People's voice rises above the clamour....

[Violet_Crumble]

November 28, 2003


Slowly but surely, ordinary Israelis and Palestinians are piecing together their own peace accord, writes John Ward Anderson from Rantis in the West Bank.

Palestinians Fahed Abu Elhaj and Saleh Balut walked down the street of this besieged town and cajoled residents to sign a petition calling on Palestinian and Israeli leaders to make peace. It was a hard sell.

"I'll sign, and what will happen in the meantime?" said Nasir Zaydan, 65. "They'll take more land and build more settlements."

On trendy, secular Shenkin Street in central Tel Aviv, Israeli signature collectors Judy Duaniss and Ofry Levy confronted similar problems with their countrymen.

"All the territories are ours!" diamond merchant Yossie Kube, 32, yelled at them. "The greater land of Israel!"

<snip>

For the People's Voice campaign, the past five months have been a long, hard slog. But despite the hardened attitudes on both sides, 113,000 Israelis and 65,000 Palestinians have signed petitions demanding that Jewish settlers quit the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians give up their claim to the right to return to Israel and the decades of hostilities between the two be ended with the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/27/1069825913841.html

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