15,000 Attend Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Event, Calling For Peace And ‘End To Occupation’

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a highly charged political event in Tel Aviv’s Ganei Yehoshua park attended by an estimated 15,000 participants, Israeli left-wingers and Palestinians held a joint Memorial Day event, calling for peace and for an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria.

Initially Palestinian participants from Judea and Samaria were blocked from attending by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, citing security concerns if they would enter Israel. However the High Court of Justice rejected Gallant’s decision and permitted the 169 Palestinian attendees to arrive, prompting outrage from right-wing leaders.

Likud MK Moshe Saada slammed the decision, saying that “The High Court is once again intervening in decisions that don’t belong to it, and is crassly trampling over the government and its representatives. If you wondered why the reforms to the legal system are so necessary, then here is one example out of many for the necessity of fixing and changing a system which has lost its way and its moral compass.”

Right-wing protesters stood outside the park at the event, shouting “traitors” and “leftists” as speakers shared their ultra-left-wing political opinions about Memorial Day.

During the controversial ceremony, the largest such joint memorial to take place in Israel, Israelis and Palestinians shared their memories of loved ones and called for and end to armed conflict.

“It is easy and natural to hate, and to be angry, and to want revenge, and to feed the fire of conflict again and again,” said Yuval Sapir, who lost his sister Tamar in a 1994 bus bombing , adding that “I am an Israeli, a scientist, a father, a bereaved brother. I chose life. I chose to try to break the chain of revenge and hatred.”

Memorial Day is viewed by most Israelis as solemn and above partisan politics, but the joint event is one of the day’s most political ceremonies, and generated controversy this year before it began as the court reversed Gallant’s decision.

At the event, in speeches delivered in both Hebrew and Arabic, activists and bereaved families denounced the “occupation” and urged others to work toward peace.

Among those present was a delegation from the US Embassy headed by George Noll, chief of the Office of Palestinian Affairs.

Representatives from the Parents Circle — Families Forum, an Israeli-Palestinian bereavement group, said in their speeches that there was pain on both sides of the Green Line, and pushed for an end to the conflict that claimed their loved ones’ lives.

“It is the pain of our loss, and our shared hope for an end to the conflict, that binds us together and strengthens us,” Israeli Anat Marnin, who lost two of her brothers on the same day during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, told the audience.

“From the depths of grief, we find the strength to work together,” she added of her experience in the forum, “to show that another way is possible, to bring our message to friends on both sides. Look at us, from whom the conflict took our most beloved. If we can together say ‘enough,’ all of you can and are invited to answer the call.”

Yusra Abdel Aziz Mahfouz from the West Bank city of Nablus, who lost her son Alaa to a stray bullet in 2000, described her transition after his death from wanting vengeance to advocating for peace.

“In the first days after the tragedy, I had a strong desire for revenge, that is, to do something to heal myself, but I didn’t know what to do,” she said in her remarks. Through meetings with bereaved Palestinian and Israeli families, Mafouz said she came to understand that “their pain is similar to mine, and the will to take revenge changed to the understanding that it is better to seek peace, not to continue violence.”

Adel Abu Badawiya from the West Bank’s Jenin — the site of repeated clashes between Israeli troops and terror groups in the past year — lost his brother Majid, who died as a child while hiding from Israeli troops. He, like several others speaking at the event, also used the platform to push for an end to Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria.

“We Palestinians, Israelis, Arabs and Jews must try to change reality and create a better future for our children. A future where there is no pain, fear and occupation,” he said.

Taking it a step further, Mohammed Beiruti, who founded an organization called A Land for All that advocates for “two states in one homeland,” told the mostly Israeli crowd that its government was “fascist” and tied ending the occupation to ending the conflict.

“This isn’t just yours,” he said in reference to the land on which all of the bereaved families have lost loved ones. “Stop the occupation if you want peace.”

Israeli university administrator Neta Ziv echoed Beiruti’s call, attacking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, which includes right-wing pro-annexation parties, in addition to widespread settlement support within the premier’s own Likud party.

“Evil winds, extremist and racist, are currently blowing from official centers of power in Israel,” Ziv said, charging that, “they preach Jewish supremacy and work to deepen the occupation. They seek to widen the rift and spread hatred between the Palestinian and Israeli peoples.”

“The unraveling of the Israeli sense of solidarity is difficult and it is real. But perhaps it also creates an opportunity,” Ziv said. “An opportunity to ask: How do we establish and formulate a new social contract that is not based on the participation of members of only one nationality?”