An Israeli peace group and two of its founders Uri and Rachel Avnery, have been awarded a Right Livelihood Award. Gush Shalom was founded eight years ago on three principles: Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied territories; recognition of the PLO as the Palestinians’ rep-resentative; recognition of the right of Palestinians to establish their own independent state alongside Israel, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Gush Shalom is a wholly voluntary organisation with about 450 core activists and a wider circle of 1400. It has no hierarchy and all its members simply refer to themselves as activists’. Gush Shalom has organised hundreds of demonstrations, protests and actions including rebuilding the demolished houses of Palestinians, demonstrations against the expropriation of Palestinian land for the establishment or enlargement of settlements and generally giving support for the Oslo Peace process. It was the major protestor against the mass deportations in late 1992, against the closure of the occupied territories and the Hebron massacre. Other initiatives have included boycotting products of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and symbolic marking with green paint of all the points where roads cross the Green Lines’ between Israel and the occupied territories. This signifies to travellers At this point you are leaving your country and entering the country of your neighbours’.

Gush Shalom activists are regularly arrested and abused, although as Israelis their treatment is far better than that meted out to Palestinians, and their presence in situations of conflict undoubtedly does much to pre– vent the mistreatment of Palestinians.

Uri Avnery writes extensively about the conflict and has worked hard to explain why the Camp David proposals failed and were bound to fail. Despite the intensification of the conflict he said recently: ‘I was born an optimist and will die as an optimist The present is but a stage ñ albeit a sad one ñ in the inevitable march towards peace and conciliation. After 55 years of struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace, I can see the immense progress we have made. The present throws us a long way back, but we shall move ahead again’.

The Right Livelihood Awards or ‘Alternative Nobel Prizes’ were introduced ‘to honour and support those offering practical and ex-emplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today.’ Founder Jakob von Uexkul said, ‘The Jury has chosen these recipients from the many outstanding people and org-anisations in order to show positive ways forward at this time of grief, fear and insecurity. It is imperative to recognise that the only remedy for terror is justice and reconciliation and the promotion of human rights ñ civil, political, economic, social and eco-logical ñ for all peoples of the world.’

The other winners of this year’s Right Livelihood Awards are Trident Ploughshares whose non-violent direct actions are dedicated to ridding the world of nuclear weapons; Jose Antonio Abreu from Venezuela who founded the National System of Children and Youth Orchestras and Brazilian Leonardo Boff, one of the founders of liberation theology. Further reports on these winners will be in the next Issue of Positive News.
FURTHER INFORMATION : The Right Livelihood Award, PO Box 15072, S-104 65 Stockholm, Sweden / Telephone: +46 (0) 8 702 0340 / Fax: +46 (0) 8 702 0338

Uri and Rachel Avnery, Gush Shalom, Rupin St 10a, Tel Aviv 63576 Israel /Telephone: +972 (0)305 244 552 / Fax: +972 351 711 08
WEB SITE : http://​www​.rightlivelihood​.se EMAIL: info@​rightlivelihood.​se