( dpa ) - Conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim is to give a charity piano concert with Beethoven sonatas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden said Wednesday.
The concert, due to take place on Saturday, is in aid of medical care for children in the Gaza Strip.
Barenboim is general musical director of the Berlin State Opera.
The news comes as US President George W Bush is Thursday due to arrive amid strict security measures in Ramallah, where he is scheduled for talks with the Palestinian leadership.
Barenboim firmly believed that all people in the region must and could live together in peace, he said.
"We will continue to play music for that," he said.
In Ramallah Barenboim is due to perform on a new grand piano an audience member from Berlin, who has died in the meantime, explicitly donated for his Ramallah concerts.
Together with the late cultural scholar Edward Said, Barenboim in 1999 founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra ("An Orchestra for Peace"), which joins 90 musicians from Europe, Israel and a number of Arab countries.
Barenboim, who lives in Berlin and holds citizenship in Argentina, Israel and Spain, is well known as an outspoken critic of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and a supporter of Palestinian rights.
He was nominated UN peace envoy by former secretary-general Ban Ki-moon last September.