West Bank runners warned in advance
AN organiser of Pat Farmer’s 1450 kilometre Middle East Peace Run has described the barring of a group of Israelis from joining the run in a section of the West Bank as merely a “secondary and minor footnote” to an “incredible event”.
AN organiser of Pat Farmer’s 1450 kilometre Middle East Peace Run has described the barring of a group of Israelis from joining the run in a section of the West Bank as merely a “secondary and minor footnote” to an “incredible event”.
The AJN reported last week that Australian oleh Ari Briggs and a group of runners attempted to join Farmer along Derech Avot in Area C, between Nablus and Ramallah, but were asked to stop running.
But according to Carole Schlessinger, who coordinated the run with Farmer and Budo for Peace founder Danny Hakim, Briggs and his group were advised two days in advance not to run in that section.
“Following the deaths of two Palestinian youths days earlier by the IDF in this area, both the Australian Embassy and Israeli security officials advised against the group running through that section as it was deemed a high security risk,” she said.
“As you can understand, the chief concern of the organisers was the security of all participants throughout all parts of the run.”
Schlessinger added that Briggs – who lives in Ra’anana – could have joined the run during the eight days it wound through recognised Israeli sovereign territory.
“He would have been welcome to join us. However, despite being fully aware of the advice given by authorities, Briggs still decided to try and run through Route 60,” she said.
She said “to distil the months and months of organisation, fundraising, negotiating and logistics planning that went into this incredible event into a recounting of the relatively small and petty experiences of a small group of political activists, is lamentable and unacceptable”.
“The Middle East Peace Run was about Pat Farmer’s and other participants’ desire to run through different geographies no matter what the political and religious borders may be, spanning Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel,” she said. “He, and the group supporting him, did so in the name of finding a common human spirit between countries and territories that can oftentimes be most easily articulated through sport, or long-distance running in this case.
“The run aimed to bring people together, not focus on the boundaries that keep them apart.”
Schlessinger also noted that hundreds of runners participated from Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, while 71 per cent of the likes on the event’s Facebook page were from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
GARETH NARUNSKY
Carole Schlessinger on the run with Pat Farmer.
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