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Arabs and Jews refuse to be enemies

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I'm proud to be one of the thousands of Israelis and Palestinians who joined the demonstration on Saturday night in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The crowd, mobilized by a broad range of groups (including the Israeli Peace Now movement), is united in our opposition to settler groups who are evicting Palestinian families and moving into their homes there.


The demonstration was a powerful show of force by the Israeli peace camp. Indeed, the headline on the front page of today's Ma'ariv, which conservatively estimates the crowd at 3,000, reads: "There is a Left in Jerusalem." 

Israeli and Palestinian flags waived in the evening breeze, as former Knesset Member Mossi Raz reminded us that this was the largest, shared Israeli-Palestinian demonstration in a decade.

Peace Now activists handed out flyers detailing the dangers inherent in a Jerusalem polarized by radical settler activity. The flyers included a letter from Nasser Rawi, a patriarch of one of the Palestinian families that had been evicted from their homes this summer. In the letter, addressed to his fellow Jerusalemites, Rawi declares:

"I have always believed in peace and that Jerusalem can be a shared capital for both peoples... Despite the suffering that my family is enduring, I will not give up on the opportunity to live in peace beside you in two capitals side-by-side. Sadly, in recent years, the Jerusalem Municipality has allowed extreme right-wing groups to incite tensions, to create conflict, and to turn the solution into an impossibility. Despite the effort at coexistence, right-wing forces in the city threaten to bring about another Intifada. I remain hopeful that we can put an end to the radicalization."

Rawi is right. The tension in East Jerusalem is palpable. And it could spiral out of control. As the demonstration was wrapping up, right wing activists threw stones at us. They also broke the mirrors of cars parked in the neighborhood.

But Saturday night's demonstration also proved that Israelis and Palestinians can stand up - together - against this violence and for a better future.  I will forever remember the simple chant that the crowd shouted over-and-over again:

"Arabs and Jews refuse to be enemies."

It is a sentiment that we can all support.