Suleiman Al-Hamri, a Palestinian, and Shimon Katz, an Israeli,
spoke together and shared their personal stories of nonviolent
revelation during a discussion Thursday night at UCLA.
The discussion was sponsored by Combatants for Peace, an
Israeli-Palestinian nonprofit organization aimed at bringing an end
to the violence that plagues their people and establishing a
Palestinian state alongside Israel, according to its Web site.
The Thursday night discussion was one of the speakers’
many appearances across the United States in a month-long tour,
which was sparked by the recent killing of the 10-year-old daughter
of Bassam Aramin, one of the founders of Combatants for Peace.
“Our mission is to end the bloodshed that has been going
on for decades,” said Al-Hamri, a former member of a
Palestinian resistance group. “History has proven that
violence is not the answer.”
About 200 former Palestinian and Israeli combatants make up the
organization, which prides itself on creating a dialogue, according
to its Web site.
Al-Hamri said Combatants for Peace is an example of how Israelis
and Palestinians can come together for their mutual benefit.
“(Some) Israelis are having nightmares because they are
ordered to kill Palestinians,” Al-Hamri said.
Looking over to Katz, he added, “Now we are
friends.”
The organization states that both sides must believe in the
possibility of peace, and through equal negotiations the Combatants
for Peace propose creating a two-state solution.
“Israelis have done many bad things to Palestinians and
Palestinians have done many bad things to the Israelis,” said
Katz, a former Israeli defense soldier. “We are stuck in this
situation and need to be productive.”
Katz, who said the fighting is counterproductive for Israel, now
refuses to pick up a weapon and fight in what he referred to as the
occupied regions. He said that after serving in the Israeli army as
a counter-terror officer, he traveled to India and experienced a
moral revelation after reading the teachings of the Dalai Lama and
Mahatma Gandhi.
He said he realized nothing could be accomplished with violence,
and when he found out about Combatants for Peace he knew he should
join.
“We all sat together, ate together, and shared our
stories,” Katz said. “We all want to live in peace and
security and not to suffer anymore.”
Al-Hamri described how he was raised in the West Bank and joined
a Palestinian resistance movement, which ultimately resulted in his
first arrest and a year in Israeli prison. When he was released, he
tried to go back to his public school in the West Bank but was
unable to re-enter because of Israeli law, he said.
Al-Hamri said he got an education from a Catholic private school
and received a scholarship to study law in Iraq, but after Israeli
law prevented his attendance because he had been in prison, he
joined the Palestinian resistance. After a lifetime of violence,
Al-Hamri met an Israeli defense soldier who believed Palestinians
had a right to secure a state of their own.
“We were targets to one another, but I decided to work
together with the Israelis who believed in peace,” Al-Hamri
said.
Though this organization preaches peace and understanding, it is
not free from opposition and disagreement.
“Their mission is very broad and needs to be more specific
about its goals,” Pouneh Behin, a fourth-year French student
who attended the event said. “What exactly do they mean by
creating a two-state solution?”
But Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of Hillel at UCLA, said
there is a strong symbolic value in Israeli and Palestinian
soldiers renouncing violence in the Middle East.
“Their motivation is to give people a sense of
hope,” he said.
The Combatants for Peace do not oppose their respective national
values, according to their Web site.
Palestinians have the right to fight for freedom and Israel has
the right to maintain security and become prosperous. What they
oppose are the violent and ineffective tactics of reaching those
goals that they say have only caused the flourishing of cemeteries
on both sides.