OneVoice Movement Press Coverage

Joint Discussion with Foremost Dignitaries at the World Economic Forum

OneVoice Debuts Imagine 2018 Campaign: Finalists Chosen to Participate in Ground-Breaking Session on Critical Taboo Issues in Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Process

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt / May 19, 2008 / This afternoon, in an interactive ‘WorkSpace’ Session with some of the world’s foremost dignitaries and business leaders - including Tony Blair, Amre Moussa, Saeb Erekat, MK Yossi Beilin, and Rabbi David Rosen - four young students - two Israeli, two Palestinian - will lead a discussion on their visions for the future of the region, and on the taboo issues that often impede the negotiations process from moving forward. The students are finalists in the OneVoice Movement’s Imagine: 2018 (www.imagine2018.org) campaign – an unprecedented national essay contest run by OneVoice in separate partnerships with the Israeli and Palestinian Ministries of Education.  The contest calls on students to envision what the year 2018 would look like if Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas were to sign a peace agreement this year.

“Two of the greatest stumbling blocks toward building support for the negotiations process at the grassroots level and for making progress at the negotiations table at the top-level are taboos – the issues that cannot be openly discussed within the two societies – and an inability to visualize the ways that a peace agreement would benefit peoples’ everyday lives,” said Daniel Lubetzky, the OneVoice Movement’s Founder. “People need to be able to imagine what an end to the conflict would look like, in order to be able to work for it, and they need to be able to talk about hard issues in order to prepare for working solutions.”

Immediately preceding the session, contest winners along with OneVoice staff and dignitaries including Tony Blair will take questions from the press.

About the “Building Peace, Breaking Taboos” Workspace: As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators struggle to move post Annapolis, the core stumbling blocks to progress are becoming increasingly obvious. Many of these blocks are linked to taboos on each side—that which cannot be said or done openly. This session, or “workspace”, examined the consequences of a failure of the Annapolis process, and considered new approaches that break taboos and challenge the established wisdom of how to build a lasting agreement.

“This is a very important opportunity for me, as a Palestinian – to write about my visions of a Palestine that is independent, free, and at peace with all its neighbours, and even more importantly, to talk about that vision with the leaders of the region and of the world,” said Christina Samir Odeh Yousef, age 14, one of the Palestinian essayists who is attending the WEF.

Shahar Hagi, age 15 and one of the Israeli essayists, agreed. “As an Israeli it is also important to talk about our dreams for Israel’s future – about a day when Israel is safe to live in, and a day when Israelis can work with Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Palestinians – all the people of the region – in an open and peaceful way to promote common interests.”

Imagine: 2018 (www.imagine2018.org) is an essay contest designed to enable people to envision some of the tangible benefits that would come from a peace agreement. It is being rolled out in two phases: The 2018 Essay Contest and the 2018: Director’s Cut. Thousands of essays were submitted for the Palestinian and Israeli contests. All of the winners will be announced by June 10, 2008. Ten of the most compelling essays will then be turned into short films directed by some of the world’s foremost directors, including Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) and Danny DeVito. The short films will be weaved into a one hour documentary and shown in the region, as well is in regional and international film festivals.

About the OneVoice Movement:

The OneVoice Movement is an international mainstream grassroots movement with over 600,000 signatories in roughly equal numbers both in Israel and in Palestine, and 1,280 highly-trained youth leaders. It aims to amplify the voice of the overwhelming but heretofore silent majority of moderates who wish for peace and prosperity, empowering them to demand accountability from elected representatives and work toward a two-state solution guaranteeing an end to occupation and violence, and a viable, independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel. OneVoice counts on its Board over 60 foremost dignitaries and business leaders across a wide spectrum of politics and beliefs, joining as OneVoice for conflict resolution. Learn more by visiting www.OneMillionVoices.org.

Jennifer Lin

Speakers from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spoke on Monday at UCLA to give their perspectives and offer hope for peace.

OneVoice, an international grassroots movement aimed at finding a resolution to the conflict, presented Malaka Samara of OneVoice Palestine and Shani Gershon of OneVoice Israel on their first stop of a weeklong regional speaking tour of Southern California.

The event was cosponsored by Bruins for World Peace, a new group founded this quarter.

“We are not like a lot of organizations that are out there. We have two parallel movements, one in Palestine and one in Israel, that are quite independent of each other. They’re working for different motivations but towards the same goal of peace,” said Laurel Rapp, international education program manager for OneVoice.

Samara and Gershon are youth leaders in their respective countries but had not met each other until a few days before the event.

Each spoke about the achievements their chapters had accomplished, projects underway for the future and personal experiences living in war-torn neighborhoods.

Samara, a first-time visitor to the U.S., said OneVoice Palestine does not have any political affiliations, but added that the organization has put on campaigns to encourage political activity, especially after the death of former president Yasser Arafat in 2004.

A Black Ribbon campaign featuring the slogan “Gaza in My Heart” was also launched to bring attention to the innocents who were caught up in religious faction fighting.

Samara said life in the Palestinian territories can be difficult, and she became emotional when she spoke about the arrests of one of her five brothers and her father.

But she added that she had “hope for a better life and to live under dignity and peace.”

“Both sides want peace and to end the conflict, but each side has to trust each other,” Samara said.

Gershon admitted that frequent terrorist attacks in Israel had caused her to develop a hatred of the Arab people, but working with OneVoice had allowed her to realize there are many people on both sides of the conflict who hope for an end to the violence.

This is reflected in OneVoice Israel’s “Halas Nimas” (Hebrew for “That’s enough, we’re fed up”) campaign, which involves taking pictures of 5,000 supporters of a peaceful resolution to the conflict and posting them on billboards across Israel.

Hershon said it would serve as a reminder to the government about what the people want.

“We both want a better future, not only for us, but for our children,” Gershon said.

OneVoice is currently pushing for a solution to be developed by the end of 2008 with their One Million Voices to End the Conflict campaign.

Talks have been going on in Annapolis, Md., since November of last year with the hopes of reaching an agreement on the formation of a free Palestinian state existing peacefully alongside Israel as well as determining a nonviolent approach to achieve such a resolution.

The presentation piqued the curiosity of some attendees, such as Jiae Koh, a fifth-year biology student.

“Before I came, I never really thought about the conflict,” Koh said. “(But when) I can really see and hear from two people who come from this reality, it made me really aware.”

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/apr/22/unifying-peace/

Danny Spector

Renowned actor Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Constanza on the hit show "Seinfeld", will be one of the judges in the “imagine: 2018” contest, sponsored by the One Voice organization, which encourages moderate Israelis and Palestinians to actively promote the peace process between the two nations.

As part of this contest, Israeli and Palestinian youths were asked to imagine what their lives might be like in 2018 during an era of peace in the Middle East. The winning script will be made into a short film directed by renowned filmmaker David Guggenheim.

Alexander noted that this project will allow young, aspiring filmmakers to meet with some of the world’s best known directors and bring across their vision of peace.

The actor also stated that he hopes that these teens would be able to tell a tale of peace that the world has not yet encountered, and that he, personally cannot wait to hear. The conflict in the Middle East is the past, said Alexander, but these stories are the hope that lies in the not so distant future.

T.J. Hall

In the front of Room 2302 in Sangren Hall, two miniature flags stood beside each other on a table. Two more full size flags hung from the adjacent wall. And two young women sat side by side, different in nationality, but alike in their shared belief that one day Israel and Palestine will be at peace.

Monday night, representatives from the OneVoice Peace Initiative Group spoke at Western Michigan University. The event was sponsored by the Palestinian Israeli Peace Initiative of Kalamazoo, in collaboration with WMU Hillel, The Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and The Muslim Student Association.
Guest speakers were Israeli Maya Epstein, Palestinian Duroub Yacoub and American Laurel Rapp, education program manager for OneVoice.

Rapp opened the evening by giving an overview of the OneVoice group and its mission. By building support with Israeli and Palestinian moderates as well as international backers, OneVoice hopes to present lawmakers with one million signatures calling for a peace agreement. Rapp also stressed the uniqueness of OneVoice, showing that it is one group that has two separate operations in both Israel and Palestine. And while Rapp estimates that 95 percent of the work OneVoice does is in the Middle East, it is still essential to build support on the international front.

"We want to bring the voices from the Middle East to speak about the conflict," Rapp said.

Maya Epstein, a 24-year-old student at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recalled her recent years in the Middle East. After moving from Botswana, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, at 17, Epstein had to adjust to the constant threat of danger.

"Living in terror is not something you can get used to," Epstein said. "It was difficult to even ride the bus."

Epstein also helped put things into perspective for the 50 people in attendance.
"We are just trying to live a normal life," she said. "We envy you [Americans]."
Duroub Yacoub, 25, moved to Ohio after growing up in Palestine. A graduate of Kent State University, Yacoub went back to her home city of Ramallah in 2002 to find it in shambles.

"The whole city was destroyed," Yacoub said. "It wasn’t the city I grew up in." Fighting back her emotions, Yacoub went on to add that she lost a family member in an attack on a church.

"We just want to live like human begins," Yacoub said.

In sharing their perspectives, Monday’s OneVoice speakers hope to foster a cooperative peace effort among people of all ethnicities.

Epstein said of Yacoub, "The most important thing is knowing that I have a counterpart in Palestine who is working toward the same goal."

http://www.westernherald.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=6daad66a-f880-4549-848c-3a8d4f3e3080

http://www.wosu.org/radia/radio‐open‐line/archive=1&date=03/26/2008

By Sean Steels 

Daroub Yacoub, a young Palestinian woman, remembers the moment she realized she wanted to speak out for peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Not that she could forget coming home to find the street in front of her house lined with military tanks.

The Alumni wall in front of which she and Maya Epstein, a young Israeli woman, are speaking to a small number of students might remind Epstein of a similar installment on her own campus. There’s only a small difference between the two exhibits: the wall on Epstein’s campus is decorated with the names of the seven students killed in her cafeteria by a suicide bomber, not with alumni.

Maya and Daroub have been brought together to speak at North American universities about their experiences by the OneVoice Movement, a non-partisan, grassroots organization dedicated to resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. They are aware of the unique nature of their friendship.

“This,” Maya said, waving her finger back and forth between herself and Daroub, “does not happen everyday.”

The battle over the land in the Gaza strip has turned the two cultures into alien neighbours. They explained that the conflict, spurred on by a small minority of violent extremists, has cut traffic between the two states down to a paperwork-laden trickle. Most people don’t believe that the side opposing them would ever be willing to co-operate or keep promises that could lead to conflict resolution. At the same time, a poll conducted by OneVoice determined that 76 per cent of Israelis and Palestinians support a peaceful, two-state solution.

Laurel Rapp, OneVoice’s international education program manager, explained that through the use of its two branches, OneVoice Palestine and OneVoice Israel, the organization is coordinating state-unique efforts at the grassroots level to foster an atmosphere of trust and compassion between the silent and peaceful majorities of the two groups.

“What we have are two separate nationalist movements, OneVoice Palestine and OneVoice Israel, who are working for very different reasons but ultimately share the same goal of ending the conflict and establishing a two-state solution,” she explained.

“We do very few joint activities for two reasons. The first is logistical. Israelis cannot go to the West Bank or Gaza, and Palestinians […] require a lot of paperwork […] to get travel permits to Israel,” she said. “The second is we also realize that, at this point, we’re a bit of a ways from bringing Israelis and Palestinians together to love each other.”

But despite stumbling blocks created by over half a century of distrust and death, OneVoice has managed to break ground in the peace-making process. They’ve obtained over 650 000 signatories to their cause, with an equitable divide between Palestinian and Israeli participants. In the years since the organization’s 2002 debut, it has also expanded to stem the conflict on an international stage with their campus presentations in Europe and North America.

“It’s so clear that this conflict isn’t isolated to the West Bank,” Rapp said. “Coming to North America. you’ll find that this conflict replicates itself on university campuses. What we’re trying to do is bring moderate voices for resolution to campuses and show that Canadian students can be part of the solution rather than the problem.”

Jay Cairns, administrator of the Jewish Students Association (JSA) at the University of Alberta, fell short of directly endorsing OneVoice’s cause, but agreed that there should always be a venue for positive dialogue.

“There are many students that feel various ways about [conflict resolution], but the point for us is that we need to start focusing on peaceful solutions,” he said.

He explained that the JSA doesn’t take a political stance on the issue. The JSA’s first and foremost priority is the support it provides for university students and the security of the Jewish community on campus.

“Whether [the solution] is one-state or two-state, that gets into the political arena, and that’s something that we’re not prepared to do,” he conceded. “As it stands, we’re very happy with the situation on U of A campus. It’s very tame.”

http://www.thegatewayonline.ca/onevoice-movement-comes-to-u-of-a-for-middle-east-peace-talk-20080326-2426.html

Three-year Award to Support Grassroots Initiative to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

New York, NY – 11 March 2008 – The PeaceWorks Foundation today announced it is the recipient of a three-year, $1,015,000 award from the Skoll Foundation for its initiatives aimed at mobilizing the Israeli and Palestinian grassroots in support of a negotiated two state solution. The award is one of 11 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship presented by the Skoll Foundation to recognize the most innovative and sustainable approaches to resolving the most urgent social issues. PeaceWorks joins a prestigious global network of Skoll entrepreneurs, now numbering 59, who are working around the world on issues including tolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability.

Since its inception in 2002, the PeaceWorks Foundation and its flagship initiative, the OneVoice Movement, has worked to bring the voice of the moderate majority of Israelis and Palestinians to the leaders and to the world stage, demanding a resumption of immediate and uninterrupted negotiations toward a two state solution guaranteeing the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state at peace with Israel. Via separate, parallel, nationalist movements in Israel and Palestine and an international movement of invested citizens worldwide, OneVoice has succeeded in signing on 650,000 signatory members to its call for a serious peace process to end the occupation and all forms of violence, and achieves international recognition, security, respect, peace, and prosperity for both sides.

“Our work is aimed at and centered on the lives and aspirations of ordinary people – it is based on the urgency of their right to live in a place free from violence and bloodshed and fear,” said Daniel Lubetzky, the organization’s Founder and President. “In the end, sustainable, meaningful change won’t come from boardrooms or statehouses; it will come from these ordinary citizens. We seek to empower grassroots agents of change, giving them the tools to wrest their lives from the grips of interminable conflict. The Skoll Foundation’s generosity will go a long way in helping us to have a real impact on the ground.”

“Daniel Lubetzky and his team at PeaceWorks are tremendous additions to the community of Skoll social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated, through their inspiration and creativity, courage and fortitude, that solutions do exist for some of the world’s most intractable problems,” said Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. “We believe their work has the potential for transformational benefit to the area of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we’re honored to support their continued commitment to systemic change at the grassroots level.”

Mr. Lubetzky will be presented the award by Skoll Foundation Chairman Jeff Skoll, Skoll Foundation President and CEO, Sally Osberg and special guest, former President Jimmy Carter, at a special ceremony on March 27 at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. Lubetzky will be participating in the three-day World Forum along with over 700 attendees from the global social entrepreneurship community.

About the PeaceWorks Foundation & OneVoice Movement

Founded in 2002, the PeaceWorks Foundation works through a variety of initiatives to unite moderates in the Middle East to push for conflict resolution and a negotiated two state solution ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Foundation’s flagship initiative is OneVoice, an international movement of Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans, Muslims, Jews and Christians who are ready and eager to support a serious process, leading to a comprehensive peace agreement ending the occupation and all forms of violence. With 650,000 Israeli, Palestinian, and international signatories, we work to amplify the voice of the moderate majority of Palestinian and Israelis, empowering them to seize back the agenda for conflict resolution and to demand that their leaders work immediately and continuously to achieve a two state solution through comprehensive negotiations that will lead to the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state living in peace and security with the state of Israel.

For more information, visit www.onemillionvoices.org.

About the Skoll Foundation

The Skoll Foundation was created in 1999 by eBay’s first president, Jeff Skoll, to promote his vision of a more peaceful and prosperous world. Today the Skoll Foundation advances systemic change to benefit communities around the world by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs - individuals dedicated to innovative, bottom-up solutions that transform unequal and unjust social, environmental and economic systems.

The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship is the foundation’s flagship program. There are currently 50 organizations represented by 59 remarkable social entrepreneurs in the program, working individually and together across regions, countries and continents to evolve the field of social entrepreneurship into a global movement for social change. The Skoll Foundation connects social entrepreneurs and other partners in the field via an online community at www.socialedge.org, and through the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The foundation also celebrates social entrepreneurs by telling their stories through partnerships with the PBS Foundation and the Sundance Institute, with the goal of promoting large-scale public awareness of social entrepreneurship.

For more information, visit www.skollfoundation.org.

by Stacey Palevsky
The Jewish News Weekly

Arab and Jew sit side-by-side at the San Francisco Hillel house and explain how the humanity that unites the two women is stronger than the boundaries dividing them.

They feel so strongly about this that the pair spent the week of Feb. 11 in California talking about OneVoice, a grassroots initiative that seeks to empower the moderate majority of Israeli and Palestinian citizens to take a more assertive role in resolving the conflict.

Wafa Nazzal, an Arab from Jenin, and Noga Ron, a Jew from Tel Aviv, visited Sanford University, Sonoma State and San Francisco State universities, U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Santa Cruz to educate interested parties stateside about their volunteer work as two of 3,100 youth leaders working to end the violence.

Although they share a vision of peace and equality, they recognize that they come from different points of view.

Ron, 28, is a thin woman with a big smile and wisps of hair that fall into her freckled face when she speaks. She was born and raised on a kibbutz in southern Israel. After serving in the army and graduating from Tel Aviv University, she became involved with OneVoice.

“It’s easy to say there’s no way to solve this problem.” it’s harder to do something to change it,” she continued. “I believe I can do something. I can change my world. That’s why I’m here.”

Nazzal, 21, wears a wasabi-green hijab that complements her striking dark eyes. She was born in Saudi Arabia and spent her childhood in Jordan. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Jenin, where her parents were born.

The second intifada in 2000 made life difficult for Nazzal and her family. In 2002, things got worse when the Israeli army invaded a Jenin refugee camp. Her family had no water, electricity or food, except what was rotting in their refrigerator.

Nazzal eventually enrolled at the Arab American University in Jenin, where she learned about OneVoice.

“OneVoice is the first organization I’ve found that believes in the power of people to ask their representatives to negotiate,” she said.

OneVoice was created in 2002 to empower moderates who support a two-state solution. It does this through town hall meetings, youth leadership programs, public service announcements and public events in Israel and the territories.

With other youth leaders, Ron and Nazzal have helped get 620,000 signatures — half from Israelis, half from Palestinians — on the OneVoice Mandate, which affirms mutual rights of both peoples. The goal is 1 million signatures.

This year, OneVoice is reaching out to American university students. The Bay Area appearances each drew up to 50 students.

Sarah Kleinman, 22, a graduate student at Stanford, attended the Feb. 13 lecture. Because of its small size (15 students), it ended up feeling more like a dialogue.

Seeing an Israeli and Palestinian sitting next to one another “was a pretty powerful message that we need to make peace — lasting peace,” she said.

“I think our generation recognizes that we need to come together as a global community,” she added. “OneVoice is another instance in which this optimism shines through.”

Nazzal and Ron hope that Bay Area college students like Kleinman will want to get involved with a Bay Area chapter of OneVoice.

Their speech aimed to promote an April leadership-training seminar in San Francisco. The training will establish a network of OneVoice student ambassadors who can help support the efforts of the youth leaders in the Middle East. There are already OneVoice chapters on college campuses in Boston, Washington and eastern Canada.

“We have high hopes for the Northern California network,” Rapp said.

For more information about the upcoming leadership training, or to apply, contact Laurel Rapp at laurel@onevoicemovement.org.

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/34647/format/html/displaystory.html

By Brian Andrew

Israeli Noga Ron and Palestinian Wafa Nazzal are unlikely partners in the movement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But their differences just might work to their advantage.

Youth leaders Noga Ron and Wafa Nazzal spoke last night on behalf of OneVoice, a citizen activism movement working in Israel and Palestine to achieve a two-state solution to the crisis.

Ron and Nazzal are youth leaders of OneVoice, a citizen activism movement working in Israel and Palestine to achieve a two-state solution through non-violent means. The pair spoke at Stanford last night as representatives of OneVoice to discuss the organization’s goals and history since its founding in 2002 at the height of the second Intifada, a period of renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians that began in 2000.

In the past six years, 650,000 Israelis and Palestinians have signed onto the OneVoice mandate that “recognizes the right of both people to independence, sovereignty, freedom, justice, dignity and respect.”

Rather than propose its own resolution to the crisis, OneVoice seeks to empower Palestinians and Israelis to demand that their leaders work toward a two-state solution.

“We believe it’s very important to honor our leaders,” said Nazzal, 21, in Building 420 last night. “We support the Palestinian and Israeli leaders in their quest for a peaceful conclusion to the conflict.”

Although OneVoice strives to reach all levels of the population, one of its main objectives is working with young political leaders and urging young people to vote. Both OneVoice Israel and OneVoice Palestine believe that involving the next generation is essential to achieving lasting peace.

“We believe in the young people,” said Ron, 28. “We need to encourage and educate the future leaders.

Ron was born and raised in an isolated Kibbutz in southern Israel. In describing her earliest memory of violence in Israel, she recalled a series of bombing attacks in 1995 that swept the country, including Tel Aviv, where her older sister was living.

After completing her mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces, Ron traveled to South Africa and the United States before returning to Israel to enroll at the University of Tel Aviv. She said that she finally realized that something was not right about the way she and her family had been living while she traveled abroad.

“There’s nothing normal about calling my sister at age 15 in tears,” she said. “There’s nothing normal about not going on the buses for eight years because I was afraid. There’s nothing normal about opening your bag every time you go to the cinema because someone may be carrying in a bomb.”

Nazzal was born in Saudi Arabia but was raised in Jenin in the West Bank. She said that she has wrestled with her Palestinian identity since her father moved the family from Jordan to Jenin in 1995.

In April 2002 one of the fiercest battles of the second Intifada occurred at Jenin’s refugee camp. During the ten-day invasion, a brother of Nazzal’s friend, a freelance reporter, was shot in the leg by Israeli forces and later died.

“The smell of death was everywhere in Jenin,” Nazzal said. “You didn’t feel safe walking in the streets because you might be shot.”

Nazzal became a strong believer in the OneVoice movement after attending a town hall meeting in Jenin City. Although her uncle told her that she was wasting her time by coming to the United States to talk to college undergraduates, Nazzal said she still believes a two-state solution can be obtained through non-violent means.

Laurel Rapp, the international education program manager for OneVoice, does not think that discussion of the conflict can be limited to the areas directly affected.

“So often you’ll find this conflict has spread throughout the area,” she said. “It’s spread throughout the Middle East, to the United States, to Stanford’s student groups.”

The OneVoice presentation was not organized by any groups affiliated with the Israeli or Palestinian movements; the event was co-sponsored by the year-old Students Promoting Ethnic and Cultural Kinship (SPEAK).

“Many are interested in the [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] from a political perspective,” said Sarah Kleinman ‘08, co-executive director of SPEAK. “But we’re looking at it from a standpoint of identity.”

Both Ron and Nazzal admit that there are challenges ahead, especially now that Israelis cannot enter Palestinian territories and Palestinians must get special permission to enter Israel. But both said they have experienced the darker side of the conflict — and neither wishes it to return.

BY FANNIE SUNSHINE

Adi Labadi was just 15 when he was shot in the leg while on a street in the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine.

Labadi, now 20, is well aware he could have made "bad" choices after he and a friend were caught in the crossfire of the Israeli Army, but instead chose to join the conflict resolution OneVoice Movement.

"After I was shot, I had anger," said Labadi, adding that his friend died. "At that age, you don’t know right from wrong. My parents were trying to keep me away from bad. And it’s really hard when you’re living in the middle of that."

Labadi and his Israeli counterpart, Smadar Cohen, spoke to York University students on Tuesday, Jan. 22 about their involvement with OneVoice, a grassroots movement working toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution.

"When you lose friends, you become more angry, more aggressive," Labadi told The Mirror, adding he has friends in militias. "But my good friends try to keep me away from anything bad, even if they are involved with bad things themselves."

Life for Labadi in Palestine is vastly different from that in the western world, he said.

"You don’t really live a life, you just live," he said. "There are curfews, check points everywhere, you cannot really move freely and you see people getting killed."

Cohen has also seen her fair share of tragedies.

Her army commander was blown up in a bus outside the base. She’s lost friends in bombings and through army service. Her paramedic boyfriend was shot in Gaza while they chatted on the phone, surviving thanks to a bulletproof vest.

"Everyday life becomes harder," said the 24-year-old. "People are angry, resentful. In my opinion, Palestinian leaders have made problematic decisions throughout history and the Palestinian people suffer from it. We want to show both sides have suffered, but it’s time to look to the future. It’s not what happened, it’s what do we do now?"

Laurel Rapp, international education program manager at the OneVoice Movement, said the organization is not advocating for peace but simply conflict resolution.

"Each side faces particular challenges," she said. "We want the creation of an independent and viable Palestine that lives next door to an independent and viable Israel."