Tag: conflict resolution


  • Obama on Israel, Palestine and the Future of the Middle East

    Senator Obama has some interesting comments on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict that deserve reflection. Here is an excerpt from his trip to the region:

    The next day, and the final full day in Israel, we spent finally doing a little bit of sight-seeing and traveling through the old city of Jerusalem. Those of you who have been here know the incredible magic of the city. As the sun rises over 2,000-year old walls – walls built by David, Soloman, the Turkish Empire, we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where the site of Calvary and Jesus’ tomb is located. Just a stone’s throw away, the Western Wall; across from there you have the magnificent Dome of the Rock, gilded in gold. It gives you a sense of just how much history is here and it reminds us that you have to be humble when you think about the Middle East

  • “Don’t Kill Freddy”: A Narrative Approach to Peacemaking

    That is what my daughter Lexi wrote on an elaborate sign, beautifully painted, that greeted me one Sunday morning.

    I could not imagine who Freddy was. Hours earlier, with the family still asleep, I had discovered a small mouse in our guest room. I scooted out and shut the door fast. We knew we had to find some sort of trap before the house became infested. Well, Lexi went into a serious funk. She has just become vegetarian, animals are everything to her, and here I was about to kill “Freddy”. What she did was to name the thing I was about to kill. She had never met the mouse, but she just knew that she wanted me to stop. So she made several pictures about Freddy, but most importantly, she named him. I was no longer going to get rid of a pest, I was about to kill ‘Freddy’.…

  • Former prisoner tells tale of peace at Sulha

    Here is one of many stories emerging out of the days of Sulha that brought together thousands of Jews and Palestinians last week. The Jerusalem Post reports:

    While Sulha participants offer many different stories and personalities, Abu Awwad’s story is exceptional in that he truly comes from the “other side.” A resident of a village near Hebron and self-described “participant” in the second intifada who spent six years in an Israeli jail, Abu Awwad has seen his share of fighting and loss.

    “My brother Yusef was killed at a checkpoint in 2000,” Abu Awwad said. “And another one of my brothers, Said, was killed in 2004.”

    Abu Awwad explained that a third brother, Ali, who was in attendance at Latrun on Tuesday, had been shot and wounded during the intifada, along with his son, who was also wounded by gunfire in 2004.

    “We’ve been through it all,” he said. “And

  • LEO THE HEALER REVISITED

    I had written a piece earlier on Leo Kramer’s pioneering work supporting Palestinian and Israeli doctors who work together. Leo’s follow-up article, Israeli, Palestinian Doctors Affect Change on the Ground, is even more revealing. Leo writes that the medical work is vital because doing is more important than talking, a theme I have been trying to push recently in It Is What You Do That Defines You. Leo writes:

    These efforts, however, must also be directed toward achieving results on the ground. That means ameliorating the insecurity of the Israelis, while addressing the deprivation of the Palestinians, their need for medical services, goods, utilities, food and freedom of movement. The overt violence of the conflict is bad enough for both sides, without the medical and humanitarian border crises, which thwart the struggle to maintain a basic standard of living for the Palestinians.

    To properly approach security and

  • IT IS WHAT YOU DO THAT DEFINES YOU: A RE-ASSESSMENT OF DIPLOMACY IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

    There is a desperation at work in the sad excuse for negotiations underway between Israel and Palestine. This is the latest:

    PA rejects Olmert’s offer to withdraw from 93% of West Bank

    By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday rejected an Israeli peace proposal, which included withdrawal from 93 percent of the West Bank, because it does not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

    Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas’s spokesman, told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan showed a “lack of seriousness.”

    Under the proposal, Israel would return to the Palestinians 93 percent of the West Bank, plus all of the Gaza Strip, when the Palestinian Authority regains control over the Gaza Strip, which the militant group Hamas seized from forces loyal to Abbas in June 2006.

    Olmert presented Abbas with the

  • OLD WINE, NEW FLASKS, AND THE PUZZLES OF CONTEMPORARY PEACE

    An article by Dev Raj Dahal on Peace Movements in Nepal is much more than an analysis of conflict issues in Nepal. It addresses the relationship between global civilizations, between secular knowledge and religious knowledge, and the history of Eastern and Western approaches to human social organization. Dehal explores how these relationships impact human coexistence, and the search for peace in a world of division. We are divided by culture, class, and power, he argues.

    There is a extensive exploration of Hinduism and Buddhism as they relate to Nepalese values and institutions. Rarely have I seen such a courageous and sympathetic integration of Eastern and Western thinking in solving the fundamental challenges of peaceful human existence. I do not agree with every characterization of or generalization about the many religions addressed in this important essay. In general the author, who has an ingrained sense of intellectual pluralism, tends to be

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