Three women, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish, who live the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will share their experiences in a presentation, titled “Jerusalem Women Speak: Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared Vision,” at 7 p.m. April 6 in the Three Crowns Room in the C. Charles Jackson Campus Center at Gustavus Adolphus College.
All three women will discuss their hopes for the future, addressing what must be done to improve today’s unsteady situation. Diana Kattan, a Christian Palestinian, lives in East Jerusalem where the separation wall looms across the street from her house. She is the director for the Martin Luther Community Development Centre, which provides area educational, vocational, and recreational programs. Also active in the Sabeel Ecumenical Centre for Liberation Theology, Kattan believes Jerusalem should be “a city for two nations and three religions.”
Dr. Nina Mayorek, a Jewish Israeli, lives in West Jerusalem and serves as senior biochemist in the Department of Human Nutrition and Metabolism at Hebrew University. As a member of the Israeli women’s human rights organization Checkpoint Watch, she monitors checkpoints in the West Bank. Mayorek has also volunteered at a Palestinian school and lectured on women and family health at Bethlehem’s Deheisheh refugee camp. She wishes to “persuade public opinion that the ongoing policy of Israeli colonization and supremacy in the West Bank is devastating for both Palestinians and Israelis.”
Altemad Muhanna, a Muslim Palestinian, lives in the Gaza Strip where she practices gender and participatory approaches to development issues by working to lessen domestic violence and by establishing a women’s micro-credit coalition as well as a coalition against poverty. Engaged in the Palestinian national struggle for twenty years, she is troubled that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is viewed as a religious struggle and hopes for a solution based on equal rights and cultural diversity, not religious discrimination.
This event is part of a national twenty-day speaking tour covering issues such as the loss of family and homes, persecution, occupation, suicide bombings, and the separation barrier currently being constructed in the West Bank. The speaking tour is sponsored by Partners for Peace, a Washington, D.C., non-governmental organization endeavoring to help bring about a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The discussion is sponsored by the Diversity Center and the Campus Activities Board and is free and open to the public.
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