Mending What Can Be Mended

It’s often said that no Palestinian suffers from PTSD because for all of them, old and young alike, the trauma is ever present and never over. The impact of Israel’s brutal occupation and all it entails – humiliation, harassment, deprivation, impoverishment and the constant threat of violence – is superimposed on all the usual pressures of a conservative, patriarchal society.

Zoughbi Zoughbi talks about the path of ‘unarmed resistance’ and ‘conflict transformation’ that has brought a measure of hope into a very bleak situation.

This talk is hosted jointly by Bath Friends of Palestine and Bath Stop War.

Dr Zoughbi Zoughbi is the director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center in Bethlehem, which he founded in 1994 (Wi’am is Arabic for ‘cordial relations’). The centre offers mediation, training and psychosocial counselling to help to resolve disputes and relieve trauma.

‘The Israeli occupation has created an alarming deterioration of political, economic, environmental, psychological status and social structures,’ he has said, ‘but even in the midst of this deterioration I experience great joy in responding to people’s needs and enhancing their hopes.’

He was recently elected president of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.