An olive branch in the West BankBy Joel Greenberg
Chicago Tribune
...Rabbi Arik Ascherman, executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights, a group that has been at the forefront of efforts to secure the olive harvest, said helping Palestinians by working with them on their lands was building important bridges.
"This is one of the few opportunities for average Israelis and Palestinians to meet," Ascherman said. "Rather than flying off to Europe for encounters abroad, people are working here shoulder to shoulder and talking to each other. It's the dialogue of the olive groves. Not only is it the right and Jewish thing to do, it also restores hope on both sides that things could be different."
With his beard and skullcap, Ascherman could be easily mistaken for a Jewish settler as he drives his car with Israeli license plates through West Bank villages and over bumpy mountain tracks to the olive groves, but wherever he arrives, he and the volunteers he organizes get a warm reception from grateful villagers.
..."It's important for Palestinians in the villages to see Israelis who are not hostile settlers. It helps balance out the Palestinian position," he said as he and colleagues picked olives, dropping them onto a burlap bag spread under a tree. "It's also important to work on the micro level through simple, direct human contact. The police and army don't enforce the law on the settlers unless they come under pressure."
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/world/15879370.htmIsraeli activists help Palestinians reap olive cropJennie Matthew
Jordan Times
...Several hundred Israelis, from left-wing activists to moderate Jewish settlers, regularly volunteer to help Palestinians pick olives, believing that their presence deters the worst excesses of radical violence. "I think what we do now is the way of peace. Palestinians and Jews work hand in hand on the trees and pick fruit together," says Zacharia Sada, West Bank coordinator for the Israeli rights group Rabbis For Human Rights. "It gives us hope that the other side of the occupation, the Jewish people, are a peaceful people and want to live together," he adds, sitting in the shade and listening to the soothing sound of olives pattering to the ground.
http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061027-093411-9452r