Hello Gaza – Sderot Calling

August 20, 2008

More than 50 residents of Sderot and the surrounding Negev villages held a “happening” along the border fence to promote dialogue with their neighbors in Gaza. The event was organized with NIF funding by Other Voice (Kol Acher), a group of Sderot and Gaza residents who want to break the vicious cycle of violence and build a relationship based on dialogue rather than bloodshed.

The Sderot residents biked along the border fence for eight kilometers and held up banners calling on Palestinians to join together with them in demanding an end to the violence. “Hello Gaza this is Sderot” read one banner draped across a car.

On the other side of the fence, more than 100 Palestinians, many of whom have been in contact with Other Voice’s activists, stood in apartment windows and shouted encouragement. The in-fighting taking place between Hamas and Fatah meant that it would have been too dangerous for them to gather along the border fence as had been previously planned.

“Hello everybody,” said Dr. Akram Ajala, a Palestinian economist living in Bet Hanoun, whose voice was amplified to all those gathered via cellular phone. “Please tell everybody that in Gaza you have partners for peace. There are people to speak to.”

The idea for the organization began earlier this year when a small group of Negev and Gaza neighbors began blogging and discovered a joint yearning for peace.

Sderot residents cycle to help break the cycle of violence.

Eric Yellin, a computer software specialist from Sderot, is one of several dozen activists who set up Other Voice six months ago. “We wanted to launch a grassroots non-political organization of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, who simply want the violence to stop so that we can get on with our lives,” said New York born Yellin, who immigrated to Israel as a child.

Other Voice has made contact with dozens of Palestinians living in the Gaza cities neighboring Sderot who want an end to the firing of missiles by Palestinians and the Israeli retaliations.

Liora Eilon, a member of Kibbutz Kfar Aza and one of the founders of Other Voice said: “Each week we meet at Sapir College and phone one or several of the Other Voice people situated in Gaza, first of all to talk to them and hear how they are, and if there are any possibilities of joint projects that we can work on from both sides of the border. The people we talk to think the same way as we do."

Yellin says that the Sderot activists in Other Voice are a cross-section of residents including secular and religious, Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, young and old.

Some of the Other Voice activists are in constant contact with their Palestinian counterparts through e-mails, blogs, Internet forums and phone calls. Yellin hopes that the Israeli Defense Force will give permission to a delegation of Other Voice activists in Gaza to come to Sderot for a joint meeting in the coming weeks.

“The current ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is very fragile,” explained Yellin. “Despite the ceasefire a Qassam fell just yesterday and that was very upsetting for everybody. But the ceasefire is a great improvement on the situation several months ago when life was a nightmare. I think the great majority of people in both Sderot and Gaza want an end to the violence and have pressed their leaders to bring quiet and this is something we have been able to tap into.”