statistics. To this end, it uses data from different globally recognised organisations: Human rights groups, academic institutions and other official sources in Palestine, Israel and International. The works are disseminated via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and the website visualizingpalestine.org.

VP is the first project of the Visualizing Impact (VI) group. The team consists of ten persons distributed between Beirut, Amman, Montreal and Ramallah. These include researchers, graphic designers, developers and information dissemination experts.

Architect Ahmad Barclay works in the areas of VI research and production. He explains that the idea of VP will soon be extended to other locations in the Middle East.

What prompted you to launch the Visualizing Palestine project?

There is a lot of news and reports about Palestine. Maybe too much. Especially in Western countries, the information that most people receive is inaccurate. Far from being stories of theft, marginalization and occupation of the Palestinians, the stories that come to us from a de facto Israeli-dominated territory all too often speak of a conflict between two equal forces. Moreover, there is a tendency to present Palestinian violence without context or motivation, while official justifications for Israel ' s violence are often not called into question.

In relation to this overdose of information, the idea that “conflict is difficult to understand” is widespread. We want to deal with that prejudice, which is a lie. We want to work tightness in people with different reasons and arguments.

Why have you chosen the graphs and the statistics?

To direct the official narrative, other multimedia projects have used traditional ways or citizen journalism. In the VP team we concluded that the infographics – and graphic animation and visual content as interactive websites – that explain the origin of the conflict are the most appropriate tools. The UN, NGOs and other sources publish essential but very academically. For example, who will read a 200-page report on minors being detained by Israel? This information explains the real dynamics of the conflict, but, as it spreads, it will hardly reach the majority of society. Infographic, if used properly, has the ability to present raw data in an understandable way, making journalism much more difficult than refuting the contents of journalistic articles or opinion articles.

What is the process of creating infographics like?

Circular: to identify, investigate, create narration and present data, design, disseminate and evaluate its impact. More and more we work with partners to create different types of content on each topic, and to increase its diffusion both on the network and outside it.

Your work is slowly reaching many places in the world.

So far we have put our forces in the creation and dissemination of works in English and Arabic. However, thanks to the voluntary work of the groups and individuals who have approached us, today our graphs are available in twelve languages and thus have organised public exhibitions in a dozen states.

The truth is, some say it's built based on the selected sources of information.

There is no fully objective information. In the worst case scenario, there are organizations working for the distortion and misinformation of the facts. And, at best, there are organizations that choose the topics covered conditioned by the limits and context established by their owners. In the case of Palestine and Israel, many organizations only work by looking at Gaza and the West Bank (sometimes including East Jerusalem), leaving aside the situation of Palestinian refugees and Palestinians living in Israel, as if they had no connection.

Since we are an independent organization, limitations do not condition us so much. We tried to connect points, getting information from the most respected sources, to create a more holistic image. However, our narratives are not the only truths about the situation. That's why we open infographics with lots of sources of information, giving anyone who wants to know more about it.

Have you adopted a political position on Palestine as a group?

We are an independent group and therefore have no political affiliation or attitude. We believe that it would be harmful and contradictory to the kind of work we do. Having said that, we understand conflict from the perspective of citizenship and from the right to equality, freedom and reparation. We do not pay particular attention to substantive political solutions. We believe that all of this is reflected in the themes and graphs we address.

Your infographics tell us how the Israeli occupation of rights such as access to food, health or safety affects us. What do you say about the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority?

We work from the universal prism of social justice, and that, as you rightly say, is not just a matter of Israeli persecution. In particular, we are preparing work on the role of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In this infographic we will explain the strength of the PA security apparatus against the civil society initiative, with the aim of weakening the resistance to the Israeli occupation.

How do you understand the role of social networks in the path of social justice?

Social networks are only tools, and from now on other tools will take their place. To disseminate and promote information that challenges the official message, to remember excluded topics and to pay attention to transformative initiatives and actions, today they are fairly open and free. However, more and more countries are resorting to the “openness” of social networks to take tough action against dissident voices. Meanwhile, the most relevant social media actors are increasingly strong in monitoring the limits of an acceptable debate.

In this regard, we have worked on the project together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation OnlineCensorship.org team. It is a project to publicize the cases of censorship that have occurred on the most well-known social networks.

What will your next steps be?

As a collective, we are working with our collaborators on a number of parallel projects to bring value to the issues rooted in infographics and graphic stories. Censorship in the Egyptian media or exclusion of young people in the Arab world, for example.

Our intention is for projects to be led by the collaborators themselves. Following the philosophy and work style of the Visualizing Impact group so far, like the decentralized model of the TEDx project, we would like to become “Visualizing X” in the brand of more projects like those we have done with Palestine.

With regard to Visualizing Palestine, in 2015 we would like to encourage collaboration with other groups to create a shared strategy and strengthen the Palestinian movement for social justice as a whole. We've also realized that we're coming to a critical moment. As has happened in the rest of the historic conflicts, the Palestinian claim will be on everyone’s lips, and we have a commitment to drive and speed up that process.

>>> All the infographics translated into Basque, in the blog 'Begizta' by Axier López.