Friends International Center in Ramallah
 January 2008 Newsletter
(Vol. II No. 1)

From the Program Coordinator:

A new year: a new beginning.  The New Year brings with it many challenges.  This year will mark sixty years of dispossession for the Palestinians – sixty years of Palestinians living in refugee camps, sixty years of watching their county slip out of their hands, sixty years of seeing their homes destroyed, sixty years of sixty years of witnessing over 400 Palestinian villages being erased from the face of the earth so the state of Israel could be established.     

The challenge for all of us is:  How do we work for an end to Israeli military occupation?  The next question is:  What next?  Prime Minister Olmert said in an interview that if no two-state solution is found, Israel will become an apartheid state. 

From the Friends International Center in Ramallah:

January brought a number of groups and individuals to the Friends Center.  These included a group of seminary students from California lead by Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marla Schrader and a group of church leaders with the Seattle Council of Churches. 

Marla Schrader and Rosemary Radford Ruether brought a group of seminary students from California to the Friends Center.

Two Friends from Norway, Kristen Eskeland and Ragnhild Harstadt, visited the Friends Center after spending a week in Gaza.  Norwegian Friends support Kindergartens in Gaza. 

Jean Zaru’s lecture “Confronting the Structures of Domination: Truth and Peacemaking in the Palestinian Experience”, was the first in a lecture series that will take place this spring and summer at FICR.  The series will emphasize the importance of human rights, international law, and UN Resolutions in the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

Jean Zaru delivers the introductory lecture of the lecture seires "Requirements for Building a Just Peace?"

From the Ramallah Friends Meeting:

The Ramallah Friends Meeting continues to receive many visitors. 

From the Occupation: Monthly Action Focus:
In general, the focus for the MYRTOE Campaign (Right to Enter Campaign) continues to be the visa and residency rights issues for Palestinians and internationals.  Many, Palestinians with dual citizenship and internationals, who want to come to the West Bank or Gaza are still being refused entry at the airport or at one of the bridges.  The refusal is random and many who are refused never register their refusal.  Some do not want to make their refusal known publicly, while others do not know about the Right to Enter Campaign and therefore do not know who to turn to.   

The Right to Enter Campaign is still collecting the names of persons – Palestinians and Internationals – who have been denied entry at one of the ports Israel controls (Ben Gurion airport or one of the bridges across the Jordan River from Amman.  If you are a person who has been denied entry or know of someone who has been denied entry, please contact Anita Abdullah at anita_abdullah@hotmail.com

If you are interested in working on this issue and are living outside of Palestine, please contact John Salzberg at john.salzberg@verizon.net.  John is a member of the FICR Steering Committee and is working on this issue in the US.  He is able to put you in touch with others in the US who are working on this issue from a US policy point of view. 

For more information on “Right to Enter/Re-enter” go to www.righttoenter.ps

Kathy Bergen
Program Coordinator          
www.ramallahquakers.org