Photo and videos – Stephen Sizer
ICAHD UK was represented at the Greenbelt Festival in Kettering over August bank holiday weekend. We ran a stall in the Takeaway section which introduced punters to a range of organisations and issues and shared it with a marvellous team and dear friends of long-standing from Action Around Bethlehem Children with Disability (ABCD).
The festival celebrated Greenbelt’s 50th anniversary and once again Palestine was featured in the seminar programme and through musical performances. Palestinian flags flew and keffiyehs were worn by many which demonstrated the prominence it now has which largely grew out of Rediscovering Palestine (RP) a network that existed for many years to raise the issue of Palestine at this festival and other events.
During the festival we also engaged with Embrace Middle East, the Christian development charity talking poverty and injustice in the Middle East. Like ABCD it is another organisation that was part of RP, so we have a long history together. Embrace brought over Daniel Munayer, CEO of Musalaha, from Jerusalem. Musalaha is a faith-based organization that teaches, trains and facilitates reconciliation mainly between Israelis and Palestinians from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. The foundation for its work is recognition of Israel’s settler colonial agenda and apartheid policies so there must be no “normalisation” of the status quo when it brings people groups together. We were delighted to get to know Daniel and look forward to working with him and Musalaha on the ground.