Nazareth

I visited Craig's internship today in Nazareth.  He seems to work for a really good organization.  Their central goal is to further the Arab-Israeli community within Nazareth in terms of community development and empowerment.  It seems like they are the non-criminal version of ACORN in Israel.  They help out women seeking a divorce from their husbands and convince them to fight for alimony.  They help train them for jobs in the community and they assist others with issues with their pensions and rental prices.  They also seem to deal with a lot of legal issues such as people being taken to small claims courts, mortgage problems, and pushing for policy change.  Mostly they are working to reduce inequalities between Jewish Israelis and Arab/Bedouins in terms of employment and income.  Apparently 30% of men and 60% of women in Nazareth are unemployed and the number of unemployed single mothers is especially bad because the community doesn't typically accept them due to traditional Arab values.  

All in all, it sounds like a great organization.  Craig's boss has some interesting ideas, though.  Sarah Hook came with me and she likes to ask lots of questions about the conflict.  That is certainly not a bad thing, but some of the questions are just asking for a problem.  She always brings up 1 vs 2 state solution and the right of return, both items that always get to people and are basically pointless questions in my mind.  I like hearing their answers, but I don't think that it address the real issues.  There will never be a 1 state solution in our lifetimes and there will absolutely never be a returning Palestinian population.  This got him off on a tangent about how there will never be a peaceful solution and war is inevitable.  That, I believe, is a more likely scenario.  However, he then began to talk about how Israel is working to keep Hezbollah in power because they are able to use them as an excuse to maintain a security state.  I fully agree that they use Hezbollah as an excuse for this, but I seriously doubt that Israel would shed a tear if the organization up and disappeared.  He also said that Israel likes the current Syrian government.  Again, I agree that they probably feel more secure with the devil they know, rather than the devil they don't know, but I don't think that they would intervene to support Assad as he proposed.  That would be international suicide.  I think Israel is happier now that the Egyptian military has said that they will ensure that their presence in the government will be maintained.  Syria is a different story.  Syria might get a new, more hostile government, but that is nothing that Israel can't handle.