TRÓCAIRE TALK: PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

On the 20th of March, we had a speaker from Trócaire come in to talk about the conflict between Palestine and Israel as arranged by someone in the class. Shane came in and spoke to us about living in Palestine as he had first hand experience of this and also about the conflict that has been going on for years now. Here's what he told us:

• Despite most maps only showing Israel, Palestine is in fact its own country.
• There is a long running dispute between the Palestinians and the Israelis as it is the Israelis belief that Palestine's land should belong to Israel. 
• This conflict goes all the way back to the late 1800s but is mainly caused by the UN's Partition Plan which gave 55% of Palestinian land to "a Jewish state". 
• Since 1947, Israel has slowly but surely been taking over more and more Palestinian land each year and Shane showed us a video that Trócaire made to highlight the land that has been taken forcibly.
• The conflict is ongoing and at this time, it looks like a resolution is not close to fruition.
• Due to Palestine not being recognised as a "real" country, citizens cannot obtain passports therefore cannot leave the country. 
  
  Shane then showed us a video produced by Trócaire on the topic of Stolen Land.
  

After a chat and discussion, we went over to school hall and talked about the conflict together and our views. Shane asked us to throw a ball around and to say the first thing that came to our mind when we heard the words "Palestine" and "Israel". It was upsetting to hear that the first thought that most of us had was something that related to the conflicts and we talked about how we would feel if we thought that was all our own country was associated with. 

We sat down in a circle and each picked a picture. We had to hold the picture to the group and individually, we told the group of what we thought was going on in the picture. We then found out what actually was going on in the pictures. Lastly, we worked on a timeline of the conflict. 

After the talk, we all felt like we'd learned a lot and we could see the conflict from both sides. 

Thank you to Shane and all at Trócaire for their help and information!