ANN ARBOR — A group of peace organizations against the occupation in Palestine gathered in Ann Arbor on Tuesday to show support for the Annapolis Mideast peace conference, despite being generally skeptical of its chances for ultimate success. “We feel we should support whatever can happen there,” said Odile Hugonot-Haber, of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She said she sees the conference as a last ditch effort for President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to pull something positive out of their administration near its end. But the group of mostly Christian and Jewish organizations said they felt the peace community should address the efforts as a real opportunity. They said their goal is to spread a culture of peace. “It’s important that we give a sense of the vision of the world we want to build,” said Hugonot-Haber. She said there are about 25 anti-occupation groups in the Ann Arbor area, 11 of which attended the meeting. In an Ann Arbor building known as Hathaway’s Hideaway set aside for community get-togethers, representatives of the various organizations offered detailed statements about their hopes for the conference and talked about other efforts, like divestment campaigns, that their groups take part in. A representative of the Common Ground group, Tamar Weaver, a Jewish woman born in Palestine before it was called Israel, said she believes most Jewish organizations and most people on both sides are against the occupation and in favor of a two-state solution. She said the barrier to peace is that the leadership on each side insists that the other does not really want peace. “Only the Israeli lobby who are associated with the right wing party in Israel are not criticizing Israel,” she said. Weaver presented a letter signed by more than 500 rabbis addressing the Annapolis conference, in support of the goal of a viable Palestinian and “tangible improvements in living conditions and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

There are other Ann Arbor groups that didn’t attend the meeting, that take on a harder line against Israel, aggressively advocating for total divestment and holding frequent, intense demonstrations in the city. “They scare people away,” said Anne Remley, of the InterDenominational Advocates for Peace. “This is a new impulse to try to draw together groups that are mutually respectful.”

Recognition of human rights on both sides is what members of the groups voiced repeatedly at the meeting and in their statements and letters, sent to Secretary Rice’s office, the White House, the Israeli Knesset, other government entities and news agencies including Al Jazeera. And they want human rights recognized immediately. “Yesterday inshallah,” said Jon Swanson, of the Ann Arbor Friends of Sabeel. Sabeel is a Christian Palestinian group. “For me,” said Sonja Page, of the Evangelical Lutheran Southeast Michigan Middle East Taskforce, “A successful conference would acknowledge equally the human political and economic rights and needs of all parties. It would admit that appropriate solutions will take much time and much talk and would give it that time. Open discussion would occur in world media, so that we in the U.S. would hear as much from Palestinians as from Israelis.”