OneVoice Movement

OVP's Wasim Masri talks negotiations on BBC World News

WATCH: OneVoice Palestine's Wasim Masri on BBC World News to discuss the return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations after three years without talks. Video courtesy of BBC World News.

 

Knesset Caucus Chair introduces bill for two-state solution

Months of hard work by OneVoice at the grassroots and political-elite levels have paved the way for a bold move in the Knesset.

Members of the Knesset (MKs), including Caucus for Ending the Israeli-Arab Conflict Chair MK Hilik Bar (Labor), submitted a bill yesterday that would, if adopted by a majority of the Knesset, for the first time in Israel’s history enshrine into law that it is the state’s policy to pursue a two-state solution, representing the true will of Israelis toward peace with their Palestinian neighbors.

Passage of the law would also signal to the international community that Israel is committed to a two-state solution, at a time when such an outcome is coming under threat.

WATCH: Israel’s Channel 2 News interview with MK Bar (Hebrew w/ English subtitles)

 

"The window of opportunity for a two-state peace agreement is shrinking; this bill is tantamount to giving a strong, new impetus to the government and the coalition to enter negotiations immediately, and promote the Two-State Solution,” MK Bar said in a press release Tuesday.

OneVoice Israel (OVI) Director Tal Harris echoed these sentiments: “We as citizens have a responsibility to ensure that the push for two states is top of the Knesset agenda. There is a majority out here on the streets who want it, and a majority in the Knesset who believe in it, too. It is OneVoice’s role to connect and energize these two constituencies, allowing each to strengthen the other.”

OneVoice, which supports a two-state solution that ends the occupation and conflict and is committed to the 1967 borders, was an integral founding partner of the Caucus for Ending the Israeli-Arab Conflict and the formation of the legislation. In support of the Caucus’ efforts, OVI launched a “Roundtable Peace Initiative” on June 23 to build support for the Caucus at the grassroots level. Nearly 2,000 people in 11 cities across Israel rallied to revive the Middle East peace process. Twenty leading Israeli peace organizations – including OVI – took part. A wide range of decision makers, issue experts, MKs, intellectuals, academics, former senior defense officials, and media attended. In Mattan Peretz’s eyes, the collaboration between the co-hosts and the engagement of the Israeli public made the event truly “unique.”

Highlights of the roundtable events are below.

There is no doubt that OneVoice’s grassroots work in Israel has found a foothold on the political level. But the backing of international supporters, too, will be vital to achieve a two-state solution and an end to the conflict.

Amid regional strife, hope for two states found in Gaza

OneVoice Palestine-Gaza Director Ezzeldeen Masri during the Rafah City town hall meeting on July 2.

With each passing day, events in the Middle East uncover ever more headlines as the region continues to bubble with volatility.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces remain locked in a bloody civil war two years on, with Lebanon also tangled in the uncertainty.

In Turkey, protestors in the thousands were in a standoff against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over plans to demolish parts of Gezi Park and over excessive force used by Turkish police.

In Egypt, President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood was toppled after just one year in office.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy between Israel and Palestine has markedly increased the chances for negotiations, but it comes during a period when both parties are experiencing domestic political pressures that reduce their freedom of action.

In all the chaos, and if one cares to remember, a question may arise…what is going on in Gaza?

The small coastal territory on the Mediterranean Sea remains under air, land, and sea blockade by Israel (with Egyptian acquiescence) since an upsurge in violence in 2007 following the Hamas takeover of the enclave the previous year. Gaza’s people have dealt with gas and electric shortages, a ban on construction materials, and fear of Israeli air attacks as part of the current dynamic of violence that has plagued Gaza and southern Israel for over six years.

But what many do not know is that support for OneVoice has found a foothold in Gaza.

The uptick in regional instability led OneVoice Palestine-Gaza (OVP-G) Director Ezzeldeen Masri to increase the number of town hall meetings and grassroots youth leadership trainings in the territory. Amidst talk of potential negotiations between Israel and the PLO – including assistance from Washington and potentially Amman – there is little room for ordinary Gazans, who feel cut off from their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank, to feel included in the process.

Masri, born and raised in Gaza, has worked over two years to rebuild OneVoice’s presence there after the office had to close during the intense violence of the Gaza War in 2008-09. So far, 2013 has been a stellar year for engagement. Over 10 town hall meetings have taken place throughout Gaza – including within the refugee camps that are dotted across the mere 223 square miles that make up the Strip – reaching over 400 people to date, while the territory’s first 25 youth activists will graduate from OneVoice Youth Leadership Program this month.

The latest town hall meeting was on July 2nd, this time in Rafah City, close to the Egyptian border. Rafah has been experiencing volatility since the Egyptian military intervened to seize power in their country, with the adjacent Sinai Desert experiencing an upsurge in violence—something many locals fear will have a knock-on effect within Gaza.  Forty people turned out for the meeting, which was called “The Threats against the Two-State Solution,” a topic which had plenty of content for locals to mull over.  

Masri, along with Rafiq Elmasry, Central Committee member of the Palestinian People’s Party (PPP), spoke to the challenges all too familiar to OneVoice’s Palestinian supporters: internal, including a lack of Palestinian unity around a vision to end the conflict; Israeli, which include the air, land, and sea blockade, settlement building beyond the Green Line, and open calls for West Bank annexation from right-wing members of the Israeli government; and regional and international, which take the form of the tumultuous events engulfing the region, as well as the United States' perceived unwavering support of Israel.

The meeting lasted two hours, though most of the participants stayed behind, including a group of young women eager to continue contact with OVP.

“This town hall meeting was different from all the political events we have attended in the past,” one young woman told Masri. “We actually gained a lot of important information about the two-state solution, and would like [OVP] to organize one for the Women’s Union of Rafah City.”

Masri accepted her request without hesitation, and hopes to tie the activity to the Women of Influence program which OneVoice Palestine is pioneering in the West Bank.

OVP-G partners with local organizations to better reach a broader audience. The Adam Center is one such group, along with the PPP. The budding relationship OVP-G has with the PPP stems from their common goal of an independent state through ending the occupation and blockade. Elmasry said that the PPP was the first to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders back in 1983 – pre-Oslo – in order to safeguard the national identity of the Palestinian people, which is also one of the prime motivations of OneVoice Palestine’s volunteers.

To attain this goal, however, one needs not just colorful language, but action.

At the heart of OVP’s campaign is “Shu Dorak?" or “What is your role?” a question that must be asked by every Palestinian man and woman by themselves to themselves and then acted upon. If every person has a role to play to establish an independent Palestinian state, says Masri, then popular opinion will prevail.

Masri explained to the group that as people under a foreign power, resistance is necessary, but creative yet peaceful resistance opens up the floodgates for all Palestinians to participate and cannot but be seen as entirely legitimate in the eyes of the international community.

Elmasry agreed. “Only with nonviolent popular resistance can we end Palestinian national division and the Israeli occupation,” he said.

Many more town hall meetings and trainings are planned for the rest of 2013. Masri and local partners will continue to spread OneVoice’s message to Gazans despite the territory’s lack of involvement in the peace process, and will continue to urge the Palestinian people to reconcile their differences and achieve national unity.

“You cannot ignore the voices of 1.6 million people,” said Masri. “Outsiders look at Gaza and they generalize about the people living there. That’s wrong. Gazans want to live in an independent state in peace and security as much as the next person, and have suffered due to this conflict more intensely than anybody else. The only way we Palestinians can achieve our self-determination is by ending the occupation and Israeli blockade.”

Witnessing detachment: A Breaking the Silence experience in Hebron

A view of Hebron during OVI's Breaking the Silence tour.

Shiri Blumberg, a OneVoice Israel youth leader, took part in a tour to the West Bank town of Hebron on June 28 with OVI’s Tel Aviv University Chapter. Breaking the Silence, an organization that seeks to "expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories," guided the tour.

Below is Shiri’s account of her experience.

While I was walking up toward Tel Rumeida, the location of an Israeli settlement in Hebron, fellow activist Elad Laor joined me and together we puffed heavily up the steep road. He pointed at a small house gate we were passing by.

"One day, I saw this little settler kid hitting a Palestinian girl; she was older than him. He was just kicking her, over and over again, and she kept standing there. I yelled, 'kid what are you doing, enough!' And then I noticed his mother, standing behind me, watching the whole thing, doing nothing, and she tells me: 'don't yell at him.'"

I was appalled that this kind of violence is not only tolerated, but encouraged. It makes our work as peace activists all the harder. And unfortunately, this is just one of many stories I heard during the Breaking the Silence tour.

Later in the day, we heard from Issa, a local Palestinian activist. He explained to us how he "doesn't hate settlers, doesn't hate soldiers: they're just a screw in the system. Someone is allowing them to do all this. Somebody doesn't prevent them from being what they are. A Palestinian peace activist is probably something you don't see or hear about every day," he said. "A nonviolent Palestinian is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it?"

It’s not an oxymoron to me. I know that we have partners for peace, our counterparts in OVP, working in parallel in Palestine for the two-state solution, the same as we are doing in Israel.

Throughout the tour, Avner, our tour guide, gave us all sorts of data and bits of information. He told us that there is a 72% unemployment rate among the 162,000 Palestinian residents in Hebron, with hungry kids roaming abandoned streets, selling bracelets instead of playing ball games, people locked inside their own homes, shut down stores; two separate law systems govern Hebron, with thousands of soldiers protecting less than 700 settlers, who ignore the fallout their presence generates. But hey, if you ask the settlers (which we did), Hebron is an exemplary model for co-existence.   

On the way back home, I asked myself, how do I feel about what I saw today? I was trying to find words, and none of them fit. Interesting? That doesn't even begin to explain what's going on inside my head right now. Harsh? Not enough. Horrifying? Also not accurate. Complex? What is that, anyway? After a long search, the only word that came close to the essence of what I saw that day was detachment. I felt like I went into a situation that is detached from everything I knew until that moment. The bad are good, the good are bad, the city is empty, the soldiers are watching over the wrong guys, and who is watching all this unfold?

I saw what I should have seen a long time ago – an embodiment of the fact that we need to end the conflict. I knew there was a reason behind my feelings and beliefs, but all the time I felt something was missing. This previously undefinable feeling put me at an inferior position when debating people about the conflict and Israel’s part in perpetuating it, and made me question my beliefs from time to time. There is a lack of serious talk from people who live inside the bubble, not witnessing the impact the conflict has on those who live it daily.

From now on, I won’t feel weaker than my detractors – I saw at least a small part of some of the worst there is to see, and I intend on seeing more and telling others what’s really going on. And now I'm sure that I am not wrong, and sure that our work with OneVoice is even more necessary, and even more urgent.