Fall / Winter 2006
'Fear and Victimhood Are Pushed'
Meg Squier
Meg Squier, MA ’05, arrived in Israel on July 17, less than a week following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
She was part of an interfaith peacebuilding team meeting with Palestinian and Israeli groups working to end the violence in the Middle East.
”Israel is a heavily militarized country – there are soldiers, police and guns everywhere,” she said. In the West Bank “it can take up to three hours to make a one-hour trip due to the military checkpoints,” though U.S. passports helped her and her companion, Larry Levine, to pass through the Bethlehem checkpoint with barely a glance.
Squier observed that many Palestinian children have to walk as much as an hour to get to school due to the checkpoints and the blocking of connecting roads.
Many Palestinians are separated from their farmland and other means of livelihood by Israel’s new barriers. Entire communities are being walled in.
The Future of Children
Squier, a social worker who normally works with adults with disabilities and high school youth in two rural West Virginia counties, is particularly concerned about the future of the children in both Israel and occupied Palestine.
Bashir Issa Zoughbi, director of the Palestinian Center for Conflict Resolution in Bethlehem shared with her that “the occupation has made life difficult for youth, who have lost their sense of spontaneity and see no hope for the future.”
Squier wonders about the emphasis in Israel, particularly by the Israeli military, on preparing young people from an early age for military service.
“Fear and victimhood are pushed upon Israelis and Palestinians from childhood, legitimizing the use of violence as a form of resistance,” Squier said. “We met with groups from both sides who are working to change this perception, recognizing the humanity of the ‘others’ as a first step towards ending the conflict.”