Israelis take rare tour of Palestinian stronghold of Ramallah

Описание: (22 Apr 2014) Ramallah, a bustling centre of Palestinian life is just a 20-minute drive from Jerusalem, but for Israelis it might as well be
on the other side of the world.
Since a major round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting more than a decade ago, Israelis have been kept out of Palestinian cities by the Israeli military and their own fears.
But after several years of relative calm, a few have begun trickling back in tours led by Palestinian guides and guarded by
plainclothes Palestinian security agents.
On Wednesday, about two dozen visitors, Israelis and a few foreigners, visited the city, as part of an ongoing peace initiative by activists that promotes co-existence.
The trip was organised by Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information (IPCRI), an Israeli-Palestinian group promoting co-existence that has organised several similar events in the West Bank since 2013.
The participants had to apply for special army permits to enter Ramallah and sign a waiver absolving the army of responsibility for them.
The tour also came as another US attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal appeared doomed.
Gershon Baskin, an organiser, said such trips are needed, nonetheless, to foster understanding after years of enforced
separation that deepened the divide between the two peoples.
"The only way that we're going to break forth through any progress and making peace between the people who live here is to break down the walls and get the people to see each other, to talk to each other, to reach out, to understand the reality that each side is living in," he said.
The tour fell in the week of the Jewish holiday of Passover, and those observing religious tradition pulled out containers with matza, or unleavened bread, to eat alongside plates of hummus and olives, as Arabic music played in the background.
The tour group visited the museum dedicated to Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, the mausoleum of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, followed by lunch at Samer's Restaurant where US Secretary of State John Kerry ate on one of dozens of mediation trips in recent months.
For their final stop the group visited Rawabi, a Palestinian city under construction nearby.
While some Palestinians, especially shopkeepers, would welcome large numbers of Israeli visitors to their towns, others dismiss the possibility of normalising relations while the Israeli military occupation continues.


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