Jonathan Kuttab is a leading human rights lawyer in Israel and Palestine who was born in West Jerusalem and raised there and in Bethlehem. After the Six Day War, Kuttab’s family moved to the United States, where he graduated from Messiah College and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. After practicing with a Wall Street law firm for several years, in 1980 Kuttab returned to his homeland, where he continues to handle cases that have both Israeli and Palestinian officials squirming.  Kuttab co-founded the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, Al-Haq; and the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners.

Kuttab is in great demand as a speaker internationally, and will be returning to the West Coast in June to address the national convention of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is a founder and board member of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.

Dr. Bernard Z. Sabella is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Bethlehem University and an authority on the complex social, economic and political issues of the region, especially the challenges facing the rapidly declining Arab Christian population. Living in East Jerusalem, Dr. Sabella is currently serving as elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and he is Executive Director of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees for the Middle East Council of Churches. As an academic and educator, Dr. Sabella has written and spoken about the political socialization of Palestinian youth and their parents and has worked with Jewish and Muslim colleagues on Israeli and Palestinian textbook research. As a Catholic, he was invited by the Holy See to participate in the Catholic-Islamic Liaison meeting in the Vatican in 2004. Dr. Sabella was born in Jerusalem and holds MA and PhD degrees in Sociology from the University of Virginia. He earned his BA at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.  His wife, Mary, is a student counselor at Bethlehem University. The Sabellas are parents of three children, two of whom are currently studying abroad and one working as communication officer with World Vision Jerusalem.

Dr. Steve Niva teaches International Politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, with a specialty in Middle Eastern history and politics.  His primary areas of research and writing include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; Islamist movements; globalization; and critical sovereignty studies. He has written for and served on the editorial board of Middle East Report magazine (www.merip.org), and his recent writings have also appeared in Peace Review, Middle East International, Al-Ahram Weekly, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Open Democracy, Z Magazine, Common Dreams, and Counterpunch, among others.

The Rev. Jane L. Barron, a native of Worcestershire, England, graduated from Stirling University in Scotland.  After five years teaching English in a deprived area near Edinburgh, she served as a radio news journalist for another five years before returning to university, taking a theology degree from Aberdeen in 1996.  As a Church of Scotland pastor near Dundee, she became involved in local issues of social justice, an experience which included visiting Northern Ireland on a fact-finding mission for her denomination during the early stages of the peace process, and also travel to Africa in the war on HIV/AIDS. After nearly seven years, Barron became minister of St. Andrew’s Church, Jerusalem, and St. Andrew’s, Galilee, ministering to Christian Arabs as well as British expatriots. She describes her calling as listening to the many diverse voices, and paying particular attention to the people and places working against the tide of division and hatred.  Her husband, Ian, a trauma specialist and educational psychologist, worked in Bethlehem with victims of political and domestic violence, and in training Arab social workers. She now has a part-time ministry with congregations in Fife, Scotland.

Sami Awad is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. Raised a Baptist evangelical by his parents, Bishara and Selwa Awad (founders of the Bethlehem Bible College), Sami has an MA in International Relations from the American University in Washington, DC.  Acting on his Arab Christian background and commitment to living out biblical values, Mr. Awad is one of the leading Palestinian advocates for nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and he undertakes frequent speaking tours in the United States and other countries. As part of its peace-building and reconciling work in the region, the Holy Land Trust provides training workshops in nonviolence, conflict resolution and democratic practice for Palestinians. It conducts trauma-reduction programs to help Palestinian children and families cope with the violence that they experience every day. The Holy Land Trust also organizes a Travel Encounter program in the occupied Palestinian Territories for international pilgrims and fact-finding missions. These programs are designed to create awareness of the situation in Palestine, Israel and the Middle East. 

The Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel is a Palestinian born and raised in the village of Kuffer-Yassif, Galilee, Israel, the son of Christian Palestinian Arab parents. He holds a D. Min. degree from McCormick theological Seminary in Chicago and a masters from Columbia Seminary in Georgia and has been the Mission Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta for 20 years. In 1986, as a commissioner to the Presbyterian General Assembly, he helped found the PC (USA)s Middle Eastern Caucus. He served on the church's Initiative Team on Racism and Racial Violence that produced the denomination's seminal document on "Facing Racism, a Vision of the Beloved Community." While at First Church Atlanta, he began and became executive director of the Atlanta Ministry for International Students, AMIS, an ecumenical organization that provides hospitality to more than 5,000 students from 140 countries. In June 2002 Abu-Akel was elected Moderator of the 214th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, the first Palestinian to lead a major American denomination.