 All right, as I told you, last week we have the guest speaker today from Israel and Palestine and they are a grassroots organization or civil society kind of activist to promote and create a bridge between different cultures and different religions and his father is devoted to land, a farm that can be used as a site for different workshops and also as a site for both local and international students to come and visit and connect and become and understand the nature of the background of the conflict in the region as you know it's a very, very difficult region there's history of conflict for many, many years this is a chapter we are going to cover this week so Mr. Nasir will give us a brief description of the background of the conflict Israeli-Palestine conflict or on a larger scale the Arab-Israeli conflict, the issue of land, the issue of religion, the nature of the violence and what can be done and what they are doing I mean peace is central to a human endeavor and that's what we also promote as a community in Gasteves the best way to resolve people's difference, religious, historical, ethnic difference is by coming together, otherwise it will lead us to the process of eliminating one another that's not peace peace is trying to find a middle way a common point where we can give and take and live in diversity accommodate one another as I said the more diverse we are the more beautiful we look like a flower if a flower is one color nobody will go to shop to buy it the fact that we are obsessed with a flower as a gift, as a symbol of love is because the diverse nature of that flower so I live very much, I'm interested in what they do on grass with lava also difficult it is and we will leave from Mr. Nasir so now we will take that thank you very much thank you thank you so much for having us today in this class of course we won't be able to solve the conflict in this class but of course I'll try to give you an idea about what is happening there and I will speak about the development I mean I won't go into details and I hope you will cover that in the class but at the end take one example about the family example of struggling to keep the land and the last part of the talk will be what can be done in a difficult situation so just to my name is Dawood and Dawood is David and was born in Bethlehem and Palestinian and Norwegian Christian Palestinian Christian and I grew up there studied in Austria studied theology in the Bible school in Austria studied at Bethlehem University business and continued with tourism management and I was dealing with the tourism issues in the country because many tourists are coming to visit the area but the most important thing is not just to visit the places the holy historical places of course the holy land is holy for the three religions for Judaism, for Christianity and for Islam at the end many people they come and go without you know, interfere with people without talking to the people there without talking to Israelis and Palestinians without meeting Jews, Christians and Muslims and at the end they go back home without knowing what's happening there so I will just give you a brief introduction about the area there and as we see here this is the map of Palestine of course Palestine was under the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years until 1916 and then from 1917 until 1947 the country was under the British mandate of course the conflict started years back but was like going faster early in the last century when Jewish started to immigrate to Palestine and as you see here before 1948 the majority of the population were in the country where Palestinians and then in 1947 when the British left and the UN took over they started to say well why not to solve this conflict and have two states on that area where the Palestinians could get their state and the Jews, the Israelis could get their state so this was the plan to do that to divide the historic Palestine, the country into two states with Jerusalem as you see here Jerusalem to be like an open city international city controlled by the UN because this is let's say the city the center of the three religions but of course this plan did not work and with 1948 the establishment of the state of Israel and of course on the other side the Palestinians called it the catastrophe because this situation left more than 750,000 Palestinians without a home they had to leave their country and they are living in refugee camps in the West Bank and in Gaza and also in the Arab countries from 1947-48 until 1967 this was the West Bank was under the Jordanian rule and the Gaza under the Egyptian rule and then with the Six Day War in 1967 the Israelis control now the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem and since then we are living Palestinians are living under occupation now of course the Israelis started to build settlements in the West Bank and day by day the land was being cut and cut so nowadays we are not in charge of everything we are in charge just in some places in the West Bank as Palestinians now in 1991 the peace process started and of course you can learn more about it later but just to give you a brief introduction so with the peace process the West Bank was divided into three zones three areas and which is the majority of the area which is this color is under Israeli control that means the Palestinians in this area control just people they are not controlling land they are not controlling resources and they are not controlling borders so it's very difficult to talk about independence in a small area of land and at the same time without in charge of land, resources and borders now this is the context in our area and of course when you talk about land issues and you talk about like there is no future if a population has no land now I will come to the story of my family my grandfather in 1916 during the Ottoman period he bought a land southwest of Bethlehem located on a hill and of course now it is surrounded by five Israeli Jewish settlements and my grandfather was a farmer he used to make wine so he bought this piece of land and they planted more than 25,000 grape trees and they started producing wine and of course this is the most important thing my grandfather did at that time and of course you see people adapted always the new culture so Palestine was always occupied the Romans were there the Byzantines were there the Muslims were there you know always people in that country the native people in that country they started to adopt the new culture and this is exactly the dresses during the Ottoman period and when the British came the people started to wear ties but this is not our subject today when my grandfather bought the land he registered it and it was unusual at that time because papers were not important according to the tradition there and this is the biblical tradition people could buy mountains with hand shakes so why do you need papers and signatures and so on but my grandfather did it the right way so he registered the land so we got documents from the Ottomans and then my father and uncle continued re-registering the land during the British mandate during the Jordanians and after the Israelis in 1967 and we have also documents that proved we paid taxes at that time property taxes and the second unusual thing my grandfather did which according to all traditions people were not living on their farms so you don't see people living on their farms they live in communities like a village or a city and they walk with their land and come back in the evening but my grandfather did it the other way because he wanted his children to grow up with the land and this is exactly what happened after my grandparents died my father and uncle continued their work they continued farming the land living in caves until they passed away in 1991 this is the piece of land I'm talking about and now it's surrounded by settlements in 1991 the Israeli authorities declared the farm as state land in order to confiscate the land and build a settlement on it and their argument was the land has no owner so since we have documents from 1916 we started, you know, we went on a legal battle with the Israelis in order to prevent our land from being confiscated and of course it is a military court so we started the process in 1991 and it is going on and on until today so we are in front of the military court for 12 years and in the Supreme Court for 11 years now so all together almost 23 years of legal battle military and supreme with a financial burden of more than $170,000 and, you know, you are in an unjust situation because you have the documents you have your presence but at the end we are not giving up we believe that one day justice will prevail although the system is unjust for us so we are continuing the legal battle but at the same time, you know, there are groups in the Israeli settlements who are radical groups that come with the ideology God promises the land so those kinds of people, they came to the farm they cut our trees it's like since 1991 we are facing those difficulties they damaged our water tank they threatened us with guns and they tried just on their own to build roads they started to come with big diggers and bulldozers to build the road and to establish a settlement and of course we went all the way legally and the last time it was in 2002 when they started constructing the road we managed to stop it legally in 2001 through going to the Israeli courts and the settlers were very frustrated because we stopped them from building the road on our own land and they damaged 250 olive trees from our property and of course like an olive tree is a symbol of hope and peace so we were very sad because in our country when you plant a tree it's not easy to grow you have to take care of it it's a dry climate but later on three weeks later we managed to plant new trees and sponsored by a Jewish organization from the UK called European Jews for Just Peace in Palestine they heard about our situation and they sponsored 250 olive trees and they came and planted them so we realized with this kind of example that there are people who believe and act for justice and this was for us the very positive encounter now the journey of violence continued like on the 30th of March we found a piece of paper on the eastern side of the farm which says the area where we planted here 10 years ago around 1500 great apple and apricot trees they said well those trees were planted on state land that means it's not your private property so immediately after we found this document we appealed because this is our strategy to go legally all the way and we appealed and our appeal was accepted by the military court because we have the papers we have the documents and we were waiting to have a court case but instead of waiting for a court decision the army came with bulldozers and they damaged all the trees and they buried the trees into the ground so this was like a punishment for the trees so we lost about 1500 trees and the problem is the story is like a very sad story because we were watching the trees to grow up to grow and grow like our own kid children but with sadness and frustration we started rebuilding the terraces and we are preparing the land to be planted again and now we have committed people who would like to come and plant trees among them is American Jewish group coming in the middle of February to plant to replant the trees that was destroyed so on the legal issues we started illegal better because this action was done illegal according to the court according to the law so we have two court cases going on now and the question is why did they destroy the trees all the trees were planted on the private property one tree of course the damages happened just a week before the harvest and we were expecting a very good harvest one tree was not destroyed which is the fig tree and that's why we call it now the steadfast witness the tree that witnessed what happened and we hope as to reconcile with the land to reconcile of what happened I mean because for us it's like we did everything but we could not prevent the destruction of our trees and that's why it's important now to replant to rebuild and to replant so I hope that this fig tree will also witness the new cultivation and the new plantation of this area now of course with violence we did not give up we are still there and we did not give up we did not lose any kind of the land now we have a problem there which is the war that is being built to separate people from each other first we have two problems with the war the war is with war we cannot achieve peace the wars we achieve more hatred you know when you separate people from each other there is no peace with that and the second problem with the war in our area is that the war is being built not at the borders between the West Bank and Israel it is going through the Palestinian Territories and it's separating people from their land and this is the case with our family farm it's located here and this is the border the green line, the border between Israel and the West Bank and this is the route of the war so the people will be living in an enclave totally disconnected from the city which is about six miles away and this situation will force many people to give up a leave because they will be totally disconnected they cannot go to the war easily the only access will be a road here and this will make it difficult for people to exist and to continue farming the land now of course when people live in a conflict situation usually they respond with three ways they respond the first way they respond with violence when people live in violence they say well I am pushed to the corner what should I do so their normal reaction is to respond with violence but the question is what can people achieve with violence except more violence with violence we create more bitterness, more hatred we build more walls physically and psychologically between nations and between people and so for us we said violence is never a solution we put it on the side the second normal reaction is to sit down and cry and accept the situation as it is to say well I can't do it I can't handle it let me wait for something to happen for a miracle to happen it might happen but it might take longer and it might never happen so this is also not a response for us because you know to resign is like being a victim and it's very bad to fall in the victim mode and then the third option is to give up and leave and who is leaving the best educated people and you know like maybe you can copy this to your situation of course like I mean everyone in life faces struggles or crisis or difficulties sometimes we react violently towards our problems we try to prove ourselves I can do it but it's not a solution sometimes you accept the situation as it is and say you know I cannot handle it and be a victim and it is dangerous to fall in the victim mode because at the end sometimes we are blaming others for our own mistakes and suddenly all you can decide to run away from your own problems in our case we said none of those options is good so we are not acting violently we are not resigning and we are not giving up and leaving so we started to think about a different way of resistance and we said four important things because we said if you want to start something new we have to think we have to work on ourselves we cannot try to change other people if we are not changing ourselves I cannot make peace if I'm not peaceful and I cannot make friends if I'm not friendly and I cannot expect others to be friendly with me and I'm not friendly so I have to work on myself and that's why it was important for us to say four things that was the start of a new beginning and that's why we said from the beginning we refuse to be victim we need to be out of the victim mode although the situation is bad and I can tell you hundreds of stories how difficult life is but we definitely refuse to be victim and then the second issue we said we refuse to hate and of course it's easy said difficult to live how can you don't hate the people who are hating you so it's a difficult thing but for us it's important to say we want to distinguish between hating the other and not accepting the bad actions so people should respect each other as humans but when people do mistakes I have to tell my neighbor or sorry you are doing something wrong I have to stand up on my rights and the third thing we said we will act in a different way not because we are good people but because this is part of our beliefs we are believing in this way of non-violent resistance and fourthly we said we are people who believe in justice and of course the path of justice is long and too difficult but at the end justice will prevail so after we said that we created another way a new way a positive a constructive way of resistance by overcoming evil not with more evil but with good hatred with love and darkness with light under the slogan the title we refuse to be enemies I am not an enemy I am refusing to be put in that circle and we started with this way of resistance which is a positive, creative and constructive way a project on the farm called the tent of nations and we say the tent of nations people building bridges because we need people to build bridges of understanding of reconciliation and peace and with the tent of nations it is a therapy for us because in a situation like that it is very easy for people to get frustrated and to act in a violent way but for us what we are doing there is like we are trying to invest our frustration in a constructive way because our frustration is a negative energy when we are frustrated we are angry and when we are angry we act negatively but we try to channel this negative energy this frustration to be invested constructively and secondly it's difficult but doable secondly we are committed to nonviolent resistance that's why we are going all the way in the courts although the system is unjust for us and thirdly we said let's open the farm for people to come and see and so we are opening this place for people, locals, internationals, Israeli people to come and see, to connect the situation with faces and when you start to make a face to what you call an ending you start to raise questions and this is important for us building a bridge of understanding like solving let me say conflict you cannot solve it just on people they have to start to change their image about the other and you cannot do that without creating an understanding without bringing a face to the story and thirdly we said and the fourth issue we said we want to connect people with land because all over we have environmental problems in our area there environment is not a theme at school that's why it's important to connect people with land plant trees, protect the environment and keep a healthy society for the new generation now on the spot here and of course with all restrictions that the road is blocked we have more restrictions there on the ground there we are not allowed to have running water no electricity and no building permit because those we are restricted there and the question is how can we develop the farm without electricity, water and building permits so we started to think about creative ideas so for electricity what do you think, what did we do for electricity? solar panels exactly we have solar panels now since 2009 and with that we are totally independent in terms of energy we have 25 batteries we have charged the batteries for the evening and now we can even there run electrical machines and by doing that we managed to save more than 45,000 US dollars for fuel expenses we used to run a diesel generator so by doing that it's not about electricity it's about telling other people showing other people that things are possible even in a difficult situation so don't sit down don't cry and don't blame the other stand up and act in a different way and of course by doing that we motivated ourselves and we are like encouraged other people to do so and at the same time we are protecting the environment so positive actions are not helpful just on the ground are helpful to keep ourselves motivated with others and also for the benefit of the environment now with water how we solve the issue of water we started collecting grain water into systems grain water doesn't drain that much but we try to collect as much as we can and then we pump the water up on the roof and use it for cleaning even for drinking because we filter it for drinking and this is like systems like we collect rain water into the systems so we cement it like a water reservoir and we use the water during the summertime with buildings we are not allowed to build on the ground we started building under the ground we started renovating existing caves it's a way of nonviolent resistance in a positive way and now we extended some caves we have this this is a chapel cave we use it as a prayer room and one time we had in this room a prayer for peace where Jews were Christians and Muslims came together and prayed for peace in this chapel and for us it is a way like you know I see here like breaking the gun it's an unviolent way of resistance and of course we started of course renovating caves and extending it to small houses for the volunteers workshop for our tools and machineries this is our meeting room there which was a cave natural cave for horses now it's a nice meeting room and the painting is done by children during one of our summer camp and the title was peace justice and conservation the creation the children painted the shadow so it is a way to encourage people of course we continue to think about creative ideas so now we are filtering the grey water to be used for irrigation and we are using compost toilets also because to save water and the idea is like to produce biogas out of the compost so any new idea any crazy creative idea you are welcome also to share it with us and those compost toilets were built by an Israeli when he came to visit the farm it changes his idea it changes his thinking and he decided to join a peace peace group inside Israel and he came back and he said how can I help you and this is important to say when people start to see the other as human being things are changing we are on the right track for peace that's why when we call if we want to achieve peace we have to create an understanding first we cannot have peace through handshake we have to create an understanding to understand what's going on and then work on the process of reconciliation coming to the end goal which is peace now of course we have infrastructure there we have tents our guests and volunteers we are started to do different kinds of activities to bring people together and every year we do a tree planting project we invite Palestinians, Israelis to come and plant a tree for peace because for us when we plant a tree we believe in the future we believe that this tree is going to bear fruits and especially an olive tree we plant a tree one year old and the hope is in 20 years to become like this it's a slow growing tree because of lack of water but the first olives might come after 10 years so we have to take care of the tree the first 10 years in order to start the first few olives but the best fruits of olives might come after 20 years or 30 years but for us when we plant a tree we protect the ground we protect the land and we make the land of course like a symbol of hope at peace but also we learn that if we are talking about peace we should start from the bottom we should start from the ground because you cannot build a house on sand you need the foundation and you start from the bottom and the tree grows slowly slowly the second project we are doing is children summer camp activities we invite children and we work with them traumatize children in difficult situation but we have a theme every camp so the last summer camp theme was with heart and hand we change that we need the people to believe we need the children to think in a positive way we need them to discover their talents focus on the positive not just deal with their problems and believe in themselves I am able to make a difference so remember the summer camps are in July the last two weeks of July so if you have a summer holiday and you don't know what to do and you want to do something constructive join us working with children we are not asking the volunteers to be talent and to be professionals we are asking the volunteers about their talents some people they come with music some people they come with art talents and we try to build a project together for two and a half weeks and this is the way how to encourage those children so we have always theme like a team of volunteers international volunteers we are doing also different kinds of activities like work camps we have the apple harvest the almond harvest, the grape harvest the fig harvest and the olive harvest so international volunteers would come and join us to harvest the fruits there and of course it's a way to get to know the country to meet people and to understand the situation and go back home and believe there is hope for a better future the products it's difficult to sell on the farm to sell on local markets because of the restrictions that's why we try to process the products that the farm is producing like olives, olive oil we do out of the grapes and we try to sell those products on the farm like the ideas like all the products are organic products now we have international volunteers coming for short and long term to help with construction with agriculture we have exchange programs we try to bring cultures and young people from different nations together to understand each other and build bridges we have a women project in the village my wife she started this project for women in the village we do not have chances for education for many reasons and the idea is to bring them out of their homes and bring them in touch with other women they started with English and cultural computer classes and the idea is to empower them we have guest groups coming to visit the farm for a talk for a stay we came to visit us last year and of course imagine those 7,000 people they went back home with a message of hope because in a situation like that it's very easy to get frustrated but we want to show people even in a difficult situation we have to work together for a better future we are trying our best in small steps to think positively but also to be realistic to live in our dreams slowly slowly we can make a difference but our long term goal is one day to build the school focusing on alternative energy organic farming and recycling and to start this kind of education with children and we hope one day to achieve this goal in small steps we are making the farm a symbol of peace and a sign of hope in a hopeless situation we are welcoming you to join us to think with us to dream with us and if you have some time also to come and join on the ground there very important thing to say here like the combination of the work we are doing is faith, love and hope we have no faith we have no love we cannot achieve what we already achieved and that's why we need to focus like a farmer using his donkey to plow he's not allowed to look backwards you should focus and look forward we have a website you can learn more about the work we are doing and we started a couple of years ago with friends of 10 nations and my friend Bill his friends are here and I don't know if they have the chance but you can talk with them if you would like to get involved you can find more information about Fautona F-O-T-O-N-N-A dot org and I always say in small steps slowly slowly the journey and the struggle for justice will continue this is my son I have three children 15 and 12 and my son Bishara is 10 years old and his name is Bishara which means the good news sometimes it's very difficult to think about good news but always when you hear even about conflicts about Israel Palestine, the conflict of religions or whatever believe there are people who are trying to make a difference thank you thank you very much Nasser an excellent presentation very sad story very moving and disturbing actually I wish this lecture was organized or campus wide campus wide community where this would have been a big lecture I know the conflict I myself grown up in a conflict situation I teach world regional geography the whole world is preoccupied with the conflict this is one of the major one which also affect United States you know the issue of security the issue of terrorism the issue of Islamic fundamentalism the Gulf War and by large the result of radicalization of Islam has a lot to do with the mistreatment of Palestine the whole thing because it appeals to us it appealed to me here I'm not even Palestinian imagine how this story is going to appeal to the Arab children it's easy there's nothing more powerful than that and our government the US government has a big hand in that and I would just open it for some questions for the students to ask actually I show a documentary the road to Palestine narrated by a British journalist where the the old farm were thought to leave this farm to give away for the Russian Jewish so you will see that similar story he has all the documents he has all the deeds he paid all the taxes and he said this is not your place and actually you are lucky you are going through this battle ground and at the end we don't know but the route you took is the most important and very holy and very human way next time there is no question about that especially when you are sandwiched between the two radicals the Hamas who think this project nonsense because what they see every day they will not really convince them to really take this and also the radical Jewish it is a difficult project alright questions comments opinions, reflections do you find more people that are internationally involved than the people in your community or is that balanced? as I said before we have all over a year we have international volunteers coming to help some people they come during the planting season between January and March some other people they come and participate in the summer camp with children women education program and in general we have now six volunteers two of them are from Germany and they are staying for a year they come for a year so we have always people there who help us a lot questions, opinions you mentioned something about grey water can you explain what that is grey water of course they are on the farm because we don't have like utilities we don't have electricity we are not connected with sewage system we are not allowed and the idea is to make it difficult for us to exist not to is the plan so what to do about the sewage water and about the grey water so we have like underground tank for that but we try to process that and filter the water to be used at least for irrigation and so this is what we are trying to do to have a full cycle of water because we cannot get water there and we are limited in using we are depending on grey water and if we have no water there we have to buy and it's very expensive so that's why we try instead of watering all our trees from this system water we try to filter the grey water and use for irrigation you talked about like growing the different crops on the farm do you have to plant all of the crops at the same time or is it more of a rotating crop well mostly we are planting trees because it's a dry dry area and sometimes we have like we grow like wheat and so on but it depends on rain if we don't have enough rain won't grow that much so our focus mainly on trees so the planting season any kind of tree is actually between January and March in the rainy season now some of the trees are producing earlier than the other for example we have the apricot and the apple harvest in June now almond harvest in July the grape harvest in August and in September we have the fig harvest and end of October we have the olive harvest so almost like starting in June we are busy with harvesting fruits then you next being in the area that you are I was just wondering how connected or disconnected you feel from the conflict between Hamas and Israel are there people that try to dry you into that conflict more than you already are or are you trying to keep yourself out of the virus well you know like the thing is the problems we are also in Gaza the thing is of course like we are in the western but living in a different situation like this everything is affected so the thing is of course we believe there is no solution with violence because violence is creating more violence and that's why we with this way of resistance with this way of actions we try to tell people you know anyone you know look in an unviolent way in a constructive way you are able to make a difference because until now you know like we as Palestinians we always say the Israelis started and the Palestinians reacted and the Israelis you know the Palestinians started and we reacted so it's like who came first the chicken or the egg and at the end what is the outcome? Nothing you know that's why it's important to prove success there it's important to show people that we are moving forward it's a long way to go but we are succeeding in an unviolent way of resistance and we invite people to come and see some people they might believe in our way of action some other people they might say but at the end they realize there is no other way to solve this conflict with you know just through understanding and through bringing people together there is no way to solve the conflict with violence The question has how much have you worked on attracting publicity from international media or some important international especially from the area because this is an extraordinary story we should be told on a global scale yes what have you done any recognition, any attention yes we are of course trying to inform people on different levels and especially this is something that our friends of ten nations in the US did for example after the destruction of our trees many people reacted many people sent letters we have also people coming from Europe and doing documentary films about the situation for us it's important to bring it on that level because we need to encourage people by doing that to show the other side of the story but at the end to show how difficult in a very complicated situation there are people who still think differently and this is what we are doing in terms of that last question I was just wondering since March that legal stuff happened what's the status on the plantation or the area in terms of legal legally the supreme court the high court in Israel demanded the military to respond why they destroyed the trees and of course the military started to postpone so they were given time until the 15th of September to give the reason because their claim at the beginning they said all we did it because it is a state land and those people they planted their trees not on their private land but on state land now we brought our documents to the courts this is our land the land survey those trees were landed on private property so that's why the supreme court demanded the military to respond this is a private property why did you destroy that you know let us say in order not to give any explanation they start to postpone so it is until the 15th of September then they said they need another month until the 15th of October and then they said another 15 days until the beginning of November we should we should hear by today or tomorrow if something happens but I believe they will demand another month or two months because the journey it happened with us since 1991 alright thank you very much now I said hello and I hope some of you learn a lot and while not only learning but also be part of this peace movement and influence in the meantime I want you to write one page reflection you start restating the problem write a narration and also the moral of the story and how it impacts you know the peace movement so Wednesday I need one page reflection on this lecture thank you so much it would be interesting for me to see yes please to send me also your reflections thank you thank you so much