March 4, 2009, South Hadley, Mass.: The Advocacy Project’s (AP) first university chapter, at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, will host a panel discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Friday.

Following the recent crises in Gaza, which claimed nearly 1,300 lives and wreaked destruction and injury on the region, the discussion aims to bring together informed, objective and concerned voices to better understand the conflict, and to emphasize the need for accountability for both Israeli and Palestinian violence.

The event, titled “Living Under Occupation: Human Rights in Gaza and the West Bank,” will feature former AP Peace Fellow Willow Heske, who volunteered with the Democracy and Workers’ Rights Center (DWRC) in the West Bank in 2008. DWRC is a nonprofit NGO that works to educate and organize Palestinian workers for equal pay, rights and opportunities.

A representative from B’Tselem, an Israeli organization that documents human rights violations in the occupied territories, Mitchell Plitnick, will also speak about his organization’s work.

The panel discussion is part of “Salaam/Shalom: Paths Towards Peace and Justice in Israel and Palestine,” a series of events organized by various Mount Holyoke organizations, including College Democrats, The Advocacy Project and Student Coalition for Action (SCA) to bring awareness about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to their campus.

AP’s Mount Holyoke chapter was started in the fall of 2008 by Hibba Al-Adawy, who interned with AP in Washington this past summer.