Calvin Prof To Speak About Middle East Peace

November 5, 2004 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Calvin College history professor Bert de Vries will speak on Tuesday, November
9 on "The Wall: The Israeli Construction of the Separation Barrier and its
Destruction of Palestinian Life, Land and Heritage." The talk is free and open
to all and will begin at 7 pm in Calvin's Commons Lecture Hall.

A historian specializing in southwest Asia, de Vries has many numerous trips
to the Middle East over the last three decades. As a frequent visitor he's
very familiar with the unsettled nature of the region.

But in recent years he has witnessed with alarm new uncertainties in the lives
of the people there, particularly the Palestinian people, as he has researched
and documented both the building of Israel's separation wall and the progress
of settlement construction in and around Jerusalem.

He recently returned from a trip to the Middle East (in October 2004) and
again spent a significant amount of time photographing the controversial wall
that Israel is building on Palestinian land inside the West Bank.

The wall, de Vries says, has become one of the world's most controversial
barriers since the Berlin Wall. This year the International Court of Justice
in the Hague judged the construction of the wall a violation of international
law, and the Israeli Supreme Court ordered some changes in its routing.

The Israeli government says the wall is necessary to secure Israel from
suicide bombers from the West Bank, but, de Vries says, those affected by it
say that it is destroying communities and playing into the hands of extremist
groups like Hamas.

Israel began construction of the network of fences and walls in 2002. Around
one-quarter of the 425-mile barrier has been completed.

Event sponsors for the upcoming talk at Calvin include the Middle East Section
of the Institute for Global Education, the Grand Rapids Institute for
Information Democracy, the People's Alliance, Media Mouse, the Arab American
Organization of West Michigan and the Calvin College History Department.

Contact Bert de Vries at 616-526-6273

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Received on Fri Nov 5 09:31:24 2004