PALESTINE: THE WEST BANK: Bethlehem

Today we went to the holy city of Bethlehem. This region has 65%-85% unemployment. This region largely relies on tourism but obviously not many people travel to Palestine these days. I didn’t feel in danger at all. We went to the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People, an NGO in Palestine working for Peace. We met with it’s founder, Mazih Qumsiyeh. He talked about his support of a one state solution arguing that a two state is unrealistic bc it would be nearly impossible to divide the capital. He also talked about how American media avoids reporting about Palestine to the Americans. He used an example of 2 editions of Time Magazine from the same month. One was printed in Europe and one in the US. All the stories were the same except for one called Plight of the Palestinians which was presented as a cover story in the European edition and was replaced by an article about cooking in the US edition.