We invite you to join us this December 21 through January 3, 2008 as part of a coalition of student delegates who will travel throughout Israel and Palestine with the purpose of engaging in an active and educational tour. Participants will meet with agents of change on the ground and learn about methods of nonviolent resistance while also deepening their understanding of global oppression and joining together to form broad, diverse coalitions of change that can have impacts in their own international communities.
Nonviolence International was founded by Mubarak Awad, a leader of the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising in Arabic).
As a young Palestinian man, Mubarak Awad learned about nonviolent direct action from the writings of Gandhi, King, and Gene Sharp; after translating their theories and methods into Arabic, he distributed pamphlets throughout Palestine’s West Bank. When the Israeli government imprisoned Mubarak in 1988, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, pressured the Israelis to release Awad. Since the early 1990’s Dr. Awad has taught nonviolence in classes at American University in Washington, D.C. where he lives in exile from his place of birth—East Jerusalem. Mubarak’s wife is a Quaker, Nancy Nye, who served as principal of Ramallah Friends Girls’ School in the mid 1980’s. Wilmington Yearly Meeting (Ohio) included in its 2005 epistle: “Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian who is founder of Nonviolence International, gave the Peace Memorial Lecture. As a pacifist he worked with individuals and villages until being deported from his country. He continues working for peaceful solutions to conflicts.”