This week we marked Israeli Independence Day. The day before we marked Memorial Day. The confluence of the two days is intentional and appropriate.

19,000 Israelis have been killed since 1947 in wars, terrorism, and other conflict-related events. How many Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and others have been killed? Unfortunately, even more. I move that Memorial Day be redesignated a day for all sides to mourn all the victims of this violent conflict, Israeli and Arab. And that we use the day to reflect upon the need to bring this blood-soaked conflict to an end.

As always, this season presents an occasion to evaluate our national achievements, shortcomings, and - above all - the road we are traveling. As last year, the Yesh Gvul organization (advocating conscientious objection to army service in the Occupied Territories) offered an alternative torch-lighting ceremony to counter the official version. In our - the people's - ceremony, torches were lit by those who have distinguished themselves in struggle for a more just and peaceful Israel.

Our torch-lighters::

Dov Yirmiya: Veteran and aging peace activist known for his ringing call "Dai Dam" - "Enough Blood!"

Sha`arban and Majid Kazamel: A Druze couple whose son was killed in a helicopter crash on his way to the war in Lebanon. 53 young men from their Druze town of Beit Jann were killed in the lifetime of the state of Israel.

Neta Amar: An activist lawyer with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, who has been outspoken about many issues, especially Mizrahi oppression.

Jeff Halper: Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD), who spoke eloquently of looking for a way to end the cycle of destruction of Palestinian homes.

Donna Birenbaum: Young and energetic advocate to end the abuse of foreign workers in Israel.

Michel (Mikado) Warschawski: Veteran peace activist, who cited the plight of Palestinian refugees throughout the world and inequality for Israel's Arab citizens.

Attalia Boimel: One of the Mothers and Women for Peace, who declared that unless Israel arrives at a peace soon with Lebanon and Syria, Israeli mothers will stop sending their sons to serve in the army.

Duddi Maklev: Active in the Keshet - Mizrahi Rainbow organization, which seeks ways to end Ashkenazi hegemony and to democratize Israeli society.

Hanna Friedman: Founder and head of the Committee Against Torture, Hanna was one of the first to expose torture as a routine procedure used against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.

Dedde Beniste: Founder of a community organization in a poor neighborhood, Dedde has relentlessly pursued public housing solutions for the poor.

Eyal Reuveni: A journalist who sat in prison for his refusal to serve in the Israeli Army as a guard of Palestinian prisoners.

Amos Keinan: Well-known Israeli writer and novelist, who dedicated his torch to Emil Gruensweig, a young Israeli killed by a hand grenade thrown into a peace demonstration by an Israeli right wing extremist. Last night's ceremony last night was held in Emil Gruensweig Park.

What brought tears to my eyes was the quiet presence in the audience of Salim and Arabiyye Shawamre, parents of Lena, whose home was twice bulldozed to the ground within the past year. This couple has every reason to hate Israel. But thanks to Jeff and ICAHD, Israelis have been there for them throughout - to express support, solidarity, and help rebuild their home (twice). The presence at the Israeli ceremony of Salim and Arabiyye is living testimony to the power of peace and reconciliation efforts.

HOPE FLOWERS And on the subject of home demolitions, things are heating up. Last Monday, two homes were destroyed in Ussawiye, an Arab village which borders Jerusalem, but has been declared part of Jerusalem by the Israeli government, thus making them particularly vulnerable to efforts to rid the city of its Palestinian inhabitants. The village has consistently paid a high price for its location - homes destroyed, residents killed in clashes with the Israeli police, and land confiscated by the Israeli government to build the Jewish neighborhood of French Hill. Can you believe that this village also has a group of Palestinian women engaged in dialogue with a group of Israeli women from adjoining French Hill?

I am appending below an abbreviated version of a letter from the Hope Flowers School, just outside Bethlehem. This well-named school is unique in the Palestinian Occupied Territories for its teaching of peace and reconciliation. No other school in the territories brings together Israelis and Palestinians or provides Hebrew-language instruction to the children (taught by Israeli volunteers). There is no school more deserving of support and less deserving of destruction. And yet they are now slated for demolition, based on a zoning law that has not been updated since 1942 - and which is applied only to Palestinians, not to Israelis in the territories.

I am horrified to think this school may be destroyed. We must act immediately to avert this tragedy.

Read the letter below. Even if you skim the details, don't skip the last paragraph, "To close sweetly". Then please send e-mails and faxes to the relevant bodies in a sample letter that I am sending separately.

Thanks for your help.

May next Memorial-Independence Day bring 19,000 flowers to cover the graves with hopes for peace.

Gila

Letter from Hope Flowers School Dear Friends,

Warm greetings to you from the Hope Flowers School in the Bethlehem area. We hope that you are enjoying the movement of the season into spring, and that it will be a time of happy blossoming for us all . . .

Now we would like to provide the latest news of our ongoing dealings with the Israeli Civil Administration (C.A.) about our building. This is the reason for the timing of our writing, our latest hearing at their center having been on Monday, 12 April. Please attend closely to this report if you can, because we would like you to write to them now on our behalf, and we will tell you how and why. Thank you for your attention.

On Monday morning there were five of us - 2 from the school, one U.S. consular officer, one U.S. embassy officer, and a close Israeli friend who knows the law. We were greeted by 4 representatives of the C.A.'s Subcommittee for Supervision of Building Activities, three of whom had already been met by the three of us who had been there on 1 March. Those three of us were surprised and NOT delighted by what we heard. It seemed that our hopefulness had been shortsighted, that there would not after all be a solution available to us with a narrow, simple focus. It seemed that after all, in a sense, "push" was coming to "shove," at least in terms of administrative law regulations.

The "New Deal": What appears to be true now, as the time closes for the decision about the fate of our out-structure-in-progress, the putative focus of the original notice to appear at the first hearing, is that this (sub)committee will NOT be able to give a permit to build for it, or for any piece of our compound. This highly probable (98%?) position was brought to the group by the new member of their panel, a higher-ranking military person than the one who presided at the first hearing. He did still speak in terms of probabilities, while one member of their panel did say explicitly this time that it was "not logical" for the permit to be granted, due to the zoning laws that apply. Those zoning laws may be familiar to some of you, as they are the ones remaining from the British Mandate period, set in 1942 to regulate development then, and often invoked controversially in recent years to justify demolition of houses built without permits in the Jerusalem area.

These regulations are sometimes referred to as the "Green Laws," defining most of the areas not already inhabited in 1942 for agricultural use – Green Areas – as opposed to "public" use. So, like so much else that had not been built on then, the land where the school and its whole neighborhood now stand is all deemed agricultural-use, "green" land.

Our early-received assurances that the Israeli authorities were not focussing on our main school building, but only on the out-structure, had let us hope that we might not need at this time to confront the full implications of the ultimate conflict between our location and this law. But it now seems very clear that our case will not be spared from the "logic" of this conflict. As things stand now, the C.A. will almost certainly not issue a permit for the out-structure as a result of the current building-application procedure that we are now in. Still we agreed to return for another hearing on this application on 24 May, before which time we must submit yet another architectural drawing. But more important for our real chances are the other options that the C.A. panel outlined in our meeting on 12 April. These are the ones where we would like your active support, and they are described below:

Request for Exemption, and Application for Re-zoning: We will pass without comment the fact that these options were not previously described to us, and the fact that two of their panel nevertheless insisted that they had told us one of these options the last time, despite none of us having understood anything like that. Let us move forward. We will now pursue these options to the extent of our abilities. First we will write a letter to the head of the C.A., requesting an exemption from the regulations requiring us to get a permit. His granting such a request would mean that our buildings could stay as they are without need of further permit applications; however, simply doing this would also mean that we would have no right either to complete the "kitchen" out-structure, nor to complete any of the building plans on the rest of the compound, even when there might be funds to permit doing so. This would not provide well for the future that we hope our school and peace education will have here. But it could prevent anything from being demolished, too.

We will also pursue application for a zoning change for the school property. This will require going through our engineer, and his firm's coordinating with a specialist as well as with the engineer on the C.A. panel. It will require submission of a specially drawn map of the local area, siting the school among the other structures of the neighborhood. This will involve a cost that we would much rather not bear - approximately $3,800 - except for its offering a chance for the school to exist and grow legally into the future, even if that future persists in our Area C, occupied category of existence. [If only there were a procedure for making an application to become designated Area A!] We will make this application as soon as possible. The engineer has already agreed to begin the process, and we hope to have the application under submission before the hearing on 24 May.

How You Can Help, and Please Do: We believe that your letters to the C.A. might improve the chances of success for our request for exemption and our application for re-zoning . . . [details about what and to whom to write appear in the sample letter sent separately] We are very grateful. Thank you.

To Close Sweetly: Thankfully we note that our Mothers' Day celebration was a big success for all concerned, despite the abrupt return to winter weather that overshadowed the afternoon, outdoor event. But it was anyway very sweet, with the return to the school of many old friends from Israel for the very special program to honor the mothers here and everywhere. Making her singing debut in the Middle East with the assistance of Israeli friends, the American singer for peace Carole Isis honored us with several of her original songs. We made the occasion also for planting a Peace Pole, with the prayer "May peace prevail on earth" in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Japanese on its four sides. Also we were joined by a dance troupe from Al-Hadaf peace center of the Old City in Jerusalem in our first cooperation with them. And in the program of singing and dancing, our third-grade class was joined by their project partners from the Jerusalem Waldorf School - the first time that Israeli school children have performed with Palestinian children on the West Bank! This is the kind of activity that our approach to peace education makes possible, and among many others, one of the reasons that we presume to ask your continued support for our work. We are sure that we can continue to lead in building such positive relationships if we can continue our existence. Thank you for your consideration.

The Hope Flowers School
P. O. Box 732, Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine, via Israel
phone, 972-2-274-0693 or -4975; fax, 972-2-274-7084
web site: Hope Flowers School Web Site

Previous articles at Ariga about the Hope Flowers School