An Arab-Israeli Walk for Peace: March 31

Joseph Siani is an Israeli correspondent for the Spirit of Ma'at. He sent us this information in January. From March 31 until April 8, a group of people from different nations and different faiths will walk from Jaffa to Jerusalem in silence to express their inside peace. In this demonstration, Arabs and Moslems will walk beside Israelis and Jews in a graphic expression of the Oneness of All Life. The coming Walk was the vision of Christopher Titmuss of the Inside Meditation Society, and they have been joined by the Peacemaker Community, established by Bernie Glassman Rosni. Their Walk is based upon a long and revered history that began when Buddhist monks would start walking from their monasteries, in silence, to a problem area. Sometimes the monks would pass through places where battles had taken place: Simply in being there, they would purify those areas with their silence and their internal peace. Mahatma Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King in the United States also followed this tradition. And Thich Nhat Han used to walk in Vietnam during the war, referring to his practice as Dharma Yatra. In the United States, peaceful walks, if not commonplace, have become a recognized way of expressing our political feelings and asking for change. But it's never been tried before in Israel.So in this time of violence and terror from both sides, these people are trying a new way to approach the centuries-old search for a solution to the Arab-Jewish problems. Rather than being politically focused, The Walk will be entirely oriented toward spiritual values. According to a Walk spokesperson: It will be a call for peace, but not a demonstration or a peace march. It is an expression for peace in silence. Every step will be in the spirit of the companions and in the spirit of the things that they will meet on the way. Thus, each day of the week-long walk will begin and end in a search for inner peace: The timetable will be in the following order. We will start the day in a meditation circle, followed by breakfast in a food circle, and then the group will start walking in a line in silence for six hours. In between, there will be a lunch break and a meditation break.In the evening, a night camp will be set up with a talking circle. The focus of the conversation will be patience, antiviolence, and peace. At night, there will be dinner and music around a fire. The camp will be in nature under the open sky in organized places.In The Walk, there will be Jews, Arabs, Catholics, Buddhists, Religious Jews, and guests from abroad. The Walk has issued an open invitation to anyone who wants to participate, saying that they may do so for as many days as they wish, with no obligations. The Walk seeks donations of money and food. Its organizers may be contacted by email at project_walk@hotmail.com.