The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is usually told by numbers and statistics, but last night in Houston Hall, it was told in the stories of three individual women.
An audience of several dozen turned out to hear Jerusalem Women Speak, a national tour sponsored by Partners for Peace that features three women -- a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew -- sharing the personal impact the conflict has had on their daily lives.
"I challenge all of us to listen, think, process and then question," said College senior Amelie Davidson, co-chairwoman of Salaam/Shalom, which organized the event. "We can learn infinitely from all perspectives."
The first of those perspectives came from Rawan Damen, a Palestinian Muslim, who lives in Ramallah and is a professor at Birzeit University.
Damen described how the once 15-minute drive to work can now take up to three hours. In order to get to the campus, she must leave her car at a checkpoint, then walk for two miles in order to take a taxicab on the other side.
She said that Palestinians call this a "block point," not a "checkpoint," since it blocks them from going about their daily lives.
Still, regarding suicide bombers, she said she "cannot understand how a person can reach that level where he has no hope." She added that Palestinians are on the side of justice and violence is not needed when there is justice.
Mai Nassar also spoke as a Palestinian -- but as a Christian as well. She noted that the "conflict is affecting everybody," not just Jews and Muslims.
She described how, for the last three years, she has been denied access to Jerusalem because a permit is now needed to enter, and how Palestinian gunmen will attack and flee, leaving civilians caught in the Israeli retaliation.
Nassar said that many are planning on leaving the area, and those who stay are merely "surviving, not living."
She advocated "a free Palestine and a secure Israel" as a solution.
The last speaker, Yehidit Keshet, introduced her talk by saying that she would not be giving the official line of the Israeli government.
Keshet, a West Jerusalem resident, is the co-founder of Checkpoint Watch, a women's human rights monitoring group.
She said that she acknowledges that she lives in fear as to whether the bus she is on will explode, but noted that "there cannot be a symmetry between [Palestinians'] suffering and ours."
"You can never justify suicide bombers, but by the same token, saying that security justifies any measure that you take is not justified either."
"Unless we find a solution... we won't survive," she added.
The audience responded to the speakers with much emotion.
In a discussion session following the talks, questions ranged from how to better educate Israeli and Arab children to the future of the peace process post-Yasser Arafat.
Keshet was asked about her role within peace activism, to which she responded that she is in the "radical peace camp," more extreme than Peace Now, the pre-eminent peace organization in Israel.
Reactions to the talk was mixed.
"I got to hear some of the day-to-day aspects of the Palestinian conflict," Philadelphia resident Josef Kardos said.
Yet, Wharton junior Adam Groveman described the talk as "from completely one perspective and part of Arab propaganda to justify suicide bombings and terror as a whole. These people continue to criticize those who fight terror more so than those who commit terror."
Nassar said she felt the talk was "well-received."
Davidson added, "This event underscored the necessity for open dialogue about the conflict and demonstrated the power of personal stories in bringing the conflict to a human level."
