{"id":1376,"date":"2009-04-24T18:01:09","date_gmt":"2009-04-24T18:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians.php"},"modified":"2009-04-24T18:01:09","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T18:01:09","slug":"italians-israelis-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians","title":{"rendered":"Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in &#8216;Peace Marathon&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM (RNS\/ENI) Former Italian volleyball world champion Andrea Zorzi was one of 50 Italian runners who joined about 100 Israelis and Palestinians in the sixth annual Pope John Paul II Peace Marathon on Thursday (April 23) that concluded in Jerusalem.<br \/>\nSome of those watching noted the structure of the run indicated the divided nature of the two main communities participating &#8212; Israelis and Palestinians, Ecumenical News International reported.<br \/>\n&#8220;I am an athlete and I believe in the importance of sport as a way of bringing people together,&#8221; said Zorzi about the noncompetitive marathon that aims to continue the legacy of Pope John Paul II for peace, brotherhood and interfaith dialogue.<br \/>\nIt was held in advance of the scheduled pilgrimage in May to the Holy Land by Pope Benedict XVI. The marathon is an initiative of the Israel Ministry of Tourism and CSI, the Italian Sports Association. It pits competitors from Italy and runners from Bethlehem and Israel.<br \/>\nThe marathon began at Manger Square in Bethlehem, with Palestinian and Italian runners leisurely running down the early morning streets.<br \/>\nIsrael does not permit its citizens to enter Palestinian territories for security reasons.<br \/>\nUpon the arrival of the runners at the Bethlehem checkpoint near Rachel&#8217;s Tomb half an hour after the marathon began, the Italian and Palestinian runners were met by Israeli runners. The three groups then continued to the final point of the marathon in downtown Jerusalem across from the Old City wall.<br \/>\nIsrael does not allow West Bank Palestinians into Jerusalem &#8212; including East Jerusalem which is also under Israeli control &#8212; without a permit. As in past years, all the Palestinian runners had Israeli permits to cross through the checkpoint to complete the marathon with the rest of the runners.<br \/>\n<em>By Judith Sudilovsky<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM (RNS\/ENI) Former Italian volleyball world champion Andrea Zorzi was one of 50 Italian runners who joined about 100 Israelis and Palestinians in the sixth annual Pope John Paul II Peace Marathon on Thursday (April 23) that concluded in Jerusalem. Some of those watching noted the structure of the run indicated the divided nature of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in &#039;Peace Marathon&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in &#039;Peace Marathon&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"JERUSALEM (RNS\/ENI) Former Italian volleyball world champion Andrea Zorzi was one of 50 Italian runners who joined about 100 Israelis and Palestinians in the sixth annual Pope John Paul II Peace Marathon on Thursday (April 23) that concluded in Jerusalem. Some of those watching noted the structure of the run indicated the divided nature of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-24T18:01:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in 'Peace Marathon'","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in 'Peace Marathon'","og_description":"JERUSALEM (RNS\/ENI) Former Italian volleyball world champion Andrea Zorzi was one of 50 Italian runners who joined about 100 Israelis and Palestinians in the sixth annual Pope John Paul II Peace Marathon on Thursday (April 23) that concluded in Jerusalem. Some of those watching noted the structure of the run indicated the divided nature of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-04-24T18:01:09+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians","name":"Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in 'Peace Marathon'","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-24T18:01:09+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-24T18:01:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/italians-israelis-palestinians#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Italians, Israelis, Palestinians Run Together in &#8216;Peace Marathon&#8217;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}