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Report
Six: Actions for Reconciliation
Wednesday, November 15
Olives of Peace
Of the 35 events or speakers we experienced or listened
to, the voice that stands out in my mind was that of Rami Elhanan.
After a day of hearing about various projects sponsored by the American
Friends Service Committee and the Quaker Meeting of Ramallah, it
was fitting that we ended our day by meeting with a member of the
Parents Circle, Rami Elhanan. For us, his words of both pain and
agony were also those of reconciliation.
Rami is a seventh generation Israeli Jew and father of four children.
Thirty-four years ago he served as a tank commander in the army
and fought in the deserts of Egypt during the 1967 war. He knew
pain and suffering, but nothing like what he would experience in
1997 when he would lose his 14-year old daughter to a suicide bomber
just 200 meters from the Center where we are staying in East Jerusalem.
After several months of pain and anger, he was faced with two choices:
either to seek revenge or to work for reconciliation. He chose reconciliation.
He joined a group of parents, both Palestinian and Israeli, who
had lost relatives to violence and would gather regularly to seek
peace. Rami began his conversation with a Palestinian parent whom
he met quite incidentally and discovered that, "If you can
listen to others in pain, you will be listened to.”
Since that fateful year, over two hundred Israeli and Palestinian
parents have gathered together to support, forgive, and reach out
not only to one another but to other audiences in Israel and Palestine,
and in the United States and Europe. They have given over 1,000
lectures to high school students, and sponsored summer camps for
Palestinian and Israelis to meet and understand one another. They
also opened up two hotlines called "Hello" for people
to call, one for Palestinians and the other for Israelis. Each caller
gets to speak to a member of the other group. Since the project's
inception over 850,000 calls have been made.
Further acts of healing came from this new Circle of friends. Rami
and others in the group initiated actions to give blood to soldiers
wounded in times of conflict. In such a case, Palestinians traveled
to Israeli hospitals to give blood for the wounded, and in turn,
Rami , who in spite of breaking the law by entering Ramallah as
an Israeli, snuck into Palestinian hospitals to give blood to their
wounded. When Rami's friends heard about what he had done, they
challenged his actions. He replied, "It is much better to give
blood to others then to shed blood for nothing".
The tragic story lives on for Rami and others in this historic land
Not only has he lost his daughter to violence, it also greatly affected
him that two brothers of his Palestinian speaking partner, Ghazi
Brigeith, were killed as young men. That seemed more than anyone
could handle until a few years ago when tragedy struck again. While
one of the joint Israeli-Palestinian summer camps was underway,
a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing three Palestinian teenagers,
and injuring many others. The pain continues. On the violence occurring
recently in these holy lands, Rami added, "The cycle of violence
continues, and the civilized world does nothing."
But still he and his new friends continue with conversations with
other bereaved parents and with others in the expanding circle of
the wounded, for there is no other choice. Rami said, “If
you succeed in making one crack in this conflict, it’s a miracle."
No one in our delegation could speak after his sharing with us that
evening. He has a powerful voice as a wounded healer, made even
more penetrating when coupled with a voice from a Palestinian.
We had met Rami's youngest son earlier in the delegation tour. With
Palestinian partners, Elik, himself a former Israeli soldier, began
a group called Combatants for Peace. The group, consisting of Israeli
soldiers and Palestinian fighters, joined together for meaningful
conversations. They appear on panels here and abroad as they "listen
to each other, share their pain, and are heard". The olives
don't fall far from the tree.
--Bill Plitt
Thursday, November 16
Being Present in Hebron—an Act of
Nonviolence for Internationals and Palestinians
We spent the day today with Christian Peacemaker
Teams (CPT), first in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani and then
in the nearby city of Hebron. Four CPT volunteers live in At-Tuwani
and spend much of their time accompanying Palestinian children to
and from school. Some children come from neighboring villages to
attend school in At-Tuwani. It would be an easy walk for the children
except that it passes nearby Israeli settlements. The Israeli settlers
sometimes throw stones, chase and otherwise purposely harm the children.
CPT accompanies them hoping that if Israeli settlers and soldiers
see foreigners with the children, they will be less likely to hurt
them.
Next we went to Hebron, a Palestinian city in the southern West
Bank which has been separated into several types of administrative
zones to protect Israeli settlers who moved into the heart of the
Old City. Many Palestinians have been forced out to make room for
them. We met with Donna at the CPT house and office. CPT lives on
the border that separates the Israeli and Palestinian zones in Hebron.
Israeli settlements are developing in the old city of Hebron, evicting
and harassing Palestinians. The settlers here are considered “ideological
settlers," who believe they have a God-given right to all of
the land. Many of the settlements are houses overlooking the Palestinian
market. Settlers have been known to throw bricks, stones, bottles
and other refuse down on the shop keepers working below. Palestinians
have covered the street with a "roof" of wire which stops
the rocks. As we walked down the street, we saw that these wire
roofs were littered with bricks, large rocks, smaller stones, bottles,
debris.
After meeting with the CPT staff, Donna took us
up to the rooftop of their building to see the wonderful view of
Hebron. The first thing we were told was to take no pictures facing
the Israeli areas; indeed there were a half dozen military posts
in our view, two of them directly below the rooftop where we were
staying. She was pointing out the various sites.
After we boarded the bus we stopped at the home of a wonderful Palestinian
family, the Natshes. A mother with four sons and one daughter. Her
husband was in an Israeli jail for five years after the 1967 war
and he died a few years ago. She baked cakes, cookies, and served
grapes from their own yard. One of her sons has a PhD; one is third-year
civil engineer; the youngest is a daughter who is in high school.
All are determined to live lives of non violence and get an education.
They are determined to stay in Palestine; it's their home. They
want to live in peace.
--Judy Lee
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