 My name is Bob Scheivel, and I am the chair of an organization called Main Voices for Palestinian Rights. Our aim is to work toward a just peace in Israel-Palestine, and our way of doing that, or helping with that, is to try to educate the public about what is really happening there, because we feel that far too often people don't get the full story. At least they do not get the Palestinian perspective. We are having this week an event on the USM campus that brings a number of Palestinians to campus, as well as the Israeli-American author Miko Pellid, the author of The General's Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. So, sitting with me today are two members of that group who have come over, and to my far right is Jirish Atrash, sitting right next to me is Jane Sami Hilal. Okay, and we are very happy to have them, and so I will begin by just asking them to briefly identify yourself and just say, why are you here? What do you do? My name is Jirish Atrash. We are here with the message of peace. We are here for a message to tell the American people through the Conference 3 of Life that justice should be done to the Palestinians. The Palestinians should have justice, and by having justice means we should establish our country, Palestine, over the land which was occupied by Israel in 1967 war, the 6-day war with East Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Palestine. And we are going to be living side to side with Israel in peace and harmony. Okay, and we will get into that a little bit more, but I think another thing you have done, is you have helped organize a group of young people into this Bridges of Hope performers. Is that right? And they are with us for this program. Eight years ago we formed a group called Bridges of Hope which the main goal is to bring young Palestinians from Palestine from different towns of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the United States so they can live two weeks to three weeks with the American people and tell them about their daily life in Palestine, their daily life under an Israeli occupation, and at the same time they will serve as ambassador after those three weeks to the American families or the American people they met to go to, when they go to the West Bank back to their hometown, they will tell that American people are supporting the freedom for the Palestinians. And Jane, my understanding is that you work for the Institute for Applied Research in Jerusalem. Would you say a little bit about what your role is there and what do you do? I'm Jane Ehlal and I'm an environmentalist working on the field of environment and water since 2004 and I'm working on the Applied Research Institute as a head of the Water and Environmental Research Department. Okay, now let's talk just a little bit about water because I know that's an issue. What can you tell us about the amount of water that is available to Palestinians? You know, first of all, I want to say that the water issue is one of the most important factors in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israeli, since they occupied the West Bank and Gaza, they also controlled the water resources in the occupied Palestinian territory and right now, as a Palestinian, we don't have access to the surface water which is the Jordan River and also they control and utilize the Israeli around 89% of the water resources in the West Bank leaving, yes, the Palestinians with only 11% of the water inside the West Bank. And is this why, when I've been over there, I've seen these, they look like big black water tanks or something on top of everybody's home is that just to catch rainwater? Yes, and also it's like storage tanks in order to reserve it for the days that we don't have water and sometimes it's for one month. What is the type of strategy that the Palestinian use to cope with the water shortage, especially in the summertime? Okay, now, as both of you no doubt know, there are water known as peace talks going on right now. Jerry's, what do you think, are you hopeful for these peace talks? What do you think will come out of it? What would have to come out of it? Do you think for you as a Palestinian to be satisfied, to feel that we now have a just agreement? What would it be? Well, the peace talk going now since 1993, since we signed the Oslo, and it has been very failing peace talk because of the stubbornness of the state of Israel, of the government of the state of Israel. Stubborn, stubborn in what way? Stubborn, they don't want to give up anything, they don't want to give up the settlements, for example, the settlements which are built on Palestinian land, they don't want to do that, they don't want to give us control over our natural resources, they don't want to give us the freedom of movement even, that's something, they don't want to give us the water we need and because they use everything for themselves, you know, like four to one, they use four times as much as one to the Palestinians and the peace talk is right now failing too, because they're not agreeing at many issues. I remember the issues are the settlements, for example, the East Jerusalem, the Israeli believe that Jerusalem is one and should be the capital of the state of Israel, but East Jerusalem was captured by the Israelis in 1967 war. Right now the peace process is failing exactly like the other ones, because the Israelis are not giving up land or settlements. There are so many issues not solved and Israel does not want even to talk about it is the East Jerusalem as the future capital of the state of Palestine. They think Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and should be united and they don't want to remove the settlements which are built on Palestinian land and they don't want to give us any control over our water. And remember other thing that Israel, even after 1993 with the Oslo agreement, Israel controls over 70% of the land of the Palestinian land and that's very important for Israel because that land has mostly, has most of the water under it. Cultural land has the agricultural land which Israel needs and it's not populated as the Palestinians need. Yeah, anti-Palestinian to establish their state, they need that land. Jane, let me ask you something. You grew up under the occupation, right? Yes. And Jarius has mentioned restricted movement. Talk a little bit about that. What's been like to grow up under the occupation? Have you felt your movement restricted or have you, do you have relatives or friends in the West Bank who can't come visit you at your place of work in Jerusalem? How does this all work? Really it's very hard to grow up under occupation and because you feel that you are in a big jail and you cannot move, you cannot go to visit your relative, your friends, even during our work because sometimes we should go to the field and because of the checkpoints that they are distributed everywhere, not just the checkpoints, we have several checkpoints but with different names. So really it makes our life very hard to go on in a daily life. So sometimes if I want to go on a meeting in Ramallah which is only maybe 15 minutes from my hometown, Bethlehem, but it takes me like two hours if everything is normal because we should take another road which is called Wadenar and it's really very bad road and because also there is a checkpoints and if the soldier in that day is in a bad mood, this means maybe I will stay four hours in this checkpoint. Really, really it's very hard to live in such situation. Well you know, I have a Jewish friend who lives in Brooklyn, New York and she was on a trip that my wife and I took to Israel-Palestine last year. We learned there, I believe I'm remembering this correctly, that there were people who say lived in Ramallah who said they lived just a very short distance from Jerusalem and yet they had not been able to go to Jerusalem in a dozen years and Jerusalem is sort of the cultural, economic, capital, heart center of the West Bank, isn't it? As a Palestinian we are forbidden to go to Jerusalem, so yes I didn't go to Jerusalem for a long time because I'm Palestinian and I cannot go there and also they now built a huge checkpoint, it's like a border, it's not a checkpoint that prevents us from going to Jerusalem and don't forget the world, the segregation world that they start to build it since 2002. Well I mentioned this woman from Brooklyn because when she was told this she said, my gosh that would be like I'm living in Brooklyn and I want to go into Manhattan but I've been unable to go into Manhattan for a dozen years. I live approximately ten minutes from Jerusalem and if I open my window room I can see Jerusalem from my window but I cannot go there physically. Wow. Question for you both. Suppose some kind of agreement came and it was an agreement that set up two states. I hear sometimes Jewish friends or colleagues, acquaintances of mine who say we don't think we can live with them, they don't want peace, they just want terrorism and war. Do you think that if we had an agreement could the Palestinian people live in peace with the state of Israel? If we establish our state of Palestine on the occupied territory, I mean the West Bank gets a strip and becomes a state with its controlling everything and yes we can live in peace with them, with the Israelis. That's not an issue anymore. We can live in peace with Israel because we depend so much on each other. Agriculture products are moving from Israel to the West Bank, labor from the West Bank to Israel. We have a lot of work together and we cannot separate the both people from each other but each of us will have his own state, his own passport, his own identity card, his own home with the title, the deed saying Palestine, the state of Palestine. That's when we start building the trust between us and the Israelis and we could live forever together. Do you agree with that Jane? Yes, because in that when we establish our state in that time we will be equal to the Israeli but right now we are not equal. They are who occupied our land, our freedom. So if I have my state then I will be equal to any Israeli so I think I can live with them. Now let me turn to the subject of religion. Are you two Arabs, you are Palestinians, what's your religion? I'm a Christian. We are Arab-Palestinians-Christians. And they are Arab-Palestinians-Muslims. Okay, I asked you that question because I just wanted to hear that from you because I think I was surprised when, I shouldn't be, it was an ignorant position, but we had a young woman from Brandeis University, a Jewish woman, no I mean a Palestinian woman who was a friend of our daughters who was going to Brandeis and she came to our house one weekend and I asked her about her religion and she said she was Christian. To show you how stupid and ignorant I was, I said to her, oh did missionaries come over? And she says, Bob, Christianity began here, it began in our home. The first Christians were Palestinians in a way, but I think if I could be that ignorant, which I was just a few years ago, we could imagine how many other people really do not know that there are real, the community of Christians. Do the Christians and the Muslims in the West Bank, how do you get along? We coexist with them and with us. Remember, Muslims and Christians are Palestinians. They are not different race. No, we are both Palestinians, except my religion is Christian and their religion is a Muslim, has nothing. We both demand the same thing, a Palestinian state. Maybe we differ, one will go to the mosque, the other will go to the church, but we are Palestinians. Okay, so I remember hearing the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, his name was Michael Oren, and you got a lot of press over here in which he talked about how well Israel treated its Christians and that the Christians were not treated well by the Muslims in the West Bank and that Christians were actually treated better by the Jews inside Israel. What do you think? Was he correct? That's really wrong. That's completely wrong because Israel will treat me not as a Christian or as a Muslim. They treat me as a Palestinian who are less than them. Okay, so being a Palestinian trumps anything else? That's what they look at you. You are a Palestinian. If you are a Christian, you still can go to jail. If you are a Muslim, you still can go to jail. If you are a Palestinian Christian, you cannot enter Jerusalem. It's the same. Let me ask you this. Are you worried that as things move forward that there are going to be fewer and fewer Christians living in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem, are things difficult that are causing Christians to leave? We are less than 1% out of 25%. We are now less than 1% because of the war, because of the Israeli occupation and the job opportunities are not there available for young people. For that, they seek other employment outside Palestine. But they still are attached to their homeland. They go and come back, they go and come back. I hear that the wall, you know the big tall wall, sometimes the wall, some places of fence that we read and hear. In fact, I heard a reporter, a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post just last week, speaking here, say that that wall was built in order to protect the Israelis from Palestinian violence and that it was working. Is this wall protecting them? Where is this wall and what's your experience of it? I think the wall was built in order to capture more land, and to add the settlements, to take the land of the settlements also to the Israeli side, to control more of the natural resources and of course the water resources. And also it will take around 13% of the total area of the West Bank. And I will give you some numbers. I isolate 29 wells, water wells, and 32 springs. That they took on the other side? And the agriculture land too, most of the agriculture now is going to be the other side of the wall, not with us. Even if it's in our land. Now, I heard a Palestinian say one time, I wonder your reaction to this. He said, if that wall were actually being built along the green line, which was called the armistice line at the end of the war in 1949, he said, if they built it along there, I'd go out there and help them build it. But not when it's coming into our land. Yeah, they should build it on their own land, not on ours, not on the Palestinian lands. If they want to build a wall to protect themselves, they can build it on the border with Israel. Okay, now let me put you on the spot. Suicide bombers. When the suicide bombers began in huge numbers back around 2000, 2002, 2004, that period right in there, it, I think, created a lot of terror in the hearts of Israelis. How do you explain that there were suicide bombers? What's your reaction to that? Suicide bombing are rejected by the majority of the Palestinians. I think it's shameful the suicide bombing people or person who did it killed innocent Israelis. You know, where totally you can ask anybody in the West Bank against it. Yeah, if the Palestinians supported it, you'll see more suicide bombing. But they said, no, we're not for it. You know, we are against it and we are not for it and don't do it. We are people who are killing, does not exist in our dictionaries. We don't like to see people, civilians or young people being killed for nothing. Okay, Jane? Yeah, the same. We are not looking for someone to kill innocent people and children. But at the same time, we also want that the Israeli soldiers not come to our house and killing our children and our people. So we want also this to stop from their side, not just from our side. If there is no occupation, we will not do this. We don't have to fight anybody if there is no occupation. If there is no occupation, we don't. We are not looking for a state with a military state. Military tanks, we're not. We're looking for a state which can support people economically. We can find jobs, people can work, people live in dignity.