MIDDLE EAST: Russian-speaking Israelis and Palestinians hope their common language will bring them closer together

Record ID: 349807

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: Russian-speaking Israelis and Palestinians hope their common language will bring them closer together
  • Date: 13th December 2013
  • Summary: STILL PHOTO OF KHALED AND HIS WIFE OLGA WHEN THEY WERE STUDENTS IN RUSSIA
  • Embargoed: 28th December 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel, West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: Conflict,General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA50Z7EQYPZCWLOG3IRZXCORKNP
  • Story Text: Several hundred Israeli peace activists marched along the pretty Tel Aviv seafront on an unseasonably warm late November weekend to voice their concerns with the impasse of the ongoing peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
    "Let each person come with his presence, get up from his comfort, from his fun, from his couch at home and join us to make peace, we do not intend to provoke, our way is graceful, non-violent and peaceful," an activists wearing a white T-shirt with the word 'Peace' written on it, shouted through a megaphone.
    The march was organised by Israeli peace campaigners united by the idea of promoting peace in the Middle East.
    Six hundred Palestinians from the West Bank were expected to participate but at the last minute their request to enter Israel for the peace march had been turned down by the Israeli authorities.
    They held their march in the West Bank town of Jerico instead, in coordination with the Israeli campaigners.
    "We want the government to hear us. There are enough people both in Israel and the Palestinian autonomy who want and need peace. They are prepared to do everything possible for the government to understand this. We want to lead our government towards peace. This is our appeal, our slogan here," said 31-year-old campaigner Edi Zhensker from the Russian-speakers' Israeli peace movement Our Heritage which was formed in 2007 and has been active in seeking contacts with the Palestinian Russian-speaking community ever since.
    Over 1,3 million Jews immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union in early 1990s, mainly from Russia and Ukraine, in search of a better life and a political stability escaping economic hardships and insecurity of the crumbling communist empire.
    Dr. Alla Shainskaya, a biochemist from the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, immigrated to Israel in 1990.
    A senior scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science and a chairperson of Our Heritage she believes the economic vulnerability and safety concerns of the Russian-speaking immigrants was used by the right-wing politicians to lure them into their support electorates with promises of a brighter future.
    Shainskaya said the majority of the Russian-speaking immigrants settled in the North of the country, near the border with Lebanon, and in the South, close to Gaza, adding that the recent wars with both were a decisive factor for their anti-Arab sentiments and leaning towards the right.
    The Russian-speaking community in Israel is generally associated with a ultra-nationalist foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party, which has grown into one of Israel's largest political forces on the strength of votes from his fellow immigrants from former Soviet republics and is allied with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud.
    A settler living on occupied land where Palestinians seek statehood, Lieberman has been outspokenly sceptical of the negotiations that resumed in July after a three-year impasse, saying that reaching a permanent peace deal was impossible.
    Shainskaya argues that peace with the Palestinians is within reach and that the Russian-speaking immigrants, which account for around 20 per cent of the total population and represent a potentially powerful force within the Israeli electorate, would be in a good position to negotiate it.
    "We have brought a lot with us. And also, we didn't have to live through a lot of things. We don't have the heavy baggage of those wars, big wars with big casualties, which the Israeli society went through. We don't have this huge and heavy baggage of hatred, neither can we associate with the pain suffered by the Palestinians," said Shainskaya at a meeting with Russian-speaking Palestinians in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, near historic Bethlehem.
    In a move to build up direct ties with the Israeli public Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last year gave his blessing to the creation of the Palestinian Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society.
    Russian-speaking Palestinians, graduates of universities from the former Soviet Union, were called in to help bring in the Jewish Russian-speakers as one of the means of reaching a broader Israeli society.
    "We want the Israelis who know practically nothing about us to hear our voice with the help of our Israeli friends, so that they would understand that there is such a country, there is such people, the Palestinians, who want to live in peace and stability as any other nation in the world," said Khaled Khaderat, a graduate of Irkutsk University, in fluent Russian The Palestinian Interaction Committee and Our Heritage became partners in their search for common grounds in future peace campaigns. Over the last year they have been meeting regularly planning their joint activities.
    At the meeting in Beit Jala Israelis presented their plan of monthly activities to promote understanding at 'people-to-people' level, including mutual home, school and village visits.
    "We have a lot in common apart from the language. We can conduct our talks in Russian, the language which is not associated directly with the occupation. Through the Russian language we can bring people closer and resolve issues which would be hard to deal with in Hebrew or Arabic," said Edi Zhensker who came to Israel from the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa with his Russian-speaking parents 23 years ago.
    For the last two years he has been running Our Heritage as executive director.
    Over 10,000 Palestinians who graduated from universities in the former Soviet Union now live in the West Bank. About 2,000 more Russian-speaking Arabs live in Israel. In the West Bank cities and villages there are about 2,500 Russian women who followed their Arab husbands to the Middle East.
    Khaled Khaderat, 45, met his wife Olga, 43, in the Siberian city of Irkutsk in Eastern Russia where they both studied law, shortly after arriving to Russia in 1989.
    Khaled went back to the West Bank in 1995 to see if he could find a job and support his future wife.
    She agreed to marry him two years later, but Khaled was fearful she might not like to start a home in his native land.
    "Of course I had my doubts that she might not like it here, that our life would not suit her. But I tried to paint a considerably worth picture for her of our country, our life, than it really was, so that she would feel pleasantly surprised when she comes here. And that's exactly how it happened," he remembered looking through the old photographs of their student life in Russia.
    Almost 18 years later the family feels settled in historic Bethlehem.
    Khaled and Olga have four daughters: Lisa, 15, Katya, 14, Dasha, 8, and Natasha, 6.
    They all bear Russian names, all bi-lingual and Muslim.
    Olga, an Orthodox Christian believer, stayed with her faith. She said she liked her life in Bethlehem but the lack of peace was a constant worry. "The situation here is as if you are always walking on the edge of a blade. All could be good today but everything could as well suddenly fall apart with no indication of what future might bring. And of course I feel concerned about our children, about their future," she said hugging six-year-old Natasha.
    Even though she and her daughters hold Russian passports, being residents in the West Bank means the family is restricted from travelling beyond the security wall separating Israel and the West Bank.
    "I can't go to Jerusalem to visit Holy Sepulchre. Sometimes I guide tours for pilgrims who come to Bethlehem and I feel envious of them when they tell me that they have been to Nazareth, walked around Jerusalem in the Old City. I don't have such a choice," Olga said adding it was especially hard for her as a Christian not to be able to visit the holy sites which under different security circumstances would have been within an hour drive.
    "I want to go to the sea and see places like that," said her daughter Lisa who in her 15 years of life has been to the Mediterranean Sea, just 60 km away, only twice.
    Peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians have been on and off for decades.
    Many Israelis and the Palestinians feel disillusioned and have doubts the current U.S.-brokered round, which has been on since July, would bring in results.
    But peace activists on both sides believe they represent a potentially decisive political force which has a good chance of influencing the future.
    In Washington last week, U.S. President Barack Obama said he believed it was possible to reach a framework agreement over the next several months that would not address every detail of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but could move things forward.
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