Palestinian

Educating the next generation of Palestinian peace builders, academic and human rights activist Sumaya Farhat-Naser trains women and youth in the occupied territories in conflict resolution, nonviolence, civic leadership, human rights, tolerance, and empowerment. She is cofounder and former director of the Jerusalem Center for Women, a Palestinian non-governmental organization that continues to work closely with the Israeli women’s center Bat Shalom; together, the two form the Jerusalem Link. This umbrella organization has created joint programs for Israeli and Palestinian women, allowing them to meet and discuss strategies for achieving peace. Dr. Farhat-Naser has been on the boards of the Arab Thought Forum and the Arab Studies Society and is on the board of the Global Fund for Women. She has returned to an academic position at Birzeit University, where she teaches botany, and is a guest lecturer at the University of Augsburg, in Germany. Holding a PhD in biology and an honorary PhD from the University of Münster for her peace work, Dr. Farhat-Naser has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights, the Mount Zion Award for Reconciliation Between Cultures and Religions, the Augsburg Peace Prize, and the Hermann Kesten Medal for Writing from the German center of PEN, an international fellowship of writers. Dr. Farhat-Naser recently published her fourth book, Daughter of the Olive Trees: A Palestinian Woman’s Struggle for Peace.

Dr. Farhat-Naser’s peace-building activities include:

• conducting seminars on communication, dialogue skills, tolerance, and conflict resolution for Palestinian university students abroad in order to heal the trauma they have suffered and lay the groundwork for a just peace;
• monitoring security checkpoints, in collaboration with Israeli peace activists, for human rights violations;
• presenting analyses of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Middle East politics, and women’s issues at seminars and conferences;
• publishing numerous articles, including “One Hundred Years of Zionism: Associations of a Palestinian Women”; and
• reporting on the current conflict in radio and television interviews.

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