Fares KaradshehCQ has lived with the conflict his entire life.

Until four years ago, when the ISU senior left to pursue an electrical engineering degree, he lived in Jordan, just east of Israel. Karadsheh said he’s always been aware of the constant struggle that exists there between Israelis and Palestinians.

That, he said, is why he’d come to listen to Jean ZaruCQ speak. He knows first-hand that peace is needed within the region.

“Peace is the first solution, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s becoming more than two parts,” Karadsheh said. “All the countries around it are being affected. It’s becoming about more than talks and treaties and religion.”

Karadsheh said he felt Americans were ignorant of many aspects of the conflict.

“Americans don’t know and they don’t care about what’s going on over there,” he said. “Their daily lives are forcing them to care about things like paying bills and the like.”

On Monday, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict came home for the small group in attendance in Carver Hall for a speech by Zaru, a native Palestinian and longtime activist.

Zaru spoke of the liberties taken with the human rights of her family and neighbors, of the things she’d seen and known of as a member of what she termed an “oppressed people.”

“Brothers and sisters, from the heart of Palestine, I come to join you today,” Zaru said. “I come with a narrative of exclusion and denial of basic human rights. In the darkest nights of the soul, we seek your affirmation and attention.”

Born in Ramallah, Zaru said she has spent much of her life in the pursuit of enlightenment and liberation. She served as president of the Jerusalem YWCA, a member of the Central Committee of Group and Interfaith Dialogue and a member of the International Council of the World Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

She spoke about what it was like for her and her family having their land and water confiscated by Israel and of being part of a large population crammed into the tiny spaces they were allowed to live.

Later, she spoke of Israeli law forbidding the residents of Israel’s Gaza Strip, West Bank and east Jerusalem from traveling farther than two miles from their villages, and how it had affected all aspects of Palestinian life, from education to health care.

Zaru recalled hearing ambulances being shot at or delayed as they approached military checkpoints, and of sick men being carried to these checkpoints on donkeys so they could seek medical aid not available in their villages.

She spoke of her brother, now counted among the lost in the war of Lebanon. He’d been out of the country in 1967, defending his thesis at Harvard. He was never allowed to return home.

“It’s not easy for me to speak about this,” Zaru said. “It drains me. It’s like opening up wounds so that other people will understand. Our country is becoming one giant prison, and one vast cemetery.”

But she also spoke of her hope for her people, a hope validated by the region’s continued existence in the face of oppression, embarrassment, and cultural and economic starvation, she said.

“We’re not going to give up,” Zaru said. “In spite of all that’s done, the Palestinians have not vanished from the face of the earth. Just surviving and living in Palestine is a part of the nonviolent struggle.”

Near the end of her speech, she spoke of the need for the United States and other nations to aid Palestine in its struggle for liberation.

“Our grief today is profound,” Zaru said. “But it will be repeated over and over again if we do not build a better world. Without international support, we cannot do anything. Without European and American pressing, nothing will change.”

But she criticized the proposed “road map to peace,” saying that it had “not been founded on sustaining human rights.”

She said garnering support for the Palestinian cause may be difficult in America due to the negative image given to the territory’s activists and lack of coverage of non-violent protests when compared to coverage of suicide bombers.

“I can’t judge how much your media knows, but when I listen to it, it seems like they don’t know, or don’t want to know, or don’t want to share what’s happening,” she said.