Newspaper
Clarin
Buenos
Aires – Monday, August 26 of 2002
Buenos Aires: a junction of two streets with no registers in the world
A ceremony in favour of peace at the corner of Palestine and State of Israel (view)
This is another peculiarity of this city. A peculiarity does not exist in any other part in the world. In Buenos Aires, Israel State and Palestine meet at a corner. A corner located in Villa Crespo neighborhood accurately.
Therefore, the junction of both streets was yesterday the scene of a ceremony organized to ask for peace in Middle East. Just as the two streets, around two hundred local Jews and Arabs mixed together at that place before the invitation of the Palestine Ambassador in Argentina, Suhail Hani Daher Akel, and Jewish leader Herman Schiller, who leads the Movimiento Judio por los Derechos Humanos (Jewish Movement for Human Rights).
Actually, the junction of these two streets was not a chance event. In the 90s, the Palestine Embassy in Buenos Aires asked the then Buenos Aires City Deliberating Council its country had a place in this city. "The only condition we laid down was that it crossed Israel State street. We wanted it to become a symbol”, Ambassador Akel states.
Finally, a stretch of Rawson street took that name in 1995. “There is not such a thing in the world”, the diplomat assures. Then he defines the spirit of the ceremony which took place at the open air yesterday: “We are asking for the finalization of the occupation and we want to prove that Palestinians and Israelis desire to put an end to the bloodshed in the region, in spite of the fact that Ariel Sharon builds walls and put barbed wire”.
In the same way, Schiller stated: “It is necessary to put an end to this conflict which only favours war merchants. I get inspiration from the joint ceremony which Israeli and Palestinian workers carried out on May 1st to celebrate their day”. Schiller and Akel promise to carry out new ceremonies to continue the line which was opened two years ago. It is said that they made both flags fly together for the first time in the world, in a ceremony which also took place here, in Buenos Aires.
Photo: Symbol. The Palestine Ambassador, Suhail Akel, and the Jewish leader Herman Schiller at the ceremony.