No longer invest your power into war, invest your intelligence into peace Setting out in silence, the Big Political Pilgrimage for Peace will take place in the Holy Land, visiting Israel and Palestine, and reaching its destination in Jerusalem by November 2005. Participants from the Middle East will join pilgrims from all around the world to journey in peace, share ideas, speeches, actions, meditations and work with other Palestinians harvesting olives. There will be concerts and also performances of the play, We Refuse to be Enemies, which addresses the Palestinian/Israeli conflict with great sensitivity. Culminating in a two-day seminar with Sabine Lichtenfels, co-founder of the Global Peace Village, Tamera, and its co-ordinator, Benjamin von Mendelssohn, the events will de-velop the work of this initiative, which seeks sustainable solutions to one of the most pressing problems of our time.

Benjamin von Mendellsohn said: “There are many historical and politi-cal facts that make the Middle East a crucial place in relation to the question of whether we’ll have a planet of peace or one of war.” He views their political activities as the search for the right acupuncture point in the whole of the organism of the Earth. The Peace Research Village is based in Tamera, an ecovillage in Portugal, and it is working towards building a similar peace village in the Middle East for Israelis, Palestinians and for other Internationals. The aim is to actively research, study and create an effective and durable, non-violent, social model for a peaceful culture that can be replicated in other conflict areas. For many years, Tamera has hosted meetings and arranged visits to the Holy Land. It has been exploring the deep roots of the conflict including the historical and psychological approaches which have resulted in the ongoing development of solutions and non-violent cultural models for a new global Peace Movement.

On 9th November, the anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Germany’, an event will take place at the Wall in Israel’ in the hope that this barrier between neighbours will also be brought down in the near future.