the united nations refugee agency has said that migrants trying to cross the mediterranean sea to reach europe are facing ever more deadlyjourneys. unhcr says one in 18 people trying to make the crossing now die. in total, some 1,600 are thought to have drowned this year. democrats in the united states have criticised the white house for withholding hundreds of thousands of documents relating to president trump's nominee to the us supreme court. senate hearings on brett kavanaugh‘s nomination are due to begin on tuesday. he must be endorsed by a majority in the senate. firefighters are trying to control a huge blaze which is tearing through one of brazil's largest and most historic museums. tv pictures are showing much of the national museum in rio de janeiro in flames. the 200—year—old collection contains millions of exhibits it's coming up to 2:30am here in london.

now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, from ramallah. i'm stephen sackur. more than five decades after the israeli occupation of the west bank began, i've come here, not to meet a palestinian politician, but an artist, perhaps the most renowned palestinian artist of his generation, suleiman mansour. his paintings have come to define a sense of palestinian identity. but in a place like this, in troubled times like these, does art really matter? i have a vision of what the painting should look like and then i keep trying until i have that image. and it does not come usually in the first instance. so this is the first try, i do it. the effect should show

the helplessness of people and so on and that is how i want this painting to be. but now this is how i feel, personally, and how i think people are feeling. this is dark, this is bleak, the mood, the feel of your paintings has really changed, hasn't it? it has changed a lot. the big difference between these figures and the figures of the heroic period that i used to do in the 70s and 80s. it depends on the situation, you know, the political situation. i hope it will change another time because i love to make heroic paintings, to reach again that feeling of being hopeful and optimistic. suleiman mansour,

welcome to hardtalk. thank you. i want to begin at the beginning. you grew up with conflict, you grew up loss, you grew up with very difficult family circumstances. your father died when you were young. so i'm intrigued to know why painting? why art? what drew you do it? i had a kind of talent, this is one part of it. the other part is all this hard life that made me kind of lonely and... ..loneliness gives you time for yourself to work on your talent and so on, so i was painting

when i was five, six years old and i couldn't leave the paint and paper and so on. also, i'm intrigued by the timing, because you were born just one year before the creation of the state of israel which, of course, had a huge impact upon the lives of all palestinians and then, through your adolescence and early adulthood, you then experienced the run—up to the ‘67 war and then the occupation by the israeli military of eastjerusalem and the west bank. and, of course, eastjerusalem is where you were leaving. —— and, of course, eastjerusalem is where you were living. what impact did that have upon you? did you see your future and your commitment in a different way? you have so many artists around you, and they are fighting,

and i was sure that palestine would be liberated. you felt that? i felt that very strongly. listening to arab media, especially egyptian media. yeah, it was a shock for me and for all the people, when we were occupied. i think at that time we did not think that the israelis would stay. we thought they would stay a couple of years and then they would have a kind of solution and then they would go, and that's it. at that time, also, we did not feel so much palestinians, you know. because all the childhood, adolescence, we were jordanians. you are underjordanian rule.

we felt likejordanians and this feeling of being a palestinian came little by little after the israeli occupation. but projecting your artistic vision of what a palestinian identity was, does that make you a political artist? does it even at times make you a propagandist? sometimes, maybe. at times. but all artists, musicians, literature people, they were effected by the political developments around and, for me, i wanted to paint. what i felt i can't paint a flower, or i can't paint a nude figure. and that's it, i'm an artist, i have a message.

but that's interesting, you mean you didn't ever feel that you could seek out and express beauty for its own sake. it always had to have a cause behind it. yes. always ? always. i remember in 1980, an israeli officer called me and another two colleagues, to his office, and he said, why are you painting political paintings? why don't you make nice flowers? why don't you paint a nude? i would buy from you. from that time, i thought, this is a bad idea to make floral or a nude figure or anything like that. and i think my time is precious and if i were to do something,

it has to have a message. but does it have to have truth because, if we look at your paintings, generally your images are very positive, heroic images of steadfast palestinians. is that really the truth of the way palestinians always are, or is it more sort of propaganda notion to help the cause? part of it, yes. another part is that i want to make a kind of idealistic idea of the palestinian land, of palestinian people, and i paint what i want people to be. not what they are. i do not paint realistic ideas

about life and people. you know, like, if i makejerusalem, i take off many things from the rooves, i make it a beautiful city. a try to make it idealistic. something very striking about your work is what happened during the first intifada in the late 1980s when you and a group of other artists got together — i think you called it you new vision movement — and you declared that you would no longer buy art supplies, canvases, paints from israel. that you would be defiant, you would create your own materials for your own palestinian art, as part of the resistance. yes and it wasn't an actually our

idea, it was the idea of the first intifada to rely on ourselves and to boycott israeli products. and we, as artists, we said, why don't we use the same idea. why don't we do the same? so each one started to search for materials that fits their personality... which brings us back to the soil, to the land. yes, and it also brings us back to the childhood period where i used to help my grandmother doing things from mud, like walls or ovens. so immediately, when i thought about material that i would work with, so i came up with the idea of the mud. i used to mix it with tea, straw and colour it with henna,

with natural materials. and then i started doing mud alone. the thing is, you still do it today. in fact, one of the things you are best known for around the world, is your work in this clay that you put on wood — not on canvas but on wood — and sometimes you incorporate it with paint, sometimes it's entirely a sort of clay vision, but you don't need to do it anymore. what is it about working with clay that you still enjoy, even though you're no longer at a place where you are boycotting art materials? i like the cracks in the mud. the cracks symbolises a kind of feeling, not only with me but with the palestinian people in general. this is a kind of... hope is lost, you know, in a way, and people are desperate, and they feel frustrated, also,

the checkpoints that we have — hundreds of checkpoints here and there — it's like they have separated people from each other... sort of fragmentation? fragmentation of the society. fragmentation of the ideal palestine. fragmentation of hope. so that is why i still work with mud and i like the cracks in the mud which symbolises all these feelings. i just wonder, when we look at that huge canvas behind you, which is so much about heroic struggle and heroic individuals in palestine, do you feel in a way a little embarrassed by it, that it projects images which do not really match today's reality? yeah, in a way, but i was...

i wanted to represent a certain time, from 19110 until 1992, through this painting, including the diaspora, including the occupation, including the resistance, and then further, and then just before the oslo agreement. the hope was very high or very strong among palestinians and i wanted to represent that period, to represent it, not only through figures and so on, but also through the spirit of the time.

talk to me about the experience, the personal experience, of being an artist living through palestinian history of the last 50 years. have you known fear? fear coming from your art and the position it put you in with the israelis? no, not really. i remember in 1981 i was imprisoned for a short time. but then i was called and they wanted to interrogate with me. but why did they imprison you in the first place? no reason, no reason. i was going with my family to nablus, with the car and then i was photographing villages on the road. and they stopped me, and they me and they took the camera and the film. i stayed like two

weeks in the prison. and after a while he asked me, who do you think you are? you know, everybody‘s writing about you, that you are in prison. who the hell are you? i think they were afraid of taking to prison a famous person, especially in cultural and art and so on. and you know, as i... did they ever try to take any of your canvases, your pictures? many, many...not only me, but every exhibition that we made, we have soldiers coming in and taking paintings that they don't like.

and the problem is they don't have a rule, you know? so if you have, like, kind of left wing soldier come in, then the paintings are left there. but the right—wing soldier comes in, and half the walls are empty. we had in ‘81, i think, they made the rule that we can't paint with red, green, black and white. the colours of the palestinian flag. and so we — every artist was painting with red, green, black and white. let me ask you this, maybe it sounds like a stupid question, but do you think, looking back on your long career,

that your art, your voice, your expression, may have taken a different path if you were not palestinian, if you hadn't been born into conflict and hostility, and this desire to express something about your people and their struggle? i am sure that i would be a different artist, i'm sure. and do you feel in a way that your situation has trapped you, as an artist? yeah, sometimes i feel i'm trapped. but also i think i used it, in a way, because making political art, and sometimes it comes out truthful, from your inside, and sometimes you just want to make a nice palestinian painting to sell it. i did that, and many artists did that also. it's like using the situation

you are in, although you are trapped in it. interesting you talk about selling art because, of course, you are a professional artist, you have to make a living, you have to make money. for example, your most famous work, probably, is that one known as the camel of hardship, which actually you painted several times, one of which was bought by gaddafi, because he loved it, and it ended up being destroyed, but you painted it again and i believe the later painting was sold in dubai for $250,000. but the subject was, again, it was an old man bearing the burdens, the steadfast palestinian, and it weaved in themes about jerusalem and loss and all sorts of things. when it sold for that much money, did it make you feel strange? not strange, you know.

happy, maybe. but i know that it's a unique painting and a unique subject, and it's very famous. and i don't think every painting i do will be sold at that amount. but this painting, i knew it will be sold for much money. and i wasn't surprised. it's very hard to make value with art. only the dealers and gallery people, who sometimes i work with, they have a lot to do with this.

let me ask you about israelis. you know, we have talked about israelis in your life experience, being soldiers who have raided your exhibitions, or who once briefly put you in prison. but you have come to know israeli artists too. have you actively sought out collaboration with israeli artist? does that seem something important to you, or do you find that very difficult? it depends on the time. like from ‘80 until 2004, i think, we were in very good relationships, and we made lots of joint exhibitions. more than 30, 35 exhibitions together. most of them under the bit title of down with 0ccupation,

and for a two—state solution, and so on. now, today, it's impossible to make a joint exhibition or to meet in ramallah, it's very hard. but i hope things will change. and what of pressures from the palestinian side? 0ver recent years, we have seen hamas, for example, in power in gaza — not in the west bank but in gaza. but clearly there are political divisions within the political life of the west bank, as well, and there are hardliners who take a very tough stand on any relations with israel. do you feel those pressures from inside palestine too? there are perhaps voices saying that you have been too close to israelis. you have been to co—operative. you have been too co—operative.

and i wonder if that worries you, that trend? for a short while, yes. somebody wrote in the newspapers and others wrote in a magazine, and so on, and you felt that people in general are against these activities now. because now it is hopeless. they feel that the israelis are using these exhibitions to whitewash the occupation and to tell the whole world, "look, there's no problem here, artists are working together". it is difficult when you say there is no chance of peace, it is hopeless now. it difficult for me then to look again at your own art, which is so full, much of it, of hope and idealism. have you lost that? are you a very different artist today, do you think,

from the man who painted some of these very famous images going back to the ‘70s and ‘80s? of course i am a different artist today. it is just i can't make heroic paintings like i used to do. i can't paint nice landscapes, because everything is destroyed. people are depressed, they are... ..they are not like people in the ‘70s and ‘80s. they are different. they are very much concerned with living, with money and so on. the landscape is destroyed, by buildings, and so on. and do you, given all of that that you see and feel around you today, do you ever think to yourself, i don't want to paint any more?

no, i haven't reached that situation yet. but it's a thing that i did for so many years, and i can't do anything else. and i come every day to my studio, and i make ita point to come to my studio. even if i don't paint, or if i don't do any kind of art, ijust sit and read a book, or drink coffee, and so on. but i make it a point that i should come here every day for several hours. it is your life. that's my life. my studio, my work. and every now and then i make a painting. but i will...

i don't think i will reach that point where i say, no, i don't want to paint any more, or to stop painting. well, we thank you for inviting us into your studio today. thanks very much for being on hardtalk. it's a real pleasure to be here, and to see some of your work. hello. that wasn't bad for the first weekend of september. summer warmth continuing for many of us, especially where you had the sunshine, temperatures into the mid—20s in the warmest places. but it is turning cooler this week as this weather front, a cold front, pushes south across the uk in the next 48 hours. now already, as monday begins, northern ireland and north—west scotland in the cooler air. under clear skies, some spots

will be as low as four or five degrees, and also a few single—figure temperatures in east anglia and south—east england, with one or two mist and fog patches to start the day, because skies have been clear here overnight. but our weather front has cloud from south—west england, wales, the west midlands, northern england, into southern and eastern scotland. some patchy rain, some heavier bursts to begin the day in south—east scotland, clearing away. any rain on the front, though, turning increasingly light into the afternoon, showery in nature. north, north—west scotland here with sunny spells, and northern ireland lighter winds than the weekend. so yes, it is cooler, but still pleasant in the sun. much cooler through eastern scotland, north—east england, where some patchy rain continues into the afternoon, compared with the weekend. some sunny spells developing through western counties of wales. the east midlands, east anglia and south—east england with sunny spells, and you're on the warm side of the weather front, so temperatures here still in the low and in some spots mid—20s. now, our weather front monday night and into tuesday, it's this area of cloud, barely budges. hardly any rain on it, though.

underneath it, temperatures are holding into double figures. but now most of scotland and northern ireland is on the colder side of the front, so temperatures readily dipping down into single figures under clear skies through the night and into tuesday morning. and then on tuesday, here's our weather front, still barely budging from england and wales, still hardly any rain on it. maybe in the far south—east, still some sunny spells to be had, lifting temperatures into the low 20s, whereas for most of us, we're in the mid—to—upper teens. so tuesday's a fairly quiet weather day, for many of us on wednesday too, though there may be some rain just edging towards parts of northern ireland and western scotland. as we go deeper into the week, it's looking increasingly likely as though our weather will be impacted by low pressure. but there is a lot of uncertainty about where the area of low pressure is going to sit. this is thursday into friday. and because there's uncertainty about where it's going to be, there is uncertainty about who's going see the rain from it, so keep watching for the detail.

we do know, though, this week is turning cooler, and there is a chance of rain, both early in the week and then later in the week, as low pressure moves in. and that's your forecast. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. my name is nkem ifejika. our top stories: deadlyjourneys — the un says more migrants are dying in the mediterranean, and calls on european leaders to act. brazil's national museum goes up in flames — 20 million objects are thought to be at risk. hundreds of thousands of documents witheld — is the white house hiding details of president trump's pick for the supreme court? and a verdict‘s expected in the case of two myanmarjournalists on trial after investigating killings by the security forces.