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Permalink Reply by Eyal Raviv on November 3, 2007 at 12:00am

If you are involved you have access to information already. Still, for public knowledge, Onevoice put out an advisory and a statement. You can read what I wrote about the issue here.

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Permalink Reply by Ela on November 3, 2007 at 9:42am

Many Palestinians and Israelis felt that this One Voice event was not aimed at achieving a real peace, but rather was intended to maintain the status quo. The main criticism of OneVoice Mandate is that it fails to take into consideration international law, something that the State of Israel all along has failed to comply with through its ongoing occupation and continued settlement policies. I personally am quite suspicious of an organization supported by global corporations, and one which also has some very conservative academics on their board, as well as members of the Likud and Shas parties. There were also reports in the press that many Palestinians in particular had never been officially asked to sit on the organization's board, and that many people had no idea what they were signing as well.

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Permalink Reply by rawan ghroof on November 3, 2007 at 10:22am

Dear Corey
i am not involved in Onevoice as you are but i know them as a very active center in Palestine,
i live in Jericho and i am originally from thier, about this event i am not sure how they announce about it, because i heared about it through members who are involved in onevoice, and i tried to contact as many as i can to know how can i attend it, withought knowing that its a message , we knew its peace event but we didnt knew about the letter & signatures, after that i read in the internet a lot of messages against them and a lot of clarifications regarding the letter they worked on and if you read it in Arabic you will understand why it stoped,
last Wednesday i went to a meeting in Ramallah and Mr. Fathi the head of OneVoice in Ramallah showed us many newspapers that talked about them in bad way, but he also expalined what i beleive also that this campaign wasnt aginst OneVoice it was sended as message to all peace makers and thier Startegy of work.

Palestine were showed to the world s a democratic country through the elections and result, but after that the internal war start and its the same with the peacemakers in Palestine , they exist , they call for peace and they believe in it, but know body think they have the right to continue so they keep growing as they can and on the other side there is movements who work very hard to stop thier moves.

its very complicated , when you work for peace you are not respectable, you will hear many comments and you have to be strong enough to ignore and go on , even you are indivedual or association.

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Permalink Reply by Corey Gil-Shuster on November 3, 2007 at 2:38pm

Thanks for your responses and I would really like to hear more. I am interested because from my perspective as an Israeli, the Palestinian reaction was very confusing. I am a conflict studies student so I decided to write a paper on what happened to help me understand. Not looking at the “facts” (because those will differ depending on which article I believe) but from the perspective that people felt threatened by this organization- an organization cannot cause damage to a cause, only the belief/disbelief in the oganization can. If anyone is interested, I will post the paper once it is written in about a month.

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Permalink Reply by Neri Bar-On on November 5, 2007 at 3:12pm

Friend,

I edited a bit a my comment from other discussion.

We need realism, because it is human nature to progress, and the Palestinians, Israelis Arabs reality demand evolution and restructuring. This is the root I see in the "One Voice" – we are one tissue of humans in a one planet with one future and we all strive to recognize and materialize this understanding about ourselves. This does not mean all of us can accept such view of the Middle East condition and in order to get this voice the power of influence groups as "One Voice" act to deliver the message.

The Palestinians that I work with me were much less impressed with the one voice, as it is recognized as collaboration with the enemy who is Israel and the Zionist movement. This is reality and it means that the Palestinians need at this stage different route to recognize the one voice and it cannot come from an "Israeli" source.

We need to respect that, and the Palestinians who recognized the One Voice and participated in this project are no collaborators with Israel, they are originally evolved people who can recognize the power of recognizing our deep bond as humans. But at this stage of Palestinians national development the identification with Israel is crucial barrier because they need to establish their autonomous identity which is attacked by the current life condition where Israel is playing a oppressive force.

Please see this "One Voice" Palestinian broadcast : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuWr3xtep3s its message – We are the Palestinians who have needs, lets share our voices to get what we deserve. "Israel" is the cause of the suffering of the Palestinians. That put us the Israelis in a blamed position – it is you and me and not the Israeli settlers who are blamed to this condition.
Now compare this voice with this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc4L2n1ni5c where it is more inline of our mutual cause of ending the conflict.

I do not think we should avoid the recognition that Israelis and Palestinians layered with different world view, not all Israelis nor the Palestinians can relate to the one voice idea. See Dr. Beck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuW0XqP4Lec explains the general systems of worldview we call Spiral Dynamics.
We need to look at the "Assimilation Contrast Effect" where the internal dominance power straggles intra-society becomes the force inter-society conflict. In this case the extreme of the Palestinians blocked the 18th event and proved their case that the Israelis cannot be trusted.

more transcripted videos from this lecture here
http://yeshe.zaadz.com/blog/2007/5/don_beck_in_tel_aviv
http://yeshe.zaadz.com/blog/2007/6/don_beck_in_tel_aviv_-_part_2


We can see the two voices in one voice and we need to recognize the Palestinian condition, they are under occupation not as Israelis so they need different routes of development that the message planed for the 18th event was pre-mature and we need to recognize it.

The Future is ours !

Please visit http://Buildpalestine.org

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