PROMOTING RECONCILIATION
Palestine is politically fragmented with Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip and Fatah being in the government in the West Bank. The political division between Hamas and Fatah has also divided and created a gap between the universities in Gaza. With this project, we are focusing on Al Azhar University, where most of the students are affiliated with Fatah, and the Islamic University, where most are affiliated with Hamas. Students from the two universities have violently clashed with each other three times in the last ten years. Thus, the main goal of the Students for Dialog project is to create a space of communication and reconciliation between students affiliated to rival political parties in the two universities.
We started to work with the students from the Al Azhar University, forming groups in which each party was equally represented. We provided them with courses in human rights and conflict transformation in order to promote a peaceful dialogue. An important result was when the Islamic block of Al Azhar University clearly and publicly declared that from now on, they would communicate and deal with the Student Council Union.
Another major result was the painting of the wall of the Al Azhar University – an activity which was planned and carried out by the participants themselves, both those affiliated with Hamas and those affiliated with Fatah. The wall of the Al Azhar University was full of graffiti, pictures of martyrs, tags fromand other politicalmessages. The participants decided to clean the wall and the day was a celebration! The university’s administration supported the event, happy to have their students unified in this activity, and local policemen took care of the security of the students. At the end of the day, we had a perfectly white wall! One of the students said: “Now that the outside of the university is white, we have to work onmaking it white in the inside, too.” Overall, I was happy with that symbolic sign of unity, between the parties and also the genders, since both men and women participated.
Unfortunately not long after, the wall was yet again tagged with hostile graffiti from the different parties. Furthermore, the political situation became too tense to continue the project. Nevertheless, we are currently discussing how to continue the activities and we are hopeful that we will be able to continue working for reconciliation and greater dialogue between students affiliated to rival political parties. Reported byMohammad Shamallakh, 24, project coordinator.
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