Paul Calvert spoke with Daoud Nasser

Daoud: Here we started the Tent of Nations in order to say we don't want to react in a violent way and we don't want to emigrate. Our message to people is "we refuse to be enemies"; so we offer this place as a meeting place. Sometimes we organise activities, sometimes people are coming and using this place, we have done activities like a tree planting campaign. We try to plant between January and March every year about 1000-3000 trees and we bring Palestinians and Israelis from peace activists to internationals to come together to plant a tree for the future. Planting a tree is a sign that there is still a hope for this country and also peace should grow as an olive tree. Peace should grow from the grass roots, it cannot be dictated from up to down it should grow from the grass roots. This is what we are actually trying to do, learning by doing, working together how to achieve peace step by step.

We also have summer camps; we are working with Palestinian kids both Christians and Moslem's. We invite them here to be away from their homes and the cities, to be here in the nature and to spend some time to be calm, to be active, and to be creative and so we try to do different kinds of projects. We have on the wall here mosaics done by our kids from the summer camp programme and we do painting on stones, painting on rocks, sport activities, music; these kinds of activities encourage the children. The issue is we want to motivate them that they can do something and focus on peace building in. This will help them to build their own future in a positive way.

Paul: Now because your land is called area C it means that Israelis and Palestinians can come together and meet here, how easy is it to bring Palestinians and Israelis together?

Daoud: We have Israeli peace activists and Palestinians meeting here, which we see that it could be the way for a better future.

Paul: What do you see as the main stumbling block in the Palestinian and Israel conflict?

Daoud: The core issue is justice. We need to achieve justice here in order to live together in peace, because without justice there is no peace. That is why it is very important for the Israelis to understand what is happening here and also to understand its not about Arabs hating Jews and Jews hating Arabs; no its about human rights and we need the people to focus on the positive side and say what can we do now? If I am blocked with the history, what happened yesterday, I won't go forward for the future, so we suffer a lot. The Israelis also went through a lot of suffering, but we have to learn from our history and say what can be done now, so that's why we need strong people to believe that we can move out together of this circle. Its a fact that we are living here both Israelis and Palestinians and we have to focus on what can be done in order to have stability and peace here from both sides because we have to share the land, there is no other way.

Paul: So do Palestinians feel like second class citizens here?

Daoud: We are not actually citizens, we are living under occupation and this is the core problem as Palestinians.

Paul: What do you think is the root of hatred and violence here?

Daoud: The problem is when you live in very difficult situations, maybe an Israeli can talk about the situation in Israel but let me talk about our situation; when the children have no future prospects, no future, no work; the unemployment rate is very high and around 60% of the Palestinian population are young people and are doing nothing, they have nothing to focus on. This will bring hatred amongst people but what can we do? How can we expect the people to react? That's why in order to overcome all of that we need to give the people the future, to believe there is a future and if I believe there is a future I will start working in a good way in order to achieve it; but the problem is when you live in this situation you have nothing. This will give the people the opportunity to lose their hope for a better future.

Paul: I guess it's easier for the terrorist organisations to recruit the young people when they are discouraged?

Daoud: I think the issue is that the people live in a miserable situation. We try in a small way to get the children to focus on other things, to show them that they have possibilities, that they can change and when we focus on the positive side of the story we don't want them to feel like they are the victims; we want them to feel that they are people who can do something even if it is small steps.

Paul: How easy is it to teach values of tolerance with the history, the past and what people have been through?

Daoud: When we recognise that people had to go through difficulties, any kinds of people; Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans, then we realise we went through suffering but we should not stay there and keep ourselves in that circle and be the victims. The issue is how to overcome that and move forward. If I talk about the history and the sufferings I will never move forward so that's why I have to learn from my history and to do the best to overcome this hatred and bring people together.