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On the fourth day of Sabeel's 6th International Conference: The Forgotten Faithful, who are the Palestinian Christians, Dr. Khalil Nakhleh received one of the loudest and most prolonged thunders of applause from over 330 International ecumenical Christians for his passionate disertation.

Dr. Nakhleh spoke to us in Ramallah and he is a Palestinian socio-economic anthropologist and Team Leader of Mu'assasat, which is devoted to strengthening human rights and good governance in the Occupied Territories. He is also a prolific writer and his latest work is "In Search of Palestinian Identity: A Personal Odyssey."

"You are here because you believe injustice has been done and you want to do something. This is not a struggle between religions, it is a struggle to expose the colonial settler movement, namely Zionism which has been ethnically cleansing the indigenous population by coercive, illegal and military means. The native population has been re-grouped as disperse refugees, displaced people on our land, we are 2nd class citizens who have endured under prolonged military and economic occupation for the last 40 years.

"This is not a religious struggle, it is a struggle against the structure that allows and condones occupation and oppression of others. This is a struggle against an insatiable ethnic cleansing to achieve a Jewish presence in Palestine. The struggle is against the colonial-settler movement-Zionism-which for nearly a century has combined military, economic, legal, psychological and environmental means to disperse and displace Palestinians from their land.