Two From Santa Cruz Join Mid East Delegation

Scott Kennedy, Coordinator of the Middle East Program of the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz has departed for Jerusalem, leading a two week delegation of 14 persons to Israel and the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Kennedy is co-leading the study tour with Miryam Rashid from the American Friends Service Committee/Quakers in Chicago. The delegation includes one other person from Santa Cruz, Ken Carlson and others from Los Gatos, CA, Ohio, Ontario, Canada, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

After a two day orientation in Washington, DC, the delegation will travel to Tel Aviv. They will stay at the St. George College Guesthouse at the Anglican Cathedral complex in Palestinian East Jerusalem and have overnight home stays with Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab families. The delegation will spend 2 1/2 days with other Internationals and Israeli activists helping Palestinian farmers with their olive harvest. They will travel to Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron on the West Bank and also visit Israeli West Jerusalem, the Western Galilee and Haifa, Nazareth and Northern Israel. The group will meet with the Mayor of Qiryat Shemona, a town near the Lebanese border that suffered heavy rocket attacks during the recent War with Lebanon.

Co-leader Miryam Rashid is the Interim Director of the Middle East Program at American Friends Service Committee in Chicago. She completed an MA in Middle East Studies from the University of Chicago in 1998. Miryam lived in the occupied West Bank for five years, including as a teenager during the first Intifada. She was involved with Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations from 1998 to 2000. In her work at non-governmental organizations in Washington and Chicago, she has done extensive research on human rights issues in the occupied territories, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the proliferation of settlements throughout the occupied territories, Jerusalem, and US policy in the region.

Co-leader Scott Kennedy has served as Chair of the Fellowship of Reconciliation's Middle East Task Force and the chair of the National Council of FOR. He is a co-founder and Middle East staff person of the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, CA. He has traveled to the Middle East more than 30 times and led delegations as early as the 1970’s and as recently as August 2005.

For more information or to receive regular reports from the delegation, contact: middleeast [at] forusa.org or visit http://www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org/CurrentDelegation.html.