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.

For most families in Israel, serving in the military is not only a required duty it’s also of great honor and prestige. “Shministim” is the equivalent of high school seniors in Israel. So at the age of 18, after graduating from high school, young Israelis serve in the military for 3 years before continuing their education. After the WhoProfits.org meeting with Dalit at the Zochrot office we met with two young female Israeli conscientious objectors: Netta Mishly and Raz Veron, both of whom rejected to serve in the Israeli military at the age of 18. Both of these young women discussed what led to their conviction of refusing to serve in the Israeli military and the reactions they received from their family and society.

At the age of 16 Netta Mishly had decided that she would reject serving the Israeli military. She came to this conclusion after much internal struggle, despite all the encouragement from her family and society to serve in the military. After visiting the Palestinian village of Bil’in at the age of 15, and attending a peaceful demonstration of Israeli and Palestinian activists that were shot upon by Israeli soldiers, Netta began to realize that she no longer wanted to serve in the military but she found it difficult to express such an opinion. “There’s such a big system of false justification that it makes you like this, that it makes you militarized. The people I met [who had served] were really racist. They would say ‘When I see the Arabs go through there [checkpoints], I want to take my gun and shoot them.’”

Netta gradually began to convince her mom and was able to do so in a matter of two years, but up until the day of her draft Netta’s father was in complete denial that her daughter planned to refuse serving in the army. Netta revealed that her father would go so far as to boast at family gatherings that his daughter would join the army and serve the Israeli people.

Nevertheless, Netta was prepared to face the consequences; whether they be family banishment or imprisonment. After being sentenced to prison Netta’s father finally began to accept her decision. After spending a few days in jail, several visits from her family, and witnessing the treatment of her daughter, Netta believes her family finally began to realize that “if she as a privileged Jew was treated as such, just imagine how the Palestinians are treated… Palestinians have to face checkpoints and discrimination on a daily basis, and my parents finally began to see that through my treatment.” However, Netta believes this would never have been the case if she hadn’t refused to serve in the army. “After all they love me and care about me and that’s the only reason why they began to see what I saw, so that they could try to get me out.” Netta was released after 20 days in prison and declared by the military “mentally unfit of serving in the military”. The Israeli military does not formally accept conscientious objectors, and considers it a serious crime to refuse to serve. Netta was lucky. Others have had to face years in prison. Netta admits that “it’s a privilege to refuse sometimes. If your family is well off you’ll be fine. It depends who you are talking to.”

Netta and conscientious objectors like her are extremely rare to find in Israeli society. Unquestioningly serving in the military has become the norm, so it is difficult for many people to question serving the army because it’s essential in being considered part of Israeli society. Apart from time in prison, refusing to serve in the Israeli military has many other consequences for young Israelis, such as: loss of scholarship and financial aid opportunities, banishment from Israeli politics, difficulty in finding a job, loss of family and social support, and much more.

Raz revealed that what bothered her most with the requirement of serving in the Israeli military was the military indoctrination youth in Israel are put through. In a society that justifies the occupation and apartheid of Palestine because of the Holocaust during World War II, the Shministim (high school seniors) go to Auswitz and are indoctrinated with vengeance to realize that serving the military will somehow bring their people retribution for the crimes of Europe. “I’m an Israeli, but Anti-Zionist… I have an Israeli nationality but I don’t believe in Israel only for the Jews… I feel that it is very unhealthy that Israel even calls these people Jews. They mix it, they don’t allow you to be Israeli if you’re not a Jew… it’s really complicated…”

Send a  letter from www.december18th.org

1. At the Zochrot office we met Eitan who informed us about their work. As an Israeli organization that raises awareness about the Nakba, (“catastrophe” of 1948, i.e. Israeli Independence Day), primarily within Jewish Israeli communities, Zochrot leads tours to destroyed and depopulated Palestinian villages and supports dislocated Palestinian refugees (who still reside in Israel) to symbolically reclaim their land by placing signs with their villages’ original names throughout Tel Aviv. There are actually 7 different villages upon which Tel Aviv was built. Some of the remnants of these villages are still visible, but many Israelis simply aren’t aware or could care less about their presence.
2. Also at the Zochrot office we met with Dalit from WhoProfits.org, a project of the Coalition of Women for Peace. WhoProfits.org specifically focuses on researching and exposing the Israeli occupation industry; quite literally, identifying who profits from the occupation of Palestine. Their website is essential in organizing a BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) campaign against Israel on university campuses.
3. Shministim, a group of young Israelis who have refused to serve in the Israeli military (which is required for all citizens of Israel). Most have spent time in Israeli prisons.

I’ll post the meeting minutes from each of these in the coming days.