Inas RadwanBuilding Bridges for Peace |
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Obstacles and Challenges and Community Responses to Peace Work:
“ It's not easy at all to say I have a Jewish friend or say that I am going to a camp in America with Jews. First of all they will think that you sold your cause. There are a lot of closed-minded people that think like that. I had a friend that knew about the program, so when I told her I was going, she said: are you crazy? Do you still want to go meet them when they want to bomb the Aqsa? How can you still think of peace with them? ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Obstacles and Challenges and Community Responses to Peace Work:
“ There is no support at all from the ones around you, your friends. Maybe family supports me a little but they are always afraid, and keep warning me not to talk about certain things or to say certain things. Same with the follow-up meetings that are close to being impossible; I mean, I need to take six taxis to get to Jerusalem and it's all illegal. In a normal situation, going to Jerusalem usually takes around an hour and a half but now it takes me five to six hours. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ Yes, [I met someone I wouldn't otherwise have met--] a settler. I don't know where she's from exactly, but she's from around Jerusalem or Bethlehem, not around Jenin. Both of us were shocked the first time we met. She was always around me, making sure that we are alike. She would ask me questions like, "What do you eat for breakfast?" I would say, "Hummus and yogurt…etc." She would ask, "Do you have bread and meat?!" You can never imagine how she was asking those questions... She would always sit next to me and touch my clothes, asking me about everything, she was afraid of me. She was exploring me like a child exploring something new. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ I consider it a great success to get to a point where the girls of the camp are able to influence their communities [...] I consider it a great success that a girl finds out that Palestine is not the Arabic translation for Israel! It is a great success that a girl that is almost twenty years old knows that there is Palestine and tells her friends. Also it would be a success if a Palestinian could tell her friends that she has a Jewish friend, which is a hard thing. We have to come to understand that the people's rejection of the current situation is the solution […] It is always the people that make the change, they are the spark. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ It was my dream to take back all of our land, Palestine as it is on the map in one piece […] I don't want to stay living in fantasies; what I had imagined is now impossible, it's a fantasy. The only solution is to stop slaughtering each other because no one is helping us; even the world is tired of our trouble. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ All the programs that I've been to were about me talking about my pain, I didn't know and wasn't willing to hear that the other side was also in pain. I didn't want to listen to that, I didn't want to understand or imagine that. At first I felt like I was being forced to listen to them [the Israeli participants], I didn't want to listen. For example, the first time they said they wanted to talk about the bombings that happen in Israel, I said I didn't want to listen and nothing could make me. I only wanted to be there [in the program] just to show the world who I was. But I had to listen for the first time and eventually I came to realize that it's not fair for me to keep talking and not listen to them. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Personal Transformation and Israeli/Palestinian Power Dynamics:
“ The first time I really felt that I was forced to listen, it really was a problem because I didn't want to listen. They insisted that they wanted to talk about their pain and what was hurting them. At last I gave in, not because I wanted to listen but because I became curious. If they wanted to talk, so be it, I didn't have to understand or feel their pain, I would just listen if they wanted to talk. When they started talking, I realized that they were saying the same things I say only from a different perspective. The way they talked was different; they were saying the same things I would say. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Personal Transformation and Violence:
“ The Israeli participants [in Building Bridges for Peace] used to think that only the Palestinian fighters are the ones killed in those operations and I used to think that only soldiers carrying guns die in those explosions. It never occurred to me that they might be normal people, just like me. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ You cannot call [Building Bridges for Peace] a peace camp because it doesn't make us sit there with them and make peace or leave having freed Palestine. It is about giving us a chance to express ourselves; we cannot talk here so we go outside to talk to the other side and express ourselves. We do not need to express ourselves with weapons and bombing; we can do it in other ways. We meet eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, the age at which they [Israelis] go to the army, so we try to make them understand. I know that one or two [people] cannot change their government, but at least when they go to the army, if they go to the army, they will treat the Palestinians better than [Israeli soldiers] are treating us now. They will know that there are good Palestinians. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
Separation Barrier and Jerusalem:
“ They don't let us go to Jerusalem even though it is a holy place, but I realize that not everybody is religious. All our needs are in Jerusalem, like the church court for example. [...] I am not a religious person, though I do believe in my religion, but I love being in that place, I feel comfort and purity from the inside. You feel that the place is sacred; you can feel it in its air. They cannot forbid us from going there, it's impossible. Every time I go I find that they've made it even harder. The last time I was there the wall had not gotten to Beit Hanina, but now it's so close to being closed completely. Maybe the next time I will come I will have to jump over the wall. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
“ America is the only country that has influence here. They could either support the continuation of the conflict or put it to an end. They could simply tell the Israelis that they will cut off the weapon supplies and support unless they stop killing Palestinians. ” [Source in Complete Interview]
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