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1993-2012
Peace Lines is a humanitarian, non-governmental, non-confessional organization, which has received unprecedented Nobel support since 1995. 145 Nobel laureates in 26 countries have participated in the Peace Lines campaigns for cease-fire and peace (Bosnia, Algeria, Israel-Palestine).
The three biggest campaigns to this day (in Algeria, the darkest days, 1997-1998 and in Israel-Palestine in 2007-2011) have gathered 68, 69 and 77 Nobel laureates respectively (among them, in 1998, the Dalai Lama, Pdt Gorbachev, Betty Williams, Ilya Prigogine, the Arch. Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow… In 2007, Pdt de Klerk, Shirin Ebadi, Joseph Rotblat, Cora Weiss, François Jacob, Arthur Kornberg, Torsten Wiesel, Avram Hershko, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Daniel Kahneman, Wole Soyinka... In 2009, John Hume, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Pdt Carter, Jody Williams, Sir Aaron Klug, Sir Harold Kroto, Yuan T. Lee, Jean-Marie Lehn, Baruj Benacerraf, Christian de Duve, Dario Fo, Elfriede Jelinek, Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison).
18 operations and humanitarian convoys were organized in Bosnia-Kosovo, from 1993 to 2005. Ten of them in war zones. 3 wells were dug in the Sahel desert, to develop food-producing farming. Solar lamps, toilets, a stable were installed in a village : Saly-Joseph.
We have printed 6,000 bilingual books in Palestine (English-Arabic, English-Hebrew) for peace education. We have started distributing Martin Luther King, Jr (Hebrew-English) in Israel, and have the agreement of the Palestinian Ministry of Education since June 2006 to do the same (Arabic-English) in Palestinian high-schools. We also have published Plutarch's letter "How to Take Advantage of your Enemies" in English-Arabic, and are currently working on editing a third volume of King's Comments, and thinking about a 4th book with texts about slander from Ghazali and Hafetz Haïm.
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The latest signatures of support for
the
October 18 & December 18, 2011 : this Campaign has reached three of its eight objectives with
1) the long-delayed liberation of Sergeant Shalit,
2) of all the Palestinian women prisoners, and
3) of a significant number of the eldest and longest-serving detainees.
Still, the siege of Gaza goes on, with daily power outages and water shortages, disastrous environmental consequences of the ruined sewage system, and three quarters of the population depending upon outside aid; in August there has been a critical increase in the number of rockets and mortar shells fired onto Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip; there are still hundreds of sick prisoners who should be immediately released; 309 prisoners are still kept in arbitrary "administrative" detention, including 26 elected members of the Palestinian legislature. Nor should we forget the 132 minors detained - 19 of them under the age of 16.
The Campaign therefore continues : one major (some say historical) step in the right direction must not be followed by several backwards !
Daniel Kahneman, George Akerlof, Martin Chalfie, Paul Greengard and Mario Capecchi have recently joined their names in support with 72 other Peace, Chemistry, Medicine, Physics, Economics & Literature Nobels; 411 Members of the European Parliament (2009-2014), including former EP President Jerzy Buzek & 132 former Members of the EP; and 10 others (Noëlle Châtelet, Yasmina Khadra, Franca Rame, Noam Chomsky, Martin Gray, David Grossman, Stéphane Hessel, Amos Oz, Michel Rocard, Hanna Siniora) who support the international campaign initiated by Peace Lines for the liberation of Sergeant Shalit and the Palestinian Parliamentarians.