PFP tour in the news in Birmingham
26 March 2004
PFP tour in the news in Birmingham
The Birmingham News
Palestinians, Israeli quest creates Partners for Peace
03/26/04
GREG GARRISON
News staff writer
Nahla Assali, a Muslim Palestinian woman born in 1938, recently went to the house her father built in west Jerusalem and met the Israeli woman doctor who lives there now.
“‘I know who you are; you don’t live here anymore,’” Assali said the woman told her.
Assali hasn’t lived in the house since she was about 10 years old, when the State of Israel was established in 1948. But her family still keeps the deed and other records for the house.
“I feel it’s still mine,” Assali said. “I feel bitter not living in it.”
Assali visited Birmingham on Thursday as part of the Partners for Peace speaking tour featuring three women, two Palestinians and an Israeli, discussing their hopes for Middle East peace.
“The situation has deteriorated to a tragic level,” said Nuha Khoury, a Christian Palestinian who lives in Bethlehem.
“The three magic words are `ending the occupation,’” said Michal Sagi, a Jewish Israeli.
“It is dehumanizing,” Khoury said. “There is so much hurt and pain.”
The three women will speak at 2:30 p.m. today at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 4300 Hampton Heights Road; at 5 p.m. at Highland Coffee Co., 2255 Highland Ave.; and at 7:30 p.m. at St. George Melkite Catholic Church, 401 Tenth Ave. South.
Sagi, who lives in Jerusalem, said she became an activist on the issue after witnessing Israeli soldiers order a Palestinian woman to take off her top in the middle of a public street to see if she was carrying a bomb.
“It occurred to me something was really wrong,” she said. She now monitors the treatment of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints as part of Checkpoint Watch, an organization that lobbies Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinians.
“The checkpoints are one of the vivid symbols of occupation,” Sagi said.
Assali, who now lives 10 miles north of Jerusalem in a rented house, wants Israel to “acknowledge the injustice to Palestinians,” she said.
“We’re suffering,” Assali said. “Very often we feel that Palestinian blood is cheaper than Israeli blood.”
Khoury said Israel needs to give Palestinians hope for the future to stop the violence.
“The majority of Palestinians are not strapping bombs to themselves,” she said. “They are hard-working people.”
The reason for continued suicide bombings is that Palestinians feel they have no hope, Assali said. “They have nothing to lose, no future to look forward to,” she said. “It’s this despair that’s killing the Palestinians.”
