Promoting peace in the Middle East - Combatants for Peace seek to end conflict

Here is another inspiring story of combatants who had been on opposite sides of a war now work to build understanding and promote Peace in the Middle East. Let’s see this an another example of what is possible for PEACE.

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Combatants for Peace seek to end conflict

By Melody Hanatani - Santa Monica Daily Press Staff Writer - Published on 08/27/2007

MID-CITY Ra’ed Haddar was only 17 years old when he believed the end of life was near.

Growing up in the West Bank village of Yattah, Haddar was only a teenager when he was imprisoned, punished for actions against the Israeli occupation.

He spent the first 41 days in interrogation, allegedly tortured and beaten.

“I waited for death every minute and I never thought I could go out alive,” Haddar said on Friday.

Haddar spoke of his childhood and later imprisonment, growing up in the midst of conflict between the Palestinian people and the Israeli forces, during a presentation at Temple Beth Shir Shalom on Friday. The Palestinian shared his stories along with former Israeli officer Shimon Katz, the two former adversaries now combining their efforts to promote non-violent means to secure peace in the Middle East.

The two men, Haddar, 35, and Katz, 29, are members of Combatants for Peace, a non-profit organization aiming to spread the message of non-violent peace efforts to end the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis. They have been traveling in Southern California for the past week, visiting local churches, temples and community houses to speak of their experiences.

Katz, the son of an American mother and Israeli father, spent four years as an officer in the Israel Defense Force unit until 1999.

When he joined the military at the age of 18, Katz said he had little knowledge of the politics involved in the conflict. He was led to believe that Israel was trying to defend itself from terrorist attacks from the Palestinians, he said during an interview on Wednesday.

The region has been plagued by car bombs and other retaliatory acts by extremists over the years.

Katz said it wasn’t until he was sent to South Lebanon to defend against Hezbollah that he began to realize that his actions were counter productive.

“We’re actually creating more and more problems and more and more reasons for us to be attacked as Israelis,” he said.

For Haddar, the conflict was the world he knew, even as a child when his mother would use threats that the Israeli soldiers were coming to get him as a way to get her son to behave.

It wasn’t until a friend was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier that Haddar grew increasingly hostile and bitter.

“The violence starts building at a young age,” Haddar said. “When you see Israeli soldiers come into territories of town, demolishing … that does build something inside of us to resist the attacks; the daily attacks on our daily lives.”

He was arrested and tortured and released three years later.

It was his cousin’s murder that prompted Haddar to reconsider his stance toward the situation plaguing both sides.

“It was the murder of one of my cousins that gave me encouragement to go ahead for non violent resistance,” he said during an interview on Wednesday. “The daily violence and the people getting killed daily from both sides also gave me encouragement to go ahead and start thinking of ways to change the situation.”

Haddar went on to become one of the first members of Combatants for Peace, which formed in 2005.

He recalls the first meeting between the two groups, sensing a mutual feeling of distrust, the Palestinian and Israeli men staring strangely at one another.

Distrust slowly turned to understanding.

The organization is now growing with about 300 total members — roughly 150 Palestinians and 150 Israelis.

The stories of how Haddar and Katz came together left the audience of mainly Beth Shir Shalom members shocked, some shaking their heads as they heard of heartbreak and loss.

“Seeing each other as human beings is the first step toward communication,” said one member, who asked to remain anonymous. “What they do is a microcosm, a template for world peace.”

Tova Baba came to the presentation with her friend, who is a temple member.

“It takes all the good will of people like that (to make change),” she said.

Spreading a message of peace

Part of the reason why Combatants for Peace is campaigning in the United States is because its members believe that Americans will have a major role in salvaging the situation as an outsider, Katz said.

“We like Americans to be unbiased, to be neutral in this situation and be involved,” he said. “Americans need to know it’s their tax money paying for the separation wall and ammunition and security budget.”

Palestinians see Americans as never helping to build peace, stirring violence more than anything else, Haddar said.

They’re looking at the conflict from one perspective, he said.

“It doesn’t balance,” he said. “We hope that … something will happen from America.”

The organization believes in dialogue and reconciliation as a means to establish a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.

“We want Israelis who never met Palestinians to speak to other Palestinians and ask each other hard questions,” Katz said. “We want Palestinians to meet Israelis in regular clothes, in face to face talks. I think that will make a big difference.”

melodyh@smdp.com

http://www.smdp.com/article/articles/4059/1/Promoting-peace-in-the-Middle-East/Page1.html

By Melody Hanatani - Santa Monica Daily Press -Published on 08/27/2007