Palestinian, Israeli girls camping for peace in US wilderness
Liza Masri had learned as a young girl during the bloodiest days of the second intifada to fear the soldiers patrolling her neighborhood in the besieged West Bank city of Nablus.
But it wasn’t until after the uprising that her mistrust was most shockingly vindicated as she witnessed Israeli troops shooting dead her Palestinian neighbor as he smoked a cigarette on his balcony.
“It’s flashbacks I can remember… the ambulance, the way they took him down the building,” the 21-year-old tells, as if the intervening decade has suddenly melted away.
“We weren’t allowed into the streets. We were afraid they would kill us. It’s something I will always remember — it’s so painful.”
Some years later, her neighbor’s bereaved daughter introduced Masri to “Creativity for Peace,” an organization in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that brings together Palestinian and Jewish Israeli girls in a bid to bridge the emotional fault lines created by 70 years of conflict.
Half a world away from the corridors of the United Nations, they get together at a ranch in the timbered foothills of the southern Rocky Mountains to hear for the first time the stories of enemies they have grown up learning to hate.
Since 2003 more than 200 girls of ages 15 to 17 have participated in the Creativity for Peace camp, where Masri has returned this year as a “young leader” after taking part in 2013.
It was at the camp that she befriended Naama Shlomy, a Jewish Israeli who lives some 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Nablus, on the border with Gaza.
Press journalist for HRO media – Khizer Hayat reports.
Category: Arab uprising
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