Durham woman travels to Mideast to defuse violence
By Brianne Dopart : The Herald-Sun
bdopart@heraldsun.com

Feb 27, 2008

DURHAM -- As a person of faith, Donna Hicks is called to be hopeful.

A Christian who has dedicated her life to harvesting peace, Hicks brings her steadfast grip on hope for a more peaceful Durham with her as she heads to violence-ravaged corners of the city to stand in vigil with the bereaved families of slaying victims.

She carries a similar hope to far corners of the globe, where, with others of the same conviction, she works to promote peace by living it.

In Durham, Hicks' work as a peacemaker is part of her involvement in the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, a group that meets monthly to look for peaceful approaches to ending the loss of life to violence in the city.

But when Hicks is not leading prayers and making plans with her fellow activists in Durham, she's bringing her commitment to living her faith to the international community.

Hicks is a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization that sends groups of unarmed volunteers to cities that are militarized or in crisis.

Six times over the past several years Hicks has lived in the Palestinian city of Hebron on the West Bank of the Jordan River as a member of CPT's violence-reduction team. The organization says it is opposed to what it views as the Israeli military occupation and is dedicated to standing in solidarity with both Israeli and Palestinian peace groups.

As peacemakers in Hebron, members of the team bear witness to conflicts between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. The organization also has teams in the Palestinian city of At-Tuwani, as well as in several other countries such as Iraq and Columbia.

The group's actions aim to deliberately and peacefully defuse situations likely to end in violence.

While in Palestine team members function primarily as the defenders of the Palestinians and those working for the Palestinians' interest, Hicks says the peacemakers work to try to understand where all sides are coming from.

"The most important principle [we have] is to seek that which is of God in those people we perceive as the Other, or our enemy. ... This is where the transformation comes. If I'm talking to an Israeli soldier and we manage to make a connection that goes past the conflict, who knows how that might shift things?"

While not all are fans of the work CPT does on the West Bank, local Jewish leader Rabbi John Friedman said the group's work is necessary so that someone is there to witness the treatment of Muslims by extremist Jews.

"You do things differently when you're being watched, right? In this scenario, it is the Israeli Army and the Israeli settlers that need to be watched ... and that's where the Christian Peacemakers come in."

Friedman, who leads Durham's Judea Reform Congregation, is a member of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, an organization of 40,000 Jews that advocates for a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The organization, the name of which translated means the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, advocates the trading of land for peace.

"God help them," Friedman said of the Christian Peacemakers. "What a difficult undertaking to be witness to the lack of effort to really resolve this conflict, particularly on the part of extremists on both sides."

On average days in Hebron, Hicks said, team members walk Palestinian children to and from school. They monitor the treatment of Palestinians at security checkpoints constructed by the soldiers to watch for suicide bombers. They accompany shepherds and farmers to their fields, where they are often the targets of Israeli settlers who dispute land ownership. When settlers destroy olive groves on that disputed land, team members help the farmers to replant their crops.

"Christian Peacemaker Teams are not missionary work. This is violence reduction work, pure and simple, out of the context of our Christian faith," Hicks said, "but you can't divorce politics from the rest of it."

Hicks said she worries about the normalization of the occupation and what that will mean for the work of those still fighting against it. Young Palestinians have never lived in an unoccupied Hebron, have never known what it would be like to walk a mile from home to school without needing to show identification or emptying their pockets for soldiers.

She is terrified by the thought that no parties will have the strength and courage to do what she and her fellow peacemakers believe is right.

"That is my fear," said Hicks, who plans to return to Hebron and her work with the Christian Peacemakers in August. "But I've got be hopeful."