Strasbourg, 13/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - By awarding the 2001 Sakharov Prize for freedom of spirit to an Israeli - Nurit Peled Elhanan, University Professor and daughter of General Patti Peled, who is known for fighting for peace, and to a Palestinian - Izzat Ghazzawi, who is president of the Union of Palestinian Writers and belongs to the Executive Bureau of the Palestinian Council for Peace and Justice, the European Parliament hopes to "contribute to forcing the destiny of peace against the evidence of war", said Parliament President Nicole Fontaine in plenary on Wednesday. Regarding the third prizewinner, Mgr Zacarias Kamuenho, Ms Fontaine (who stressed that this was the first time that, exceptionally, the Parliament was awarding prizes to three people), recalled that, in his capacity as Archbishop of Lubango and President of the Ecumenical Committee for peace in Angola, he had worked unrelentingly in a country that has been at war for 25 years, 40 in fact if one includes the struggle for independence begun in 1961.
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, University Professor in Israel, said in a very poignant and tough speech for the political leaders of the region (obviously also hard to deliver), that "Israel is becoming a graveyard for small children, and this graveyard is growing by the minute, like an underground kingdom growing beneath our feet". "It is in this kingdom that my little girl lives, with her Palestinian murderer", she continued, evoking the personal tragedy of the death of her daughter Smadat, at the age of 13, following a suicide attack committed three years ago. After the death of a child, "there is no vengeance (…). Mothers know that the death of a single child, any child (…) is the death of the whole world", she said, criticising the "leaders" who, throughout history, "have used God (…) as an excuse for their ambitions of megalomania". And throughout history, "the only voice that has been raised to oppose them has been that of mothers (…), midwives who have not obeyed (…) when they were order to kill the newly born (…), the women of Troy, mothers in Argentina, Ireland, Israel and Palestine", she said, recalling that her own child had been killed "simply because she was born an Israeli, by a young man who felt so desperate he went to murder and suicide simply because he was born Palestinian". Our leaders, however, seem "able to live in peace when it is really necessary", she noted, pointing out that an article appearing on 1 December "tells us that Jericho has been living in calm for two months: no Israeli soldiers, no policemen, no crossfire. And it is not because the Americans have managed to convince Sharon to no longer send Israeli 18-year old boys to assassinate innocent Palestinians, or to convince the Palestinians to stop killing themselves with innocent Israelis. No. Jericho is calm because the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have decided to reopen the casino that they themselves use, with certain German and Austrian businessmen. Which makes me think (…) that my young daughter was worth even less than a chip in a game of roulette …".
Izzat Ghazzawi also lost a child, his 16-year old son killed in 1993 by the Israeli army when he sought to help a wounded friend in the courtyard of his school. His message is not a message of hatred, either, but of reconciliation. "Suffering, if we decide, can be used as a power to heal rather than a blind struggle for revenge and hatred. The principle of an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind", said Mr Ghazzawi, who recalled that, after having been imprisoned for almost three years, he had taken part (in 1993, the year when his son died), in Oslo, at a meeting of Israeli and Palestinian writers, in order to examine together how to "contribute to peace". "Our insistence on dialogue between cultures is more at its highest now, because we have got to search into the roots of terror", he said, and because "whatever happens in our region is doomed to affect the whole world". He concluded by saying, "Our isolation and anxiety is beyond any proportion, but our faith in the future is also great. We will always need your support for a sustained peace process".
Finally, Archbishop Kamuenho made an appeal: "Help Angola to live!" He painted the picture of a ravaged country, where malnutrition affects 47% of the inhabitants, where the southern wealth "generates war", where voices calling for tolerance are not heard, (and where the war has already caused one million deaths, recalled Ms Fontaine). Mgr Kamuenho also pointed out that he will pay his share of the prize to the Ecumenical Fund for Peace (the Sakharov Prize is EUR 50,000: the Angolan archbishop receives half this amount, while the remaining 25,000 is shared between the other two prizewinners).