"I stayed here, you ask me why, a tree stays where it was planted"

Arna's Speach at The Right Livelihood Award

The award ceremony occured at the Swedish parliament at Stockholm

Distinguished friends, honorable members of parliament, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I was born over sixty years ago, in a very small community in Palestine. In a Jewish 'Moshava' called Rosh-Pina near the Arab village Jaoni.

The village on the rocks and the green hills of the upper Galilee, between the lake of Galilee and the Lebanese boarder was at that time under the British Mandate. Since 1948 Jewish Rosh-Pina has grown and developed, whereas the village of Jaoni has been erased from the face of the earth. Its inhabitants became what we term, the Palestinian refugees.

Kids participating in creation workshop at Jenin

Dispersed in their homeland and confined in camps, even the land, the source of livelihood and the foundation of entire culture, passed into the hands of others through sheer robbery and forced displacement, this has left deep wound in my soul. While one half of me is intact the other bears the terrible pain of that reality. In this land were sawn the seeds of racism and suffering, wars and death and pain.

An entire nation stand before us deprived of human rights, where children grow up surrounded by imagery of soldiers, stones and guns. They are scarred, they are threatened and they are venerable. Their cries of suffering are drowned by loud speakers, screaming about law, order, security and progress. I came to resist with the children with the burden of my past. With my broken heart I tried to turn away the vale of hypocrisy and crime, piled up like rubbish on the streets of Jenin and its refugee camp. The refugee camp was erected 45 years ago, and its children and grandchildren were born facing Israeli occupation to this very day.

It is in the name of all these children that I have come here, to speak to you in a language of life, in a language of hope.

Kids participating in 'Care and Learning' workshop

Today on this occasion, we can listen to the resounding human cries of thousands and millions children though out the world and especially the Palestinian children on whose behalf I have come. They are telling us, you have obligation toward us. Yes, we owe them something. These children are the hope of tomorrow. It is imperative that we reveal the hypocrisy, which leaves these children wounded on the battlefield without first aid.

Their wounds are deep although they are not bleeding, their souls and spirits are wounded, their development handicapped. They are children beaten and shocked, who have witnessed their parents and siblings being humiliated by soldiers. They are children who have experienced long interrogation in prison. Children who have been prevented from studying, when their schools, kindergartens were closed down. These children who know the Jew, the Israeli, only as a soldier shooting to kill and who beats and humiliates.

Ladies and Gentlemen. On this day, the 9th of December 1993, exactly six years ago, all these children joined hands in the battle of freedom with the stone and the burning tier. They shouted their passion for liberty, for an end to oppression and humiliation and for the hope of a better life, the hope of the Intifada. This is were our paths meet - a small group of us from Haifa joined up with and for these children in order to put an end to the crimes and reduce the mental and psychological damage caused by the years of oppression.

We formed an organization in defense of children under occupation 'Care and Learning' and we have been engaged in this task daily, hour by hour on days of closure and curfew, on working days and holidays. Trying to bring these children a morsel of happiness and hope, by means of books, games and educational brochures. But first and foremost, we have been with these children on the streets, near the jail houses and inside the military courtrooms, in order to saw and tend the seeds of hope for a better life.

Theatre players in action

In return we have received the greatest prize of all, their smiles, their confidence, their friendship. All of which have served to bread a new human relation between Jews and Arabs - the only basis for a real peace.

Since 1988 a new landscape has started to find its way into the familial life. In the a alleys of the refugee camp, in the streets of Jenin and the surrounding villages large rolls of papers were unrolled, paints and brushes distributed, and hundreds of children together could be seen laughing and shouting. Painting together their thoughts, their dreams, their anger and their hope. In all the colors of the rainbow, they were six years old, eight years, twelve years. Children for whom these hours were the only time they could feel hopeful in the midst of violent occupation and repression.

These children today are crowded into classrooms of 50 - 60 pupils; as a result many drop out, resigning themselves to ignorance and illiteracy. These children who for days and weeks of curfew have been kept, locked up with their fears in their homes. Our task has been to reach them in order to elevate their misery, if only by a little, and so we did. Openly as well as clandestinely, armed with books and games and we needed also milk and bread in order to be with them during these moments.

Our task was never easy, it was not paid with roses, but mind with bullets and soldiers, anxious mothers and frightened children, whose wounds have yet not healed. These children have friends, they have friends in Holland, in Switzerland, in France, in Belgium, in Germany and now in Sweden. We also have friends and supporters and together with the help of financial support we were able to set up a network community of 'child homes'. The first child home was established in 1991, named after the name of the martyr, Abu-Jihad, it provided first library, first game, first quire, first theatre and a human right center for juvenile detainees and the children of the detainees.

The award ceremony at Swedish parlement in Stockholm

Today, with the help of this prize, we were able to build a home for young students, providing education and social assistance to the children of Jenin refugee camp. We shell be able to lay the foundation for individual therapeutic care and learning, which will enable hundreds of children to grow and learn and make up for what has been denied to them all these years. To all our friends, we say today, that we still have a long way to go, but with your helping hand we shell give these children a chance for a better life. In the name of these thousands of children allow me to shake your hands and to thank particularly, the 'Right Livelihood Award Foundation', which has served to brighten up a long arduous struggle with a spot of warm sunlight. We shell not halt our struggle on behalf of these children and all others, until peace and dream can flow from their dreams and become a reality.

 

Additional sources about Arna:

» Life Story

» Arna - One of her kind

» Resources about Arna from the Web

» The Work of Arna Mer-Khamis with Palestinian children