A Palestine pavilion will be put up at Edmonton Heritage Festival for the first time this summer, after being rejected for three straight years.

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“I’ve been going to the festival since I was a little kid and for the first time I can actually show my kids now, ‘Look, there’s a tent for where daddy came from and from where daddy’s daddy came from.’ So on a personal level, it’s awesome,” said Mousa Qasqas, vice president of Canada Palestine Cultural Association.

Qasqas said the board has wanted Palestine represented at the popular summer festival for years, but for the past three years their applications have been turned down.

“Edmonton Heritage Festival let us know there wasn’t room for us, there wasn’t space for us,” he explained.

Last year, the Palestinian community held a cultural event at Sir Wilfred Laurier Park at the same time as Heritage Festival. Dozens of people gathered for traditional Palestinian food, dancing and music. The event was planned after Palestine was not granted a pavilion at the festival.

Mousa Qasqas, vice president of Canada Palestine Cultural Association.

To have their own tent this year, is a big step for Edmonton’s Palestinian community.

“The Arab tent has had a Palestinian presence in it but we felt like now, we’re at the evolution in our community where we’re ready to stand on our own as our own tent and we’re really happy to have that,” Qasqas said.

“All of the Palestinians in the community, they all deserve to be proud of this and they all in some way contributed. So it’s the Palestinian community as a whole that’s led to this and they should all be proud.”

Qasqas said there are about 3,000 Palestinian families living in and around Edmonton.

This year’s Edmonton Heritage Festival runs from Aug. 3 – 5 at Hawrelak Park.

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