During the month of July I am participating as a Christian Peacemaker Team member in Hebron, Palestine. Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is a faith-based organization that supports Palestinian-led, nonviolent, grassroos resistance to the Israeli occupation and the unjust structures that uphold it. CPT has demonstrated that teams of four to six people trained in the skills of documentation, observation, nonviolent intervention, and non-anxious presence can make a difference in explosive situations. Peacemaker teams are present in places like Hebron where the distribution and exercise of power stimies real peace efforts. Hebron typifies conditions in which one party has most of the power and the other has little. Until both parties have hope for a fair relationship at the nogotiating table,the conflict appears to be headed toward an ever vanishing place called Palestine. CPT workers try to emphasize or encourage nonviolent methods for redress and get in the way of violence when they can.
CPT maintains one team at two sites in Palestine. Half of the team is in the city of Hebron/al-Khalil in the southern West Bank. The second half is located 25 kilometers (15) miles further south in the Palestinian village at-Tiwane (near Yatta) very close to the Israel settlement of Ma'on.
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