Zoughbi Zoughbi, the founder and Director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Centre will be visiting the UK in July as a guest of FoR England. Zougbhi will be speaking at the National Justice and Peace Conference in Derbyshire and speaking to a small number of groups around the country. Please do try and come along.

Zoughbi Al-Zoughbi is founder and Director of Wi’am, The Palestinian Conflict Resolution Centre which uses the traditional Arab form of mediation, Sulha, with western models of conflict resolution. Wi’am is a branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. Zoughbi was born in 1963, the second youngest of eight children, just two minutes walk from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. His family has lived in the area for almost 600 years as a Palestinian Christian family. He is married with four children.

In a recent interview in FoR’s magazine, Peace by Peace, Zoughbi talked about the work of Wi’am: “We try to ‘walk the walk and talk the talk’ of nonviolence. Wi’am focuses on nonviolent conflict resolution and in particular we have programmes for women and children. For women we have programmes to try to help them be part of society on an equal footing, to be equal citizens. In our society which is very patriarchal, a conservative traditional society, it’s not easy.

We also work with children and that is really the enjoyable work because children will be the youth of tomorrow and they will be the leaders of the coming years. We work with the children focusing on trauma coping. We don’t have trauma ‘healing’, this is not post traumatic stress disorder because its layer over layer – it is not post - it continues. So we work to help them cope together, play together and provide them with an environment to air their feelings, to vent their problems and to create. They write poetry, they do art, and they have drama, sport and so on. FoR and other organisations have supported us and we really appreciate all the prayers and support and partnership because without you, without international support, I don’t think we could do it.”

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Zoughbi will be speaking at the following events:

20–22 July: Derbyshire: ‘Called to be Peacemakers – Who Me?
The National Justice and Peace conference, Swanick, Derbyshire. For more details and a booking form see www.for.org.uk/njpn or call 01865 748796 [MAP HERE]

22 July: Wolverhampton: Preaching at Evening Service. 6.30pm
Wombourne Methodist Church, Common Road, Wombourne. For more details contact Denis & Diana Beaumont 01902 895585 [MAP HERE]

24 July: London: ‘Persistent Peacemaking: Keeping Faith with Nonviolence in a Time of War’.
Zoughbi will be speaking alongside Fr. John Dear from the US. In this session two long-time peace activists - one from Palestine and one from the USA - will explore how we can remain faithful to our call to be nonviolent peacemakers -even in a time of war. St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, London. 6.30pm-8.30pm. Details from 020 7496 1610 [ MAP HERE]

25 July: Bath: Journeying in Hope – Peacemaking in Palestine.
Friends Meeting House, York Street, Bath. 8.00pm. Contact Nick Francis 01225 480782 [MAP HERE]

26 July: Bishop’s Castle: Journeying in Hope – Peacemaking in Palestine. Methodist Hall, Station Street, Bishops Castle Shropshire, SY9 5AQ. 7.30pm Contact John Cribb 01588 620 470 [MAP HERE]

28 July: Edinburgh: Journeying in Hope – Peacemaking in Palestine Quaker Meeting House, Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh. 2pm. Contact Runa MacKay 0131 5522567 [MAP HERE]

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A short interview with Zoughbi Zoughbi.

Can you tell us a little about how you got involved in this work?

I was 13 years old when I discovered who I am in the sense of being an Arab Palestinian Christian, and from that point of discovering my identity I became an activist. I was going to the Good Friday procession in Jerusalem, when I was stopped at a checkpoint. I was asked for my ID but being under 16 I didn’t have one but they wouldn’t believe me. So they slammed me against the wall and raised my hands. I was being searched, beaten and so on. I tried to ask how I could prove it to them when I remembered that I had my birth certificate. I tried to get it from my pocket but the captain hit me with a stick. Finally I was able to get it to give it to him.

I went back to my mother – my father had died by this time – very angry but she said, “No don’t, be angry you are a Christian, remember where you are going”. So since then, I became active, active in three spheres; social, religious and nonviolence. From my elders I learnt mediation and how to resolve conflict. From early on I was doing peer mediation. While I was doing other jobs, people called and asked for mediation, so we became mediators. I studied conflict resolution and undertook a Peace Studies MA and graduated from Notre Dame in the US in 1989. After I finished the studying I came back. I worked in different things. But still the mediation work was needed. I decided to leave my job, and establish a centre.

Tell us a little about the work of Wi’am.

At the beginning we had a small room, a telephone line and a computer. Eventually Wi’ am became one of the main centres, locally and regionally. We have good connections with the world, we invest a lot in relationships. We try to ‘walk the walk and talk the talk’ of nonviolence. Wi’am focuses on nonviolent conflict resolution. We have programmes for women and children. For women we have programmes try to help them be part of society on an equal footing, to be equal citizens. In our society which is very patriarchal, a conservative traditional society, it’s not easy.

We also work with children and that is really the enjoyable work because children will be the youth of tomorrow and they will be the leaders of the coming years. We work with the children focusing on trauma coping. We don’t have trauma ‘healing’, this is not post traumatic stress disorder because its layer over layer – it is not post - it continues. So we work to help them cope together, play together and provide them with an environment to air their feelings, to vent their problems and to create. They write poetry, they do art, and they have drama, sport and so on. FoR and other organisations have supported us and we really appreciate all the prayers and support and partnership because without you, I don’t think we could do it. Your involvement gives more depth and meaning to our work. So we are working with children on all levels and more children are asking to join us.

We also work with youths which is an important issue because youths in Palestine are the pride of everything. The things that young people in the West take for granted, our youth die for. There is a theft sort of spontaneity. We don’t move from place to place freely, we cannot say, ‘OK, lets have a cup of coffee in Jerusalem’. Jerusalem is five miles away but its easier for us to go to England than Jerusalem. So we work with youths, helping them to see that they don’t have the monopoly on pain and oppression. People are oppressed here and there. There is poverty in the south, there is poverty in the north. We are part of this global village which they should try to look at and we try to help them see.

You say you have been an activist from thirteen. When you were growing up was there a temptation to get into violence?

I mentioned about the time when I was 13 years old. I was really angry – you can imagine – I was full of anger, but not hatred. My mother always taught us to be kind to others; to Christians, to Muslims, to Jews or any other faith. She always reminded her children that one my our father’s best friends was a Jew. We are not against Jews - we are against this oppression, this occupation. For me Jesus was our example of how to face oppression and frustration, and anger. Many times we were tempted, especially when you are a young chap and you are confronted with occupation forces, teargas, bullets etc. You want to change the world. However if I have the choice between being oppressed or being the oppressor, I would chose to be the oppressed rather than the oppressor. For me the choice is nonviolence as activism not passivism. Later I was exposed to the American civil rights movement, to Gandhi, to Bishop Helda Camara in Brazil, to Mother Theresa, Thich Nhat Hanh…

I have been in prison several times, been tortured several times, denied access permits. Even now I am not allowed to go to Jerusalem and I don’t have a permit to visit Tel Aviv. My wife has no right to live with me. She is a tourist in my home after 16 years. Recently an Israeli captain said to me ‘You married an American - your wife and children have American passports, still you are here. Why do you not go?’ I told him ‘I’m here for the same reason you are here, this is my land as well as your land, and this is a land where I was born, and I like to keep’. He was annoyed. I feel I am called to be here and to work here. I hope and pray that I can continue with the message that I have to give and continue to live that and witness to that - I feel that is my mission.

You mentioned you have been in prison a few times, do you want to say something about that?

We are not prisoners because we commit crimes but because we are calling for justice and nonviolent action. The earliest time I was in prison was when I was a teenager. Several times I’ve been taken to prison without trial under the emergency regulation laws which, I’m sorry to say, the British introduced in 1945. It gives Israeli's the ‘right’ to imprison under the umbrella of administrative detention. In a way that law says that every Palestinian is guilty until proven innocent. So they take me from time to time, and they call it, in the modern political terminology, ‘preventative detention’. One time I was taken to prison because I was taking two Americans to visit a refugee camp.

Prison was a good experience for me. It was also part of the temptation that you talk about. It helped me to really examine my value system and examine the route that I want to be on. I was at one time the only Christian in that prison and my fellow Palestinians didn’t believe that I’m a Christian. ‘You don’t have blue eyes, you are not a white person’ etc. I said our family have been Christian six hundred years in this land – there was real interfaith dialogue inside the prison! Prison isn’t easy. I was in solitary confinement, which is really the most difficult situation, standing all night, not able to sit, not to shower, not to eat, not to drink. You have a sack on your face, plastic handcuffs which if you move they will be tightened, name calling and psychological warfare against you. The family don’t know where you are and you don’t know what’s happening to your family. It was really a very tough situation, but it has enhanced my knowledge and empowered me in my work.

What is it about FoR that makes you want to be part of it? Is there something special about it for you?

We talk about the 21st century global village. For me the Fellowship of Reconciliation brings the global village to be in front of us. Through FoR we are connected with people from all the corners of the world who are working for peace and nonviolence. As Martin Luther King says, ‘an injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere’, and as Christ says, ‘whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you are doing it for me’. I am compelled to be part of this global village, to try to understanding the situation and to be in solidarity with those who are oppressed and those who are marginalised. So FoR is one of those groups that give us a window to the world and help us to be active.

How do you keep going? What keeps you energised?

Life is a matter of choices and when you choose hope you are not the same. Hope by itself is a journey that you take, a journey of risk and a journey of promise. We take risks with our lives in the hope that we will have the promise of peace. I do what I do also because my children would like to see things change. I can’t live in peace probably in my time. I hope it will, but I would like that my children when they are grown they will see a different life.

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Click here to vist the website of Wi'am, the Palestinian Conflcit Resloution Centre