Palestinian peace activist speaks at J Street U event

J Street U hosted Ali Abu Awwad, a Palestinian activist and pacifist, on Tuesday at Hillel.

Awwad asserted that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should incorporate both sides and make them more familiar with each other’s wants and needs.

Awwad is the founder of al-Tariq, an organization which educates Palestinians on principles of nonviolence. He said that he speaks to groups in America, Europe and the Middle East with the goal of increasing understanding between people of different cultures and different beliefs.

“Wherever I go, I always say to people, ‘Whatever you’re going to hear from me [is] not a story of complaining or punishing or blaming; it’s mostly to understand,’” Awwad said. “I explain the story of my life and my thoughts and my feelings as a Palestinian, but mostly as a human being. I know that any political management... has to include our emotions, our feelings, our suffering.” Ben Schwartz, an executive board memeber of J Street U, spoke about why the organization brought Awwad to Hopkins.

“Hopkins J Street U is committed to expanding the conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus,” Schwartz said. “We are hosting Ali Abu Awwad at Hopkins Hillel because we believe that listening to and engaging with challenging perspectives is necessary in order to achieve a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.”

Awwad described his youth as a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation and as a member of a family of Palestinian activists, including his mother, a leader in the Fatah political party, whom he saw be repeatedly arrested by Israeli forces throughout his childhood.

Awwad became interested in pacifism during his youth. When he and his mother were arrested and imprisoned in the 1990s, they participated in a 17-day hunger strike in the hope of being allowed to see one another. This strike persuaded him that peaceful tactics could be used to help the Palestinians gain statehood, and he made this nonviolent mission his life goal.

“We need a Palestinian nonviolence national movement and to create an identity to remove this blindness of confusion of who we are,” Awwad said. “Are we resisting... or are we citizens of a legal, political body? There is a movement of resistance, of a resistance based on nonviolence or also [the] development of our society and of our minds and our hopes.”

After the murder of his brother Youssef by an Israeli soldier, Awwad also became a part of a group which helps to bring together Israelis and Palestinians who have suffered bereavement due to the ongoing conflict.

Awwad said that his greatest hope was that students and others who attended the lecture would gain an understanding of life in Palestine. He hoped that both sides, in the interest of ending the conflict, would join together in a mutual, non-violent commitment to peace and a two-state solution.

Schwartz and his fellow executive board members hoped that students would come away with a greater understanding of the Palestinian side of the debate. Schwartz hoped that the lessons of Awwad’s experiences would help to influence students in their thoughts on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and convince them that peace with a two-state solution would be the right answer to ending violence in the area.

“I hope students not only learn about Ali’s life and work but grapple with the Palestinian narrative, of which Ali’s personal story is a part,” Schwartz said, “Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have tragic national narratives. What we hope to do, like always, is move beyond the unproductive conversation about which party is more to blame and focus on what we can do — as Americans, as Israelis and as Palestinians — to achieve peace.”