Rodents bring Israelis and Jordanians together

Economical benefit remains one of the greatest motives for individuals to actually do something. In some cases, it even neglects political barriers!

Read this story of Israeli and Jordanian farmers sharing experiences and working together in their struggle against rodents.

Let us hope that one day they will also work together fighting prejudices and hate.

No Israelis and Palestinians in the pub

Have you ever seen an Israeli and a Palestinian official sitting around the same table in public? I mean in real, not on television or in newspapers! Well, did you? I myself did yesterday!

The deputy chief of the Israeli embassy in the Netherlands, Yair Even, and the Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands, Sumaya Barghouti, met each other yesterday evening in a debate organized by a group of students of the University of Amsterdam (UvA). They were joined by Bert Bakker, former Dutch MP and Foreign Affairs spokesman for the small Dutch liberal party Democrats '66. The debate was presided by Paul Aarts, lecturer of International Relations at the UvA.

The event was titled "The good, the bad and the Dutch: The Netherlands' role in the Israel-Palestine conflict", but it was clearly not this Dutch thing that had attracted the 100-120 people present in the lecture room. It was rather the fact that two high ranked Israeli and Palestinian officials would talk to each other in public. The debate started with the aforementioned topic, but quickly shifted to the main issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I will only mention the main arguments though - this blog entry is not intended as a report or whatever.

"We want Israel to end the occupation, which is the root problem of the Palestinian question! If the occupation ends, there will be no Palestinian question!" shouted Barghouti. I never know what to think about female politicians and diplomats. There are so few of them, especially in the Middle East, that I can't afford myself to utter any critical word about them...

"If the Palestinians are really committed to peace, like Sadat (the former Egyptian president) was, then we will end the occupation and disband all settlements. Remember that we had cities in Sinai! We disbanded them all! Why? Because we saw that Sadat was committed to peace!" was Yair Even's reply. Though people had reminded him several times to speak up, the guy muttered throughout the debate, which really drove me crazy.

The Pub
The most interesting part of a debate in the Netherlands starts after the actual debate, as both the audience and the participants rush into a pub to continue talks in a more informal atmosphere. I was eagerly awaiting the moment that Even and Barghouti would have a beer together, but sadly enough, that did not happen.

The only debater that did come to the pub was Bert Bakker. Rushing into the pub, shouting "They sent me here!", he seemed as if he was totally unaware of the Dutch tradition of the Borrel (this is how the Dutch call such post-lecture pub sessions), but was eventually spotted drinking several pints of beer. At the end of the evening he greeted me twice; the first time on his way to the men's room and the second time on his way back - and this actually caused me some trouble in judging the guy: was he a real gentleman or simply a drunk man?

I myself was of course totally clearheaded, despite one Palm, two Maredsous and two La Chouffe...