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‘Our mobility, our life, lacks freedom'
Jerusalem women speak of living in perpetual state of war
Friday, Oct. 30, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photo submitted by St. Mary's College of Maryland
Jala Basil Andoni, left, speaks with Michele Johnson, a junior at St. Mary's College of Maryland, as Nathan Beal, a junior, studies a handout.
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Jala Basil Andoni remembers clearly when she was in college in Israel and when the six-day war broke out, leaving her separated from her family.
She was not allowed any communications for two years following the war in 1967.
When a separation wall was built, at the time she and many others thought it would last only a short while. In different forms, what she calls the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has continued for decades; thousands of Palestinians and Israelis have been killed or injured in the last decade alone.
Andoni, a Palestinian Christian from outside Jerusalem, and Ruth El Raz, an Israeli Jew, are touring the United States to spread awareness of the ongoing conflict and violence in the region.
The two women spoke to students and others at St. Mary's College of Maryland last week, offering their perspectives on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. A third women, Hekmat Besisso-Naji, a Palestinian Muslim, was to be part of the tour "Jerusalem Women Speak: Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared Vision," sponsored by Partners for Peace, but was denied her visa by the U.S. government.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States restricted the number of visas issued to Muslims, said professor Michael Cain, who also heads the college's Center for the Study of Democracy. "She was denied a visa by the U.S. consulate office in Jerusalem" despite several previous visits to the United States, he said. "Certainly this is not in keeping with President Obama's vision on hearing all voices," Cain said.
This is the first time in more than 10 years of the speaking tours that bring three women from different faiths from the region to tour the United States that a visa was not issued.
Andoni works with the Wi-am Center for Reconciliation, the Arab Educational Institute and the Alternative Information Center. She believes that "the only way to peace [is] to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians, not walls and fences."
The women said that America has enabled the Israeli government to continue what they call illegal colonies to be established within the borders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Without America's continued support to Israel, other countries' voices might be heard and the Israeli government might ease its restrictions on the Palestinians, the women said.
In a recent speech by President Barack Obama in Egypt he called for a stop to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Both agreed that the situation in Gaza is worse than in the West Bank. Gaza is a strip of land about the size of Calvert County but surrounded by walls built by Israel with a population of some 1.5 million people.
"We're starving people to death, basically, since 2005," because it is extremely difficult to get supplies and food past the wall, St. Mary's College of Maryland political science professor Fuad Suleiman said.
The U.S. government essentially encouraged a coup in Gaza in hopes the people would rise up against Hamas, he said, and added that the U.N. Security Council should be encouraging the removal of the wall instead.
"Our mobility, our life, lacks freedom," Andoni said.
The most concrete aspects of the occupation are the checkpoints throughout the West Bank and what the women call the "apartheid wall," which runs around and through different sections of the West Bank.
"It goes around the villages like a snake," Andoni said. It prevents many from going to Jerusalem for prayers, she said. Villages are cut off from one another by concrete walls and deep ditches, making it hard to find work or even get to school.
Both Andoni and Raz said they oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. They both spoke out against the checkpoints that dot the separation wall.
"There can be no such thing as a good occupation," said Raz, a therapist at the Counseling Center for Women in Jerusalem, which she co-founded.
"We're normal people and we want to live in peace," she said.
To learn more
To learn about the other programs and activities Partners for Peace offers, visit www.partnersforpeace.org.
