August 17, 2010
On Monday, more than 500 Bedouin and Jews protested the ongoing destruction of Al-Araqib, an unrecognized Bedouin village in Israel’s Negev Desert. The Israel Lands Authority has destroyed the entire village three times within the past three weeks leaving residents exposed to the desert sun at the height of the summer.
After each demolition, [...]

For Arlene Kanter the fight for equal rights and social recognition for people with disabilities is a universal battle.

Here this year on a Fulbright scholarship to help Tel Aviv University establish the country’s first academic program in disability studies, the Syracuse University College of Law professor says that what has struck her most since arriving in August is how myths and misconceptions about people with disabilities transcend local cultural and religious boundaries.

Fighting for the rights of those with disabilities, she says, could actually be a uniting factor in a region separated by war and politics.

“What has been most interesting for me is hearing the stories of people from across this region and realizing that they are the same kinds of stories regardless of whether the people telling them are Jewish Israelis, local Beduin, Palestinian refugees in Jordan or social rights activists in Turkey,” explains Kanter, as we sit together in her rented Jerusalem apartment and she begins to recount her adventures in Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, India and even Vietnam, researching disability laws, material that will form the basis of a future book.

July 2010
More than 200 Haifa neighborhood activists, organizational representatives and city council members, business people, academics, representatives of local authorities abroad and many others participated in From Mixed to Shared: The Haifa Alternative, an international conference held by Shatil on June 22-24 in cooperation with the European Association of Local Democracy Agencies (ALDA) and the [...]

July 2010
The 600 residents of the unrecognized neighborhood of Dahmash on the Lod-Ramle seam, and over 1000 other Israelis – Arabs and Jews who have marched with the Israeli Arab residents and gathered in dignified daily protest over the past weeks – waited with baited breath on July 14th for Judge Noga Ohad of the [...]

Ronit Heyd has her hands full. The recently appointed executive director of Shatil says this country needs to wake up to the threats of internal social issues before it’s too late.
“I hope to use my experience of working with a diverse group of people to help bring all types of groups together to promote shared [...]