Learning from others in conflict - CAIN

preserved and protected, we shouldn’t be afraid of structural change. YesterdayI saw part of the peaceline which divides your communities. It is a sad thing tosee. But for the sake of our children we always have to look for things that weshare in common, things which unite both sides. Our friends from NorthernIreland speak about of a lack of trust. In our organisation we are lucky to havethat trust, and I hope that you too will manage to establish this trust, in order toimplement your ideas – and always non-violently.[UDA] I take it if the internationalcommunity recognised Transdniestriait would help to stabilise your country?[Mol/Trans] Valentin thinks it would,but Evghenii thinks it would set a verybad precedent for the world because itwould in effect be condoning thecreation of a state based not onnationality but on political ambition.[Facil] That was a very unified presentation. But, more importantly, the lastcomment reveals that people can work extremely well across the conflict divideand yet still retain a diversity of opinion.The Palestinians and Israelis then made up a panel.[Pal] Although we are sitting up here together, we will not be giving a jointpresentation, as we represent totally different points of view. Hopefully such athing might happen in the future. Before 1948 Palestine was under a Britishmandate and during that time Lord Balfour promised to give Jews ‘land withoutpeople to people without land’, which was a lie, because Palestine at that timewas full of people. During the mandate, the British facilitated the immigrationof Jewish people to Palestine and also provided them with weapons. On theother hand they prevented any kind of Palestinian resistance movement fromacquiring weapons or struggling against either the British occupation or theincreasing Jewish immigration. Then the Jewish people started to build settlements,and began to confiscate more and more land with the blessing of the British.The newcomers destroyed 450 Palestinian villages in order to force people toleave their homeland. In 1948 they established the Israeli state and hundreds ofthousands of refugee people went to live in Syria and Jordan. At present thereare more than five million Palestinian people living as refugees outside Palestine.The new Israel state seized more than 40% of the land, the rest was underEgyptian and Jordanian control. In 1967 Jordan and Egypt and other countriestried to retake the land that was under Israeli authority but, unfortunately, as aresult of this war we lost all the land, and Palestine became under total Israelioccupation. Senior refugee people formed the Palestine Liberation Organisation,and they started their struggle on behalf of the Palestinian people.17Yesterday I saw part of thepeaceline which divides yourcommunities. It is a sad thing tosee. But for the sake of ourchildren we always have to look forthings that we share in common,things which unite both sides.