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Edelstein and Al Habash: "Dialogue must be true, in Barcelona with Sant'Egidio we can speak authentically"

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For Edelstein, Israeli minister for public diplomacy and the diaspora, the end of the "fashion to call to make a nice dialogue people who have no political roles, Jews and Palestinians who may not even live in our land must be appreciated. If we move forward we must not be afraid to talk about issues, refugees, Jerusalem. We say here publicly what we also say at home, in front of our people. The reason why we are here is that we took the strategic decision to ensure that our children do not fight each other in war". On this same tune the statements of Al Habash, Minister for Religious Affairs of the PNA, who says "we can not come here to talk about roses, have a dialogue only on principles, but we must start from the roots, because what happens on the field is important".

Their histories are different, but they have the same passion. Edelstein was a young jew in the Soviet Union of the '70s, where teaching Hebrew and ask for a visa to Israel could cost the gulag. Obtained freedom in 1987, he left Moscow to reach Israel. "I'm optimistic: I thought that I would not be able to go hug my parents, but after a few years everything has changed in the Soviet Union". Al Habash, moved, tells of the village of his parents, abandoned in '48, that became the Jewish Ashkelon, that he could see for the first time with his father. "He showed me the trees, the houses, the places where he had been playing, and the grave of my grandfather. But even taking into account the history of our fathers, we must work for the future, for our children and the children of Israelians."