“The Other Side of the Israeli-Palestinian Wall?Is it a Security Wall? Berlin Wall? Apartheid Wall?” will be the topic of a presentation and discussion by Ziad Abu-Rish at Middlebury College on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 4:30 p.m. Abu-Rish is the Zaru-Mikhail Fellow at the Middle East Peacebuilding Unit in the national office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Philadelphia. The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Conference Room of the Robert A. Jones House at 148 Hillcrest Road off College Street (Route 125).

In June 2002, the Israeli government began constructing what it called a Separation Wall. Abu-Rish will discuss the effects of the wall on the Palestinian people, their lives, their land and their environment.

Abu-Rish has lived in various places throughout the Middle East. A Palestinian, he was born in West Beirut, Lebanon, where he lived until the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. As a result of both the ongoing civil war and the invasion, Abu-Rish moved to Saudi Arabia where he lived in Al-Khobar until the 1991 Gulf War. In 2001, he received a bachelor of arts in history and politics?with a focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?from Whitman College.

The AFSC is a Quaker organization that works for peace and justice in the United States and around the world within the framework of Quaker values and principles.

The event is sponsored by the Middlebury College Democrats and Political Science Department.

For more information, contact student organizer Matthew Meyer at mmeyer@middlebury.edu or 443-4405.

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