Mediators lend an ear to Israel & West Bank: What local group heard is subject of movie, panel talk on Sunday

The group of local mediators went to Israel and the West Bank for 11 days in March 2008 with one main mission: to just listen to people from various sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They heard from secular and religious Jews, Palestinians, peace activists, a former combatant, settlers and family members who have lost loved ones.

A filmmaker who tagged along has finished a documentary on the experience titled "Stories from the Green Line," which debuts Sunday at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia, to be followed by a panel discussion.

Cheryl Cutrona, executive director of the Good Shepherd Mediation Program and former board president of the Greater Delaware Valley chapter of the Association for Conflict Resolution, organized the trip. Good Shepherd offers mediation services for neighborhood, family and youth disputes.

Each person they spoke with in the Middle East had a different message to share, Cutrona said.

"Most people said there will be peace, but not in my lifetime," she said. And, "the common ground seemed to be the children are suffering the most."

The hardest part of the trip for Cutrona was seeing children growing up in a culture of violence. In the West Bank town of Bil'in, which lost about half its land from Israel's "separation wall" or "security fence," depending on how one views the barrier, the group went to the home of a Palestinian man who considered himself a peace activist.

The man showed the group a video of what he called a nonviolent protest that had taken place in the town. Cutrona was surprised to see parents who brought their children to the protest, at which some people were armed with guns.

She was also shocked to see the man's toddler-age daughter passing around rubber-coated bullets to the visiting mediators as if they were household toys. The bullets were said to have been fired by Israeli soldiers.

Cutrona said that before the trip, she knew that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was "intractable," but "I never knew the number of layers or the different perspectives."

After the film is shown, panelists will discuss their views. Among them are Burt Siegel, retired executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia, and Raslan Abu Rukun, the new deputy consul general of Israel in Philadelphia. Abu Rukun, the No. 2 man in the consulate, is a secular Druze Arab who was born in Israel and served in its army.

Cutrona is trying to find one or two other panelists who will provide an Arab or Palestinian point of view.

Ellen Knechel, a fourth-year graduate film student at Temple University, filmed the trip and created the 50-minute documentary.

She said that the most powerful speaker for her was a former Palestinian combatant who spoke of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's efforts to talk with Palestinian leaders before he was assassinated in 1995.

The film will be shown at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Ethical Society, on the southwest corner of Rittenhouse Square in Center City.

Tickets: $25 at the door, or $22 in advance. For more information, call 215-843-5413 or visit www.phillymediators.org. Proceeds to benefit Good Shepherd.