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Uri Avnery - Our Jerusalem (294/315)

83 views · Published 12 July 2017 · 4:20 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · News & Politics

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Uri Avnery (1923-2018) was an Israeli writer, journalist and peace activist. He was editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine "HaOlam HaZeh" and founded the Gush Shalom peace movement. [Listener: Anat Saragusti; date recorded: 2017]

TRANSCRIPT: So we conducted several operations with Faisal, quite a few, in and outside Orient House. We celebrated the wedding of Saeb Erekat there and I was also invited.

[AS] Nabil Shaath, it was Nabil Shaath who got married there.

Your memory is better than mine.

[AS] I was also at the wedding.

You were there?! Nabil Shaath, sorry, who later was the Foreign Minister for the PLO. They are similar to each other, to be honest. Okay, Nabil Shaath is from the Gaza Strip and Erekat is from Abu Dis near Jerusalem. We held an Israeli-Palestinian demonstration for a united Jerusalem. Following this demonstration and from talks with Faisal, who participated in the demonstration and spoke there, we issued the petition 'Our Jerusalem' which I drafted. I'm rather proud of it. It begins with the words, the title: 'Our Jerusalem'. In the introduction: 'Jerusalem is ours − Jews, Muslims and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians', etc, rather literary. As I mentioned, I'm quite proud of this version.  To our absolute surprise − I had hoped that 50 people would sign it – in the end it seems to me that 750 signed, all of them people of repute. Yehudi Menuhin also joined us. I asked him, he sent me his signature, and the German author Stefan Heym from East Germany, who is not so well known in Israel, a German-Jew from the East German regime at that time. It was a very impressive list and included Israelis. I asked Faisal to sign and he signed along with Nusseibeh. At the next meeting with Arafat it occurred to me to have him sign, but during the conversation Ahmed Tibi, who was present, passed me a note saying: 'Don't ask him'. Arafat expressed his consent verbally, but he didn't sign.

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