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Building Peace: Understanding First, So We Can Act
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Journey to Palestine: Report
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Building Peace: Understanding First, So We Can ActBackground and preparationThis journey, which took place from April 10 to 14, 2002, was prepared from one day to the next. It was the response to a call launched by the Brazilian Organizing Committee of the World Social Forum (WSF) to join a Brazilian delegation of parliamentarians and members of Brazilian organizations active in the WSF, which was getting ready to go to Palestine. The call was sent to approximately one hundred members of the WSF International Council on April 4. The next day, two member organizations of this network had given a positive answer: Alternatives, from Canada, and the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation (FPH) in Paris. The two organizations also support the networks of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World. On the weekend of April 6 and 7, Gustavo Marin of the FPH and Robert David of Alternatives were ready to start out for Jerusalem on Monday, April 8, as the Brazilian Committee had requested in its call. The Brazilian delegation, however, was not ready to leave and we had to wait for answers from other members of the International Council to enlarge the group. A Brazilian group, organized by the Movement of Landless Farmers (MST), was able start out on Tuesday the 9th. It comprised José Arbex, a journalist, Paulo Suess, a theologian, and Ronaldo Zulke, a parliamentarian of the state Rio Grande do Sul. Robert David and Gustavo Marin, accompanied by his FPH colleague Karine Goasmat, thus left to join the Brazilian delegation. In addition, Christophe Aguiton of Attac-France arrived on the same day and (Mrs.) Nicola Bullard of Focus, based in Bangkok, arrived the following day. We were therefore able to constitute a small delegation of the member organizations of the WSF Committee and participate in the different initiatives that were taking place in Palestine. (The Israeli army had begun its intervention on March 29 in the Palestinian cities and camps and had surrounded the headquarters where Yasser Arafat was locked up along with about forty internationals, including Paul Nicholson, leader of Via Campesina, and Mario Nill, leader of the MST). A significant fact that needs to be strongly underscored is that since the very beginning of the Israeli army intervention, several hundred persons, active in the new civil-society organizations and movements manifesting their refusal of capitalistic globalization and asserting that a different world is possible, had gone to Palestine. The presence of the so called "internationals," not only in the big street demonstrations initiated in Seattle then in Genoa, in Barcelona, etc., as well as in Porto Alegre, is a singular fact in the scenario of the conflicts marking this period. These groups, each with their own profile, implementing various and plural actions, are fighting for peace where warriors have only aggravated the suffering of the peoples and where diplomats have demonstrated their helplessness. We were able to enter Israel, then to reach East Jerusalem, at a moment when the airport police were turning back foreigners who were coming in large numbers and were being suspected of wanting to enter the militarized zones. We should mention that our projections, even though all based on a common solidarity with the Palestinian people and on the equal search of possible ways to peace, were not precisely the same. Some of the Brazilian members had come mostly to manifest their solidarity with Mario Nill, the MST leader shut in with Arafat; others with Marcos Koneski, a Brazilian priest who was in the Church of the Nativity. Others wished most of all to go to Ramallah, to Jenin, or to Bethlehem as far as the army-controlled road blocks, to show their solidarity. Finally, others placed the accent on listening to and reflecting with the Palestinian and Israeli partners united in solidarity to think, together, about how, while trying to meet the emergencies, to prepare the medium and the long term, starting now, in this context of war. |
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