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Reports from the AFSC - IFPB Assessing the Prospects for Peace: 40 Years of Occupation, 40 Years of Nonviolent Resistance Delegation

The following reports are from the Assessing the Prospects for Peace - 40 Years of Occupation, 40 Years of Nonviolent Resistance Delegation to Israel/Palestine taking place May 27 - June 9, 2007.

We are sharing these for information and education.  The views in the report may not be the positions of the American Friends Service Committee, but reflect delegate's experiences as they learn first-hand about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Report #1: City of Broken Hearts - Divisions in Jerusalem
May 29, 2007

Our first full day in Israel/Palestine highlighted a seemingly endless array of distinctions - between Palestinian and Israeli, between East and West Jerusalem, between Jerusalemites and West Bank residents, between the Green Line and the Separation Wall, between areas A, B, and C, between Ideological and Economic Settler, between Settler and Villager. These divisions define the parameters of day-to-day life for Palestinians, defining and restricting their possibilities by religion, ethnicity, geography, and history. 

• Zarinah Shakir: Realities on the Ground
• Eugenia Brown: City of Broken Hearts
• Daniel Rice: Divisions in Jerusalem

Report #2: Sadness and Hope
May 29-30, 2007

As we toured Israel's "matrix of control" in East Jerusalem today, our guide, Catherina Wilson of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, commented: "Just feel how normal this place is. That's the danger of the economic settlements. The Israelis here don't think of themselves as settlers, they just think of themselves as moving into a nice new neighborhood. That's why it's so hard to disengage. If you're not here to make a political statement, why would you leave? This is much more dangerous than the ideological settlements because there are so many of these economic settlers and they think of it as banal."

• Cecilia Lucas: Extraordinary Ordinariness
• Eric Bjorgan: Combatants for Peace - Sadness and Hope

Report #3: “Assertions of Humanity:” Women Working Against Multiple Forms of Violence
May 30, 2007

There is a reason why the olive tree is a symbol of Palestine. It has to do with lasting. The steadfastness of ordinary people -- extraordinary people who refuse to allow these extraordinary circumstances to become normalized. Their engagement in ordinary daily acts of living are themselves acts of resistance and assertions of humanity and spirit that refuses to be broken.

• Cecilia Lucas: Steadfastness and Struggle
• Steve and Linda Bell: New Profile

Report #4: Living Together Apart
May 31, 2007

It's pretty straightforward to get outraged about soldiers walking around harassing people or about extremist settlers who terrorize the Palestinians whose neighborhoods they move into. Ardi and Batya do not belong to this extremist camp.  Their settlement is very established, and they are friendly people, all smiles and welcoming and seemingly well-intentioned. But they live comfortable lives that depend every day on the occupation, brutalization and humiliation of others, in complete denial of this relationship, taking no responsibility whatsoever for that suffering. In fact, they paint themselves as the victims in this situation: "We didn't want to live this way, with checkpoints and bars on the windows.   But terrorism has forced us into this situation."

• Daniel Rice: A Walk in Al-Khalil (Hebron)
• Cecilia Lucas: The Production of Violence

Report #5: Radio Report from Jerusalem; Remembering 40 Years of Occupation

Our travels have allowed us to observe the terrain from several perspectives. We’ve experienced the ever visible Israeli soldiers, checkpoints and a mall which is in Israel that is quite on the level of any upscale mall in the West. However, when you travel to many of the areas of the Palestinians the opportunities are not the same. The word apartheid has come up many times and when you see this mammoth and long wall that separates families, villages, cities and just practical living it’s almost unreal.

• Zarinah Shakir: Report from Jerusalem

Report #6: Exploring Complexities of the Conflict
May 30 - June 2, 2007

Is there nothing that can inspire every individual to treat every other human life as sacred?  If not this place, this monument, this recounting of the sorrows and horrors of oppression, then what can? I would leave Yad Vashem feeling not a sense of awe or of inspiration from its power, but rather a sense of fear of that power.

• Zarinah Shakir: Report on "Jews of other hues"
• Beth Kaiser: Rebuilding Hope
• Michael Batchelder: Yad Vashem
• Steve and Linda Bell: Badil  

Report #7: From the Nakba to Now: Israelis and Palestinians Address History in Search for Peace
May 3 - June 8, 2007

Since March of this year, a new, unannounced practice has come into effect. Many West Bank residents have been denied re-entry during the performance of what they thought would be a routine exit and re-entry. This denial is stamped into their passport, and no reason is given. Israel claims that no new policy has been put into place, merely the tightening of an existing policy.

• The Right to Enter
• Parents Circle
• Lifta
• Zionism and the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
• Legalized Discrimination
• Grassroots Nonviolent Resistance in Bil’in
• A Formula for Solutions

Special Report : Powerful Agents of Change - AFSC's work with Palestine's youth

The majority of Palestinians are young—by 2016, 65-75% in the Middle East will be less than 25 years old.  Poverty and unemployment are widespread and becoming ever more so due to the Occupation’s curbing of physical mobility needed for commuting to work.  One third of the population growth is immigrating, and for those who stay, life is increasingly constricted.

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