Published: 24 November 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Palestinian peace advocate AZIZ ABU SARAH believes travel is a powerful way of crossing the divides of ignorance and fear. He is sharing his insights on a national tour.
At the age of six or seven, Aziz Abu Sarah travelled from East Jerusalem to Egypt for his sister’s wedding. Despite getting lost in bustling Tahrir Square, he remembers how struck he was by being in a different environment. Eventually, his mother found him sitting with a bunch of locals sharing stories about Jerusalem.
This memory tells a lot about this extraordinary Palestinian peace advocate, who, despite everything afflicting Israel and Gaza, still believes that travel is the way to cross the divides of ignorance and fear. Not only was he a born storyteller, but he could see the benefit of travel and how it could be used to create a more peaceful and interconnected world. Abu Sarah will be sharing some of these insights and reflections on the current conflict with Australian audiences as part of his Crossing boundaries: A Traveller’s Guide to World Peace Tour.
A life-changing journey occurred when, aged 18, he decided to walk 20 minutes from his home in East Jerusalem to study Hebrew in West Jerusalem. It was the first time he met Jewish Israelis as equals and was able to build meaningful relationships. This was not a given, as his brother died when Abu Sarah was younger, from internal injuries when arrested by Israeli forces.
It took him many years to get over his brother’s death and realise that “revenge is not justice”. He insists that killing someone else will bring only anger and bitterness.
Abu Sarah believes that travelling locally can sometimes be the hardest and yet most rewarding journey. “Local travel is more powerful, this is true for Palestinians and Israelis as well as Australians.” Yet he admits that it is sometimes easier to learn about each other overseas.
He met a number of his colleagues in the peace camp while in the US and noted that his father, who lived in Jerusalem his entire life, set foot in his first synagogue in America, where adjacent Muslim and Jewish congregations shared overflow space.
