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Tuesday, June 23 (Jerusalem):
6:00pm – Meet for dinner and a bit of orientation
9:00pm – Finish, and go to sleep!
Sleep in Jerusalem (at the Paulus Haus)
Wednesday, June 24 (Bethlehem, Khalil/Hebron):
8:45am – Meet after breakfast for a little more orientation
11:30am – Leave for Bethlehem
12:30pm – Meet with Muhammad Jaradat of Badil. Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights was established in January 1998 to support the development of a popular refugee lobby for the right of return through professional research and partnership-based community initiatives. Badil takes a rights-based approach to the Palestinian refugee issue through research, advocacy and support of community participation in the search for durable solutions.
1:30pm – Eat lunch
2:00pm – Leave for Hebron
3:00pm – Meet Hisham Sharabati, journalist and activist and our tour guide in Hebron. See old city, Ibrahimi mosque, settlements, and Tel Rumeida (Palestinian neighborhood that has been partially seized to build one of the most ideological Jewish Israeli settlements in the West Bank).
6:15pm – Group check-in
7:15pm – Meet up with host families for dinner and sleeping (2-3 students per family)
Sleep at host families in Khalil/Hebron
Thursday, June 25 (Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem):
9:00am – Leave Khalil for Dheisheh refugee camp, stopping at glass factory on the way
10:30am – Get settled in rooms at Ibdaa’ Cultural Center
11:00am – Meet with Areej of Ibdaa’ Cultural Center about history of Palestinian refugees in general, Dheisheh in particular, and Ibdaa’s work. Ibdaa’ means “to make something out of nothing.” This Center provides educational and cultural activities for youth in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp, including a dance troupe that performs pieces about the history, struggles and aspiration of Palestinian refugees by intertwining dabke (traditional Palestinian folk dance) and theatrical choreography.
12:00pm – Walking tour of Dheisheh refugee camp
1:00pm – Lunch at Ibdaa’ Cultural Center
1:30pm-2:30pm – Free time – relax, blog, etc.
3:00pm – Meet with students from the Ambassadors program at Bethlehem University (including Lubna!). Tour the campus and chat with students.
5:00pm – Meet with Toufic Haddad, Palestinian-American activist, writer, and expert on the history of Palestinian resistance movements.
6:30pm – Dinner, check-in
Sleep at Ibdaa’ Cultural Center guesthouse in Dheisheh refugee camp
Friday, June 26 (Al Quds/Jerusalem, Ramallah):
8:30am – leave for Jerusalem
10:30am-2:00pm – Meet at Alternative Information Center (AIC) for Israeli Black Panthers walking tour of Musrara neighborhood with Reuven Abarjel, translated by Rotem Mor. Reuven is a founder of the Israeli Black Panthers and leads tours of the Musrara neighborhood where he grew up and where this Mizrahi (Arab or Middle Eastern Jews) movement was born. Rotem was a conscientious objector to the Israeli army, has done work with Israeli youth on refusal, and has been part of the joint struggle against the wall. He now runs tours for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and independently.
2:00pm – Lunch with Rotem, Reuven, and others.
3:30pm – Meet Abu Hassan for a tour of East Jerusalem and problems faced by Palestinian people there. We will see the wall and settlements and learn about issues of population, permits, IDs, house demolition, water, etc.
7:30pm – Arrive in Ramallah, dinner and check-in
Sleep in Ramallah at Al Ain Hotel
Saturday, June 27 (Ramallah, Nablus, Balata refugee camp):
9:00am – Meet with Amira Hass, a prominent Israeli journalist who lives in Ramallah and writes for Ha’aretz. Hass has recently returned from several months in Gaza after having entered on one of the Free Gaza Movement’s boats from Cyprus.
10:30am – Political briefing with Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, Palestinian Legislative Council member and former Palestinian Authority Minister of Information. Dr. Barghouthi is a founder of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (now Palestinian Medical Relief Society), Health Development Information and Policy Institute (HDIP), and Al Mubadara (Palestinian National Initiative).
12:00pm – Leave for Nablus
1:30pm – Arrive at Yaffa Cultural Center in Balata refugee camp, meet and eat lunch with them. The center seeks to raise the level of cultural awareness, intellectual and cultural heritage of the Palestinian people, development of abilities, skills and commitment to the historical and political rights in Palestine.
3:00pm – Meet with Said Al Atabe, Palestinian political prisoner who was in Israeli prison for 32 years
4:00pm – Tour of old city of Nablus.
5:30pm – Dinner with Jehad’s family (one of the delegates who studies at Washington University)
7:30pm – Walking tour of Balata refugee camp
8:30pm – Watch Yaffa Cultural Center short films and part of Slingshot Hip Hop
Sleep in apartment in Balata refugee camp (on our own, not with families)
Sunday, June 28 (Um Il Fahm, Al-Lajun, Haifa):
8:15am – Leave Nablus for Um Il Fahm
10:30am – Meet in Um Il Fahm about situation in Um Il Fahm and recent violence instigated by right-wing Israeli groups. There is a possibility that this meeting will be with Afu Agbaria, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) from the party Hadash.
11:30am – Meet Adnan Mahamid, an internally displaced person originally from Lajun village (just a few kilometers down the road). Hear Adnan’s story.
12:30pm-2:30pm – Visit Lajun with Adnan, walk the land, picnic on the land.
3:00pm – Leave for Haifa
4:30pm – Meet in Haifa with Baladna. Baladna is a developmental and capacity building agency for Arab-Palestinian youth in Israel. Formed in and around the cataclysmic events of October 2000, in which 13 Arab citizens of Israel, mostly youth, were killed by Israeli security forces, Baladna works to address the gaps which exist between young Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel and other youth in our society. Baladna strives to foster in Palestinian youth in Israel a strong sense of identity which spurs community engagement and inspires self-motivated social change.
6:00pm – Dinner and check-in
8:00pm – Meet with Kobi Snitz, an Israeli activist and academic working on BDS work from inside Israel.
Sleep in Haifa with hosts, organized by Baladna
Monday, June 29 (Haifa, Tel Aviv, Yaffa):
9:00am – Meet with lawyer Orna Cohen at Adalah (“Justice” in Arabic), a Palestinian human rights organization established in 1996. Adalah is a legal center that serves Arab citizens of Israel, who number over one million people or close to 20% of the population. Adalah’s main goals are to achieve equal individual and collective rights for the Arab minority in Israel in different fields including land rights; civil and political rights; cultural, social, and economic rights; religious rights; women’s rights; and prisoners’ rights.
10:15am – Leave for Tel Aviv and Yaffa
12:00pm – Meet at Zochrot office over lunch with three different Israeli activist groups. Meet with Eitan from Zochrot, an Israeli organization that raises awareness about the Nakba (“catastrophe” of 1948) primarily within Jewish Israeli communities. They lead tours to destroyed and depopulated Palestinian villages and support Palestinian refugees to symbolically reclaim their land by placing signs with the villages’ original names. In June 2008 they hosted a conference about the implementation of the right of return.
Meet with Dalit from Who Profits, a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace, specifically tasked with researching and exposing the Israeli occupation industry.
Meet with Shministim, a group of young Israelis who have refused to serve in the military. Most have spent time in Israeli prisons.
3:30pm – Meet Sami Abushhadeh in Yaffa for tour to learn about the history of the city and ongoing displacement of Palestinian communities there.
7:00pm – Dinner and check-in
Sleep in Yaffa
Tuesday, June 30 (Naqab/Negev, Lyd, Ramallah):
8:30am – Leave Yaffa
9:00am – Meet Palestinian hip hop artist Tamer Nafar of DAM for a tour and lunch in Lyd. Lyd is often called a Palestinian ghetto and conditions and policies are compared to that of refugee camps, despite the fact that Lyd is inside Israel and its inhabitants are Israeli citizens.
1:00pm – Leave Lyd for Beer Sheva
2:30pm – Meet with Faisal Sawalha of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, fighting displacement of Bedouin communities in the Naqab/Negev.
5:30pm – Leave for Ramallah, check-in in van
Sleep in Ramallah at Al Ain Hotel (tonight and for the rest of the program)
Wednesday, July 1 (Ramallah or wherever you want to be):
Day off
6:30pm – Meet for dinner with Palestinian students who will be joining us for the workshop
Thursday, July 2 – Saturday, July 4 (Ramallah):
Workshop with Palestinian students from Stop the Wall, Right to Education, and Baladna. Full itinerary to be given just before the workshop. Summary follows.
July 2:
-Introductions
-Presentations from Palestinian students about their organizing
-Tour of Birzeit University
-Video conference with student activists in Gaza
-El Funoun performance in evening (opening night of Palestine International Festival in Ramallah)
July 3:
-Presentations from North American students about organizing
-Trip to north (settlements, factories, wall, resistance) organized by Stop the Wall
-DAM performance in evening (optional – you pay)
July 4:
-Israeli Apartheid Week discussion
-Short issue-based presentations
-BDS Case studies
-Countering Zionist rhetoric
-Next steps
Sun, July 5 (Ramallah):
Closing day of workshop for North American group.
9:30am: Meeting with Addameer (Arabic for “conscience”), a Palestinian human rights organization focusing on prisoner rights and advocacy. They are a member of the BNC (BDS National Committee) and see their campaigns as part of the BDS movement.
11:00-5:00: Various activities, issues not yet addressed, and next steps. Guests will include Hazem Jamjoum from Badil and Anan from Right to Education.
5:30pm: Closing dinner
7:30pm: Finish – This is early enough for some of you to get somewhere else that evening if you plan to leave Ramallah.