"I am a Muslim Palestinian American and when my son asked me who my hero was I took three days to think about it. I told him my hero is Jesus, because he took a stand and he died for it. What really needs to be done is for the churches to be like Jesus; to challenge the Israeli occupation and address the apartheid practices as moral issues. Even if every church divested and boycotted Israel it would not harm Israel. After the USA and Russia, Israel is the third largest arms exporter in the world. It is a moral issue that the churches must address."-Mohammad Alatar, film producer of "The Ironwall" on Nov. 1, 2006 during the coordinating and strategizing meeting at BEIT ARABIYA Peace Center.



Beit Arabiya is the name of the home of the Arabiya family with seven children that has been demolished four times by the Israeli government and rebuilt four times by the efforts of ICAHD/Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and the JCHR/Jurist Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian NGO focused on legal advocacy for Palestinians in the Jerusalem area.

The home has become a meeting place for Israelis, Palestinian and International peace activists and is the cornerstone and intersecting point of Areas A, B, and C. Area A is under Palestinian authority, areas B and C are areas where Israel has control and demolishes homes.

Since 1967 over 15,000 Palestinian families in the occupied territories have been left homeless due to home demolitions. The reasons for these home demolitions is purely political: to confine the 3 ? million residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza into small, crowded, impoverished and disconnected enclaves.

Less than a half hour drive from the Old City of Jerusalem one will witness a most unholy stark landscape of acres upon acres of olive trees that have been cut down to stumps by the Israeli government. Bedouins no longer graze the land and the few who remain in ghetto camps will soon be transfered to a new 'home' upon a garbage dump.

International Law states that Occupation is to be temporary, maintain the status quo and not to pilfer the resources of the occupied. A massive rock quarry is just one more example of how the occupiers ignore and deny International Law as the world remains silent.

The Beit Arabyia home/Peace Center's closest neighbor is a soon to be dismantled bedouin camp. The Israeli governments policy of "Quiet Transfer" will mean extinction for the the nomadic bedouins for they have been denied the inalienable right to move about to graze their dwindling herds.

On a hill in front of the Arabyia home/Peace Center is the newly erected Sheen Bet [similar to USA FBI] prison and interrogation center. A new portion of the Ring Road which will connect the illegal settlements/colonies runs between the two and The Apartheid Wall is in full frontal brutal view.

Upon the wall of the home is a mural donated by the North American Workers Against the USA occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The mural depicts Rachel Corrie, the American who was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza when she stood up to defend the home of a Physician with five children, and a pregnant Palestinian woman of ten who was also killed in Gaza. The angelic images of the two women float above a depiction of a USA made Caterpillar bulldozer tipped to one side and flanked by tanks and weapons of destruction. On both sides of the weapons of destruction are many people. A railroad track reminds the viewer that prior to 1948, Jews and Palestinians once worked together in peaceful solidarity to build a railroad.

The Arabyia home/Peace Center is the cornerstone of the the village of Anata and the Shufat refugee camp, in the area where the prophet Jeremiah warned the people that violence and destruction were all that God could see. The Arabyia home/Peace Center is a visible persistent witness of hope and solidarity that stands because of the cooperation and unity of of locals, Israeli's and Internationals with one mind, one heart and with The Great Spirit on their side.

"We're looking for a leader with The Great Spirit on his side."-Neal Young, 2005.

I met many on my journey to Beit Arabyia.