Understanding the Palestinian angst

A local Palestinian rights advocacy group wants to inform Thais on the region from their perspective

Carleton Cole
May 15, 2008

While Israel celebrated its 60th anniversary last week, Palestinians marked 60 painful years in the statelessness of al Nakba (The Catastrophe). And while, in recent years, a massive series of walls have kept Israelis safe from Palestine suicide bombers, the Apartheid Wall, as Palestinian groups call it, isolates Palestinian communities in the West Bank from each other.

"Nowhere in the world over the last 60 years has there been so much continual suffering," Sule Larsson said. Larsson is a former member of the Green Party in Sweden and has lived in Bangkok for 15 years. "We want to bring about awareness of this in Thailand."

Larsson is the secretary of the five-month-old Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC Thailand), a local organisation of expatriates and Thais, which is affiliated to the UK-based group of the same name. The group supports "self determination of Palestinians, the right of return of Palestinian refugees and an end of Israeli occupation".

"Why start a group? Because there wasn't one here. I want to help Palestine," PSC Thailand chairman Stuart Ward said. Ward, like Larsson, works for the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok.

This story will be continued in a future book.......................