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Summary of 2005

01-01-2005: The Arava Project

The School for Peace was invited to work with students who are studying in the Arava Project. The project is conducted by the Arava College for Environmental Studies. The students live and study on the campus that is located in Kibbutz Ketora. It is an international program. The group studying there this year is made up of twenty six students: ten Jewish Americans, six Jordanians and ten Israeli citizens among whom are eight Jews and two Palestinians.

The students invest most of their time and energy in environmental studies and in creating joint projects. Part of their time is put into social activities. The project coordinator invited the SFP staff to help participants address the social and political aspects of their experience together on the kibbutz – campus. Our program with them is to include a total of four seven – hour meetings. There are a few students who only study in the first semester and a few students who will join in the second semester. These particular students will participate either in the first two or in the last two SFP meetings. All of the academic and social activities of the group are conducted in English. This language restriction was imposed on our work as well. We offer translation for those participants who request it, and there are a few who require it.

This group is particularly complex and the work with them is challenging. The size of the group is problematic and the number of different backgrounds that the participants come from raises a variety of social and political issues. There is a wide age range, bringing together participants at very different stages of life. As opposed to most of the Jewish – Arab groups that we work with, this group has a life and history of its own and the SFP meetings make up only a small part of what they do and study.

The American group for example includes several participants who have dual citizenship and who define themselves as half American and half Israeli. Some are new immigrants and some have been living in Israel for many years.

The first meeting included standard activities that are often aimed at breaking the ice and making acquaintance. This group however had already worked together for three weeks and certain patterns of relations had already been established. The students were asked to define the expectations that they had from the Arava project regarding social and political aspects of their encounter. The participants expressed great interest in addressing issues of the Israeli – Arab conflict. The second session involved open discussion and from the first moment we could identify tension between the American Jewish and the Israeli Jewish groups. The tension was around the question of who has the right to interfere in what happens and whether or not giving economic support gives one the right to buy political influence. “Does Israel belong to all of the Jews or only to those who live here?” At this point the Palestinians and Jordanians listened quietly and added very little to the discussion. The situation was somewhat reversed with discussion of the Palestinians. This discussion was dominated by the two Palestinians and the Jordanians, while the Americans primarily asked a few questions. It was difficult for several of the Jews to hear that instead of defining themselves as Israelis, the Palestinians defined themselves as Palestinians living in Israel.

An important component of SFP projects is the uni-national discussion, where groups sharing a common social reality conduct separate sessions to work through issues that come up in the encounter forum. In the case of this project it was not altogether clear how we were to divide the group. We decided that we would conduct a discussion session in two groups - one group of those who live the conflict, and one group of those who are visiting it. The eight Israeli Jews and two Israeli Palestinians were all in one group, the Jordanians were all in the other group, and the Americans divided themselves between the two groups. The group that “lives” the conflict conducted discussion in Hebrew and focused primarily on issues of Jewish – Palestinian relations within Israel. The “visiting” group of Jordanians and Americans conducted discussion in English. They addressed questions of cultural and political differences between Jordanians and Americans. The Americans were particularly interested in the social life of Jordanians and why there is little or no discussion of politics in Jordanian culture. Discussion was also held on feelings of superiority and inferiority in West – East relations.

31-01-2005: Media in a Time of Conflict

We are conducting this new and exciting project in full partnership with the Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (CCRR). The CCRR works from Bethlehem and conducts programs in the West Bank (Hebron, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem). For more on the center: www.ccrr.net

The aims of the media project are:
- To create links between Israeli and Palestinian journalists
- To raise the awareness of the participants to the role media plays in our societies so that they create fair journalism.
- To make them more committed to humanistic values such as equality and peace.

We launched the project in Jordan in November 2004 when the staffs of our two centers met for a four-day encounter. Prior to this joint meeting we met in Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam and in Bethlehem in order to break ground and prepare for the project. We took it on ourselves to acknowledge our differences, and find our common goals and it was not an easy process. In our work we both believe in the ability of dialogue to transform, we both strive for equality in our a-symmetric situation, we believe in the power and knowledge that the participants bring to the groups and use it in our trainings, and we are committed to raise the awareness of participants, to the social and political structures which hinder just peace.

Between January 27 –31 we met in Cyprus for the second stage of the project. Each organization invited ten people who have vast experience in the media, to participate in a think tank, and help us learn which are the most crucial issues between Israeli and Palestinian journalists. The group was very supportive and productive and we reached more than what we set out as our goals.

Who was on the team?
The Palestinian group included five men and five women, eight from the West Bank and two from Gaza. The group was very experienced in media coverage of the Palestinian situation and society, and very committed to create free and professional media in Palestine. The team included two academic who specialize in educational T.V. and in freedom of speech in the Palestinian media, three directors of local private T.V. stations, two reporters who work on the Palestinian official T.V., a journalist from one of the three big papers in Palestine, and two journalists, one from a private T.V. station and one from the official Palestinian media bureau.
(we are not mentioning names, out of respect to the request of some of the members of the team).

The Israeli group included four women and six men:
-Dr. First, the head of the media department at Natanya college, she specializes in research on minority representation in the Israeli media, especially women and Arabs.
-Dr. Dahan, teaches philosophy at the Open University and law at the Ramat Gan academy of law, he is a member of the Eastern Democratic Rainbow, and a researcher at the Adva center. He did research on the structure of ownership in Israeli media and on freedom of speech.
Merav Michaeli who presents a daily news program on Radio Tel Aviv and is active in the centers for victims of sexual abuse in Israel.

Zvi Yechezkeli is the head of the Arab and the Palestinian desk on channel 10, a commercial T.V. channel in Israel, and teaches a course on the media and the Intifada at the Tel Aviv school for media.
Michal Kaphra has been a journalist for twenty years, mostly in Ma’ariv (one of the two biggest daily Hebrew news papers), she wrote about current events and especially about the Jewish-Palestinian conflict.
Suliman a-Shafi is a reporter for channel 2, a commercial T.V. channel in Israel; he has been covering the Palestinian society for 12 years, and lectures about his work in Israeli colleges.
Uri Ayalon was a journalist at Haaretz newspaper, editor of the local radical media website indymedia, and works at a public relations agency which gives services to leftist organizations.
Hanin Zubi is the director of I’lam Center in Nazereth, an Arab NGO which informs the Hebrew media with news from the Arab society in Israel. The center also conducts workshops for Israeli journalists.
Meron Rapaport has been an editor and journalist for twenty years, his last position was editor of the news division at Haaretz newspaper, he writes about the Palestinians and about the conflict.
Ziv Koren is a photographer for local and international newspapers, he lectures about his work in media departments in Israel and abroad.

The program
The program was conducted in Arabic and Hebrew and included the following sessions:
-Acquaintance
-Dialogue in small bi-national groups about the conflict and about media
-Presentation in the plenary of the School for Peace and the Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation
-Encounters between Israelis and Palestinians in the lyears of occupation and Intifada- a presentation in the plenary by SFP and CCRR.
-Dialogue in national groups
-Presentation in the plenary of Israeli/Palestinian media- the mission was prepared in the national groups.
-Presentation in the plenary of moral dilemmas of journalists these days- the mission was prepared in the national groups.
-Presentation in the plenary of four topics-prepared in small bi-national teams. The topics were:
1. Are the media and the journalist independent? The group explored issues such as self-censorship, economic restrictions, security restrictions and social restrictions.
2. The conflict within the journalist: the group explored the clash between national identity, professionalism and the value system of the journalist.
3. Language reflects the conflict: the group prepared a lexicon of terms that journalists on each side of the border use.
4. What are the expectations of journalists from Israel/Palestine from each other? The group explored issues of cooperation and dependency.

Thanks to our friends from the Peace Movement in Cyprus, we were able to take a study tour of Nicosia with Prof. Yiannis Papadakis from the University of Cyprus who is a critical anthropologist. After the walk we met top journalists from the Greek and the Turkish sides of the island, and heard from them about their partnerships and about the Anan plan to end the conflict, a plan that was rejected by the Greek Cypriots.

What next?
The project as a whole will bring together 110 media people, half from Israel and half from Palestine. We will also bring together 30 teachers who will train to be more critical of the media, and we will bring together for training 30 NGO representatives who will train how to be more effective in reaching local and international media. In addition we will cooperate with an academic institution and teach a course for media students, based on the program we are now creating. The two classes, from Israel and from Palestine will meet and share their experiences at the end of the semester. The SFP will cooperate with the Natanya College for this program.

Our next step is an encounter for media people. 28 Israelis and Palestinians are now signing up for the program that will take place in Jordan in March.

The meeting was very powerful and interesting, it was affected by the changing political situation, and by the fact that the participants had a joint interest and mission. Their profession is in itself one, which crosses borders, somewhat like medical doctors, and indeed they managed to overcome great barriers and pain, and work together with an amazing amount of openness, self-criticism and commitment.

The whole project is sponsored by the European Community

12-02-2005: Al-Ein Course for Jewish and Arab Women

The School for Peace and the Ben-Gurion University recently completed the Al-Ein course for Jewish and Arab women. This program follows the successful model created by the School for Peace and Tel-Aviv University in their “Women in Times of Change” course. The goal of the program is to empower Jewish and Arab women and to advance Jewish – Arab understanding. The course sets out to broaden and deepen dialogue between Jewish and Arab women and to enable participants to gain insight into their situations and roles as women in their respective societies.

The course was conducted as an “external program” of the university, targeting women who are not registered students and who have had little chance of ever entering a university. The Jewish and Arab participants alike come from lower socio-economic levels of society. Eleven Arab women and 16 Jewish women participated. The Jewish women came from Kiryat Gat, a development town in the Negev, and the Arab women came from Rahat, a Bedouin town not far from Kiryat Gat.

The program is based on a series of ten four-hour meetings in the Ben-Gurion University and one full day in Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam. Eight of the meetings were comprised of lectures and discussion sessions. Lectures addressed women‘s issues in the fields of psychology, law, literature, language, health, education and relations within the family. All of the participants listened to the lectures together, and after a brief question and answer session the participants continued discussion in the uninational forum. This forum enabled the women to analyze and apply the content of the lectures to their particular social realities. Naturally the uninational forum also enabled the women to conduct discussion in their own language without translation.

Three of the meetings were conducted as dialogue workshops between the Jewish and Arab participants. Two of these were conducted in the university and one workshop was conducted in Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam. Here the participants directly confronted issues of Jewish – Arab relations. They also gained a different perspective on unique roles that women play within the national and inter-group conflict.

There were several features about this particular course that made it a unique experience for all of us. The Jewish participants all came from families of North African origin. Most of them knew Arabic. Their social customs and patterns of participation were similar to those of the Arab women. The participants entered discussion on the most difficult aspects of the Jewish – Arab conflict, and they did so while maintaining a pleasant atmosphere throughout the course. As facilitators we were unaccustomed to the ease with which they addressed these issues, as if it were a natural social event.

The family and social status as well as the ages of the women varied greatly within the Bedouin group. There were married and single women. Among the single women there were divorcees and widows. These differences were particularly significant in the uninational discussions, leading the Arab group to do a great deal of work. The course therefore not only involved a Jewish – Arab encounter, but an encounter between several different positions of authority. In their feedback at the end of the course the Arab women also related to the experience of working with the Arab facilitator from the SFP and both groups discussed the uniqueness of their relationship to the Arab director of al-Ein.

The Jewish and Arab group alike demonstrated enthusiasm that seemed to grow from one meeting to the next. We were impressed by their openness and warmth. While expressing feminist positions and their struggle for change, many of them spoke of their mothers as role models that they would like to emulate. They spoke of the support that they try to give to their daughters and daughter – in – laws in order to empower them and help them reach positions in which they will feel more self-fulfilled.

Program directors: Niza Yanai from Ben Gurion University and Wafaa Srour Zriek from the SFP

22-03-2005: Media conference in Jordon

On the Jordanian shore of the Dead Sea, the Moevenbik Hotel wonderfully blends into the rugged desert surrounding like an oasis. It was there that the School for Peace and The Center for Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution in Bethlehem conducted a joint workshop for Israeli and Palestinian professionals in media. Thirteen Palestinians from the Palestinian Authority and 14 Israeli citizens took part. There were 3 Palestinians and 11 Jews in the Israeli group. The workshop was funded by the European Union and it took place from March 17th to March 21st, 2005. The aim of the dialogue was to enable participants to examine the role of the media in the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. Most of the participants were journalists, however there were also a number of photographers and people who worked on documentary films.

aasThe Israeli group arrived late on Thursday, the first day, making it impossible to conduct formal meetings according to the program. However the participants quickly and easily took the initiative to get acquainted, and they stayed up talking until late in the evening. From Friday morning until Sunday evening they took part in an intensive series of discussion sessions. They parted at noon on Monday after a summary session.

During the course of the workshop we held discussions in four different forums: The full group together, two small Jewish – Palestinian groups, two uninational groups (one Palestinian and one Jewish), and towards the end of the program the participants divided into four mixed groups, each of the four tackling a particular task. One group wrote an article together. One group formulated a letter to the Israeli authorities protesting their decision to prevent certain Palestinian journalists from participating in the workshop. One group examined expectations that Jewish and Palestinian journalists had from each other. One group examined ideologically – charged concepts commonly used in the Israeli and Palestinian press and they prepared a glossary of terms.

Among other activities, we requested of Israeli and Palestinian participants to describe their media to the other. We also asked them to address moral dilemmas that they have had to confront in their daily work. Most of the participants took an active part in all stages of the program. The dialogue was open, effective and fascinating. Though we initiated activities, our job as facilitators in this workshop was primarily to observe and allow the discussion to continue.

Questions of neutrality, objectivity and the essence of professional journalism made up a major theme of the discussions. But the subtext of that discussion was an ongoing competition over which side was more humane, or which side was morally superior. While they may not have been aware of it, each side tried to score more points. From the moment of arrival the Palestinian group worked hard to give the Israeli group a first hand account of their inhumane conditions under occupation. The Jews were not accustomed to having someone else set the agenda. Israelis grow up in a society that dehumanizes the Palestinian side. Any society determined to occupy another‘s land has little choice but to dehumanize the other. Dehumanization is necessary in order to justify the oppression and humiliation that are inherent to occupation. The reaction of the Jews in this case was common to most encounter workshops that we are familiar with. But as journalists, these participants in particular are accustomed to being the ones who draw the image of the Palestinian for public consumption. They are the ones who analyze the political situation and who offer advice. The Israeli journalists in this workshop seemed to be shocked by their encounter with a Palestinian group that was self-confident, knowledgeable, professional, dynamic and articulate. The Palestinians exposed to the Israelis a reality with which they were not familiar. The Palestinians were also very candid, even courageous, in sharing with the Israelis dilemmas that they, as professionals, confront working in the media while living under occupation. They allowed themselves to be critical of Palestinian society.

After recovering from the initial surprise, the Israeli journalists regrouped and found themselves divided between those who were more pro-Palestinian and those who took upon themselves the role of gatekeepers of the status quo. But soon Palestinians and Israelis alike let down their guards and met eye to eye.

After such an experience it is hard to imagine the participants returning to the same patterns of work to which they were previously accustomed. The encounter was a revelation not only to the Israelis, but also to the Palestinians, many of whom were speaking to unarmed Israelis for the first time in their lives. However while the changes that we identify may be significant, we do not delude ourselves into believing that a single three - day meeting can put an end to deep-rooted perceptions that develop over years and that lie at the base of our identity and our self-image. We have seen that the encounter framework such as this can raise awareness of perceptions and problematize them. Though it is a significant step, we must remember that it is still only a step. It is the beginning of a process in which workshop participants begin to identify ways in which their perceptions and assumptions color their understanding of political and social processes.

Both sides, the Israeli even more than the Palestinian side, left the workshop after having shaken the foundations of basic beliefs and conceptions regarding themselves and regarding the other. The workshop ended as the participants began to reexamine their roles in the conflict as Jewish and Palestinian journalists. We regard this reexamination as a significant measure of the workshop‘s success.

20-04-2005: An encounter between Palestinian and Jewish nurses

The School for Peace conducted a dialogue workshop for twelve Palestinian and Jewish women who work in the medical profession on April 14-17,2005. The program was supported by Austcare and by the Swiss Women for Peace Fund. The goal of the project was to provide participants with tools that can help them analyze their reality as women in a national conflict, and enable them to cope as professionals who must function in that reality.

The discussions focused on the role of women in the Jewish – Palestinian conflict. The Jews spoke of issues that they confront as women in a militaristic society, and the Palestinians spoke of their predicament as women living in a society under occupation. The Jewish women noted how the conflict contributes to giving men an even more powerful voice in society. They often encouraged the Palestinian women to talk about the behavior of the IDF in the occupied territories, primarily because they, the Jewish women, do not generally hear these stories from the Jewish men. The Palestinian women readily spoke about their hardships under occupation. They also spoke about their two-fold struggle as women living in a patriarchal society under occupation by another nation. The participants addressed also professional issues that each group faces. They presented their health – care system and examined ways in which women‘s issues were addressed or ignored in each society.

The participants concluded the workshop with positive feedback, speaking of insights that could only be gained through this kind of direct dialogue. One Jewish participant said, “It was a fascinating experience that will leave it‘s impression on me for a long time. It contributed to a healthier and more considerate way of thinking about our situation.”

A Palestinian participant said:“The encounter was good. I hope that there will be another encounter in order to see how the Jewish participants were influenced.” A Jewish participant gave the answer for that, “I‘m proud to have participated in this encounter. I leave here both richer and more confused. I came with strong convictions about the other side, and now I leave here with more questions.

30-05-2005: School for Peace Graduates Conference

On May 26th the School for Peace conducted a conference for graduates of its various courses over the past fifteen years. The conference was initiated in honor of Professor Ariella Friedman‘s retirement from the Tel-Aviv University. Ariella has been active on the SFP board for many years. She worked with the staff to develop the first cooperative SFP – university course which began in the Tel-Aviv University and was soon adopted by the Ben-Gurion University, Haifa University and Hebrew University. Ariella also worked with the SFP to create the “Women in Times of Change” course.

The program consisted of a presentation by keynote speaker Professor Ed Garcia followed by two panel discussions. The first panel was chaired by Dr. Halabi and was made up of academics who have cooperated with the SFP and the second panel was chaired by Nava Sonneschein, and was made up of course graduates who are active today in various organizations dealing with questions of Jewish – Arab relations. The conference was attended by 120 Jewish and Arab SFP course graduates.

There was a festive atmosphere as old friends and colleagues renewed contact with each other. The master of ceremony was Omar Aghbariya. The program opened with a number of Arabic songs sung beautifully by Rim Talhami and continued with greetings by chairperson of the board Dr. Yusuf Nashef, and SFP director Nava Sonneschein.

Professor Friedman introduced Professor Ed Garcia of the Philippines who gave the first lecture. Professor Garcia comes with a wide variety of conflict management experiences. For the past eleven years he has been invited by the “International Alert” organization to intervene in areas of conflict around the world. He also participated in drawing up the constitution of the Philippines. He shared a number of stories in order to lay out his understanding of the guiding principles of dealing with conflict. His first principle is to develop the mentality of a marathon runner in order to maintain long-term

commitment. In this regard he spoke of his work with 1991 Nobel Prize laureate Ann San Su who fought courageously for human rights in Burma, and Nelson Mandela who spent 27 years in jail and continued to struggle for peace. The second principle is dialogue as a way of life. Here he spoke of the philosopher John Young in Northern Ireland who worked tirelessly in discussions with Catholics and Protestants in conflict. The third principle is strategic thinking. He brought the example of East Timor, a small island of less than a million inhabitants. In order to protect their rights they had to carefully create strategies of cooperation with neighboring Indonesia, the fourth most heavily populated nation in the world. The fourth principle is networking, which was essential to the peace process in Mozambique. He spoke of ways in which to mobilize people in the peace process stressing the importance of reaching youth. Here he brought examples of his experience in Columbia and in the Philippines. Finally he spoke of the principle of reconciliation, bringing in examples of work bridging memory and hope in Rawanda following the massacres there.

Professor Garcia‘s lecture was followed by the first panel discussion. The panelists included Professor Ariella Friedman, Dr. Gabriel Horenczyk, Dr. Yifat Maoz, Dr. Niza Yanai, Professor Dan Baron and Dr. Rabah Halabi.

Professor Ariella Friedman described the development of the first joint SFP – university course. She spoke of her attraction to what she called the courageous and direct approach of the SFP that does not fall into the trap of focusing on interpersonal relations, but rather confronts the most conflictive and painful issues that lie behind the tension between Jews and Palestinians as two groups. The combination of the psychological and socio-political aspects of the SFP approach were particularly significant to her.

Ariella spoke of her suspicion of new psychological theories that abound in her field, but that now and then an article or new approach appears that sheds a whole new light on her work. Such was her encounter with the SFP. She said that as she sat behind a one-way mirror observing SFP courses in the Tel-Aviv University over the past fifteen years, she learned that processes in the encounter between majority and minority groups can be studied systematically by simply counting on them to develop. She observed how these processes repeat themselves in certain patterns leading to a more effective dialogue based on relations of greater equality between the participating groups. Her experience with Jews and Arabs in the SFP courses contributed to her insight on asymmetrical group relations in general. She was moved by observing the change in the way Arab students left each session. For many of them it was their first experience voicing their opinions in front of Jews. As they overcame their hesitation and fear of the price they might pay by opening their mouths, the Arab participants became increasingly assertive and clearly empowered by the experience. Ariella noted the Jews‘ initial bewilderment, loss and embarrassment as they encountered such voices for the first time. In their response, the Jews learned to identify the tools they used, available only to them as the privileged group, in order to restore the power relations with which they were familiar. Having shattered myths and failing to return to the starting point, the Jewish participants begin to reexamine their group identity in light of their new experience with “the other”. Ariella was particularly impressed with the participants‘ agreement to go through this often-painful process, almost always sticking it out to the end and determined to continue their dialogue.

Dr. Ifat Maoz of the Hebrew University spoke about the changes that Jewish – Arab encounters underwent since October 2000: fewer funding sources, less legitimacy for encounters on the part of the Ministry of Education, and more uninational work. The educational work focuses more attention ono sub-groups within each of the national groups such as: gender issues, Mizrahi – Ashkenazi groups, and encounters between new immigrants and native or more established citizens. Among the larger organizations that continue to work, as well as among funding organizations, the work has in general become more professional with more realistic goals and more effective strategic planning. However there is still a lot of activity conducted that is based on the classic coexistence models. Citing surveys in the field Ifat said that an estimated 16% of the Jews in Israel have taken part in Jewish – Arab encounters of one type or another. Among those who participated, 36% stated that the encounter had a positive influence on them (this is not to say that the remainder were influenced negatively). In other words 6 % of the Jews in Israel took part in Jewish – Arab workshops and regard this experience as a significant and influential experience. Ifat stressed that this figure is impressively high. She presented preliminary findings from research that she is now conducting with Dr. Zvi Bekerman in which they find that the concepts developed in the School for Peace have been disseminated not only to those who graduated from SFP courses but that they have spread to others in the field as well.

Dr. Niza Yanai of the Ben Gurion University told a number of stories that shed light on what she sees as a new understanding of what being Israeli means to Palestinian citizens of Israel. She said that it is not sufficient to ask whether or not one is Israeli, since clearly anyone with Israeli citizenship is Israeli. The question to ask is what is Israeliness, and what is its significance to different groups. She calls for a challenge to the dichotomy that determines that Israeliness belongs only to the Jews and that it stands in opposition or contradiction to the Palestinian identity. It is up to us to conduct an urgent discussion on points at which the two groups connect and that this will be the source of hope.

Prof. Dan Baron of the Ben Gurion University spoke of the learning process that he himself underwent as he observed from behind the one-way mirror the SFP course in his university. Until that point he had seen himself as an enlightened liberal and he had not appreciated how difficult it was to be on the side of the majority group under attack. He learned about the significance of power relations and how blind he had been to the processes involved in majority – minority group relations. It prepared him for work that he later pursued with Palestinian partners exploring historical narratives and preparing educational material. He noted changes that take place in the Jews‘ narratives over the years. It was once more common for Jews, in telling their life stories, to speak of their Zionist grandfather who fought in wars and paved roads. Today more people construct their story with talk of their uncle who came as a refugee with nothing and who lived on the margins of society, never feeling comfortable with the Zionist ethos. Dan connects this development to the aftermath of October 2000. As Jews are increasingly exposed to Palestinian narratives they reconstruct their own in response.

Dr. Gabriel Horenczyk of the Hebrew University spoke about the role of researchers in the field of inter-group encounters. It is up to the researcher to raise irritating questions. He still does not have an answer to the question of how the encounters contribute to Jewish – Arab relations. Yet the question is necessary in order to define goals, examine processes and improve the work. Referring to Dr. Nashef‘s discussion of the need “to heal,” Gabi asked what kind of healing are we talking about – conventional or alternative. Are there different levels of healing and is pain a necessary part of the process? What are the similarities and differences between the healing processes of each group? Gabi said that the SFP is not the only organization that conducts Jewish – Arab encounters, but it is the only organization that has formulated its method and developed theory in the field, and for this it deserves to be regarded with the highest esteem.

Dr. Rabah Halabi of the School for Peace Research Center closed the session and stated that after much work and thought we arrived at the conclusion that the only goal that we can reach in the encounter is awareness. Awareness can lead to more extreme positions and it can also bring the sides together. Rabah pointed out that not only through his work, but through his life experience he sees that underlying the conflict are deep-seated perceptions that exclude and dehumanize the Palestinians. Rabah described a report that he saw on the news in which the IDF surrounded the house of a Palestinian who was under suspicion. The army sent a trained dog to enter the house to try to pick up scents. The Palestinian killed the dog and the army destroyed the house with the suspect inside. The media provided coverage of the dog‘s funeral for five or ten minutes, seeming to Rabah like eternity. There are moments that the life of a dog – and in this case not metaphorically speaking – is more important than the life of a Palestinian. It is this dehumanization that leads Rabah to speak of Jewish – Arab relations in colonialist terms. Rabah went on to say that it will not last forever. The Palestinians will liberate themselves from the occupation, and in doing so will liberate the Jews from their inhumanity. Bringing an example from an SFP course for Palestinian – Israeli journalists, Rabah said that when a Palestinian is strong he leaves the Jews with no choice but to accept him with his national identity and all that that implies.

In between panel discussions the floor was given to Muhammad Joudeh from Hiwar, a Palestinian organization with which the SFP has been cooperating for years. Muhammad said that he began to think of conducting dialogue work after participating in a Palestinian - Israeli SFP course in 1994. Muhammad said that at the beginning of their work in Palestinian society they had to swim against the stream. He spoke of negotiations with the SFP over terminology. “As Palestinians our identity was clear. We weren‘t interested in talking about ‘constructing identity‘. The word ‘conflict‘ also didn‘t suit us. We wanted to speak of the occupied and the

occupier. We were also concerned about power relations, thinking that the connection formed with the Jewish group might create the illusion that we had reached some kind of equality. We also saw that in 90% of the Palestinian – Israeli cooperative projects it was the Israelis who made the decisions. We worked under very difficult conditions, because usually parties to a conflict meet for these kinds of discussions after the conflict is over. Here the occupier meets the occupied during the reality of occupation. I must mention the professionalism of the School for Peace. Many organizations meet for the sake of conducting a meeting, and professionalism is not a top priority. In working with the SFP the encounter provides the participants with new options of examining the conflict and their role in it.”

The second panel opened with the words of Tal Ayal, an activist in “Mahsom Watch” and a graduate of the 1998 SFP course in the Tel – Aviv University. This year she completed her doctorate. Mahsom Watch is a women‘s group that protests the reality of military checkpoints as one of the aspects of occupation that prevent Palestinians from conducting any kind of normal life. The movement was founded in 2001. Observing the routine of military checkpoints the Mahsom Watch group documents violations of human rights and in some cases provides humanitarian aid. Tal said that the SFP course shook her liberal self - image and led her to reexamine her social identity as she began to recognize the degree of militarism that permeates Israel‘s civil society. Taking an active role in Mahsom Watch has been her way of taking action and making it clear that she is not prepared to support Israeli policy by remaining silent. However Tal also spoke of how infuriating and frustrating it is in her work to see the degree of pain that the Israelis cause the Palestinians, while she alone can do nothing to make any essential difference.

Riad Ali is a graduate of the 1994 facilitator-training course and works today as a CNN reporter. Riad spoke of his traumatic kidnapping in Gaza as the dominant experience of his life as a journalist. The whole event lasted 24 hours. He described how he had entered Gaza that morning feeling like a Palestinian, he was kidnapped as a Druze, and he returned home feeling Israeli. He used his story to illustrate the complexity of the various spheres of identity. Of all of these spheres he felt that his experience made his Druze identity the most salient.

Yuval Tamari completed the SFP facilitator – training course in 1997 and has worked with the SFP facilitating youth encounter workshops. Today he is completing an MA in urban planning and works with the Sikui organization. Yuval came to the course after serving in the army for five and a half years. He had noticed that he had never had a discussion with a Palestinian, and he turned to the SFP for the opportunity to change that. He remembers the course as a significant experience in his life, opening his eyes and providing him with tools to analyze our social reality. Today these tools help him in his work in Ramla where he is conducting research on the significance of walls that have been erected to divide the Arab neighborhood of Joarish from the Jewish neighborhood of Ganei Dan. In the framework of his research Yuval facilitates dialogue in Ramla and other mixed Jewish – Arab towns, and he described how the approach and guiding principles of the School for Peace have influenced the questions that he poses and the methodology that he uses today. He attributed to the SFP his sensitivity to issues of power sharing, particularly in regards to the representation of Arabs and the use of the Arabic language.

Ra‘ida Aishe Khatib is a graduate of the SFP facilitator – training course. Today she is a resident of Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam and teaches English in the village‘s Jewish – Arab Primary School. As a high school student Ra‘ida participated in a SFP youth encounter workshop. She spoke of her participation in the workshop

as her first experience with Jews in general and NS/WAS in particular. Ra‘ida mentioned her family‘s history as internal refugees who were evicted from Kfar Damoun in 1948, and on that background she remembers being influenced by her unique encounter with “the enemy” on the grounds of equality that were created by the SFP. This youth encounter eventually led her to return to NS/WAS and participate in the facilitator - training course. Ra‘ida spoke of the course as an empowering experience contributing to her ability to analyze social reality and express her criticism. She spoke in particular of issues that she confronts with parents of some of her Jewish pupils who do not easily accept the authority or qualification of an Arab English teacher.

Eitan Bronstein completed the 1991 SFP facilitator – training course and worked on the SFP staff for several years. Eitan founded and directs the “Zochrot” association. Zochrot conducts various activities aimed at preserving the memory of destroyed Palestinian villages raising awareness among Israelis of the costs of the 1948 War. Eitan said that his experience in the SFP taught him how much his identity is tied to the majority group, exposing the extent to which he benefits from privileges that come at the expense of the oppressed minority. The ideology of the SFP challenges the Zionist construction of Jewish identity in which the Jews are perceived as returning to their land while the Palestinians are regarded as a bothersome part of the scenery, or as people who have to be put up with while keeping them in an inferior status. Eitan said that the work of Zochrot begins where the work of the SFP ends. Even in 1948 there were Jewish voices that spoke out against the expulsion of Palestinians. Though these voices were weak they can contribute to attempts to rethink concepts of identity that are based on the opposition of Jews against Arabs.

Nada Mata completed the SFP course in the Tel-Aviv University in 1998 and then took part in the SFP facilitator – training course. She continued to work as a facilitator, primarily for the SFP women‘s courses and youth encounter workshops. Today Nada works in Sikui, a Jewish – Arab organization that advances the struggle for equality for Arab citizens of Israel. Nada said that it was easier for her to work with the SFP‘s approach because it strives to confront issues that lie at the foundation of inequality between Jews and Arabs, while analyzing the processes of change that Jews and Palestinians undergo in their encounter with each other. Sikui on the other hand works on important issues such as reaching a more equal allocation of budgets for the Arab sector, but in their pressure to produce reports they must agree to certain premises that are not discussed. It is easy for many people to speak about equality between Arab and Jewish citizens as long as we do not challenge the very nature of a state defined as Jewish.

Michael Sfard is a lawyer and graduate of the 1993 SFP facilitator – training course. Michael spoke of the course as a turning point in his life, providing him with insight that continues to accompany him in his professional work. He said that NS/WAS exposed him to messages and to a discourse that he had never previously encountered. The course taught him to examine Israeli society through a different lens. It is his experience in the course that enabled and encouraged him to represent people who are not from

his national group. In order to represent any client and serve as his or her voice in court, it is important that the lawyer be versed not only in the language of law, but in the language, world and discourse of the client. Michael has been representing Palestinian groups in various struggles against issues that grow out of the Occupation. These fights are extremely difficult. On the Israeli side he represents refuseniks who oppose military service and he helps various human rights organizations advance their struggles. Michael said that he once thought he could run away from the conflict or ignore it, but he finds that the conflict continues to chase him. His way to cope with the conflict is to jump into the middle of it, learn what he can, say what he has to say and to continue to fight oppression.

Ofra Pisetski is a teacher in the Givat Brenner regional high school. She has taken part in a number of SFP teacher-training courses. A formative experience for Ofra was when she and one other Jewish teacher joined twelve Arab teachers to go to Berlin as a Jewish – Arab delegation. It was her first taste of being part of a “national minority”. She was not previously aware that she was part of a group that controls and oppresses and her exposure to these aspects of her social reality shook her up. As a result of one of the Jewish – Palestinian teachers‘ courses, and in the wake of the euphoria of the Oslo Accords, Ofra worked with three other teachers on her staff to create a program entitled “Drachim Niftahot” (“opening paths”). It is an intensive one – week program aimed at exposing students to the Palestinian story. It has become a regular part of her school‘s curriculum for several years.

sdNava Sonnenschein closed the session pointing out the panelists‘ critical look at society as the common thread tying together all of the presentations. This criticism was not only directed towards others but towards themselves. She thanked the panelists both for their participation in the conference and for the important work that each of them have carried from the SFP courses to their various professional fields.

20-06-2005: university courses

The School for Peace conducted two university courses in the 2004 – 2005 school year. The courses combined dialogue work with the study of social identity theory. One of these courses was in the Tel-Aviv University and the other was in the Haifa University.

Tel – Aviv University course
This course consisted of 16 three-hour meetings in the university and a weekend workshop in Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam. The weekend workshop included students from a similar SFP course in the Haifa University. The meetings were conducted jointly by one Jewish and one Palestinian facilitator from the School for Peace. Every third meeting was conducted in the uni-national forum. Every fifth meeting opened with a lecture on theories of identity and conflict. During the course of the binational dialogue a number of sessions were chosen in which one Jewish and one Palestinian student would leave the circle, observe the process and take notes on their impressions. They would then report on their observation to the group. The course was structured such that every participant would have an opportunity to observe the dialogue from outside.

Among the Jewish students there were five men and three women. The Arab group included one man and seven women. Most of the participants were graduate students working towards an M.A. They came from departments of psychology, sociology, law, social work and biology.

The students underwent a fascinating process. We can only describe a small part of it here. The first meeting addressed issues that are common to opening sessions. The students presented their expectations. The Jews spoke about their desire to get to know Arabs and to gain a better understanding of themselves and their own group. The Arabs spoke about their desire to enter into deep political discussion, and to change the image that Jews have of them.

From the second meeting until the end of the course the students entered an on-going discussion on issues of conflict such as: military service, the occupation, and terror tactics on the part of Palestinian militant groups and the Israeli army. The Arab group ties Palestinian terrorist attacks to the reality of occupation, while the Jewish group as a whole discusses terror as part of a world – wide phenomenon characterizing the Arab world. The Jews use the Arabs‘ understanding of terror as a means to dehumanize them and undermine the legitimacy of the Arab struggle. While the Arab students oppose the use of violence, they make a distinction between their opposition to violence and their understanding of it as a means of resistance to occupation.

The Jews deal with this subject on another level when they reach their uni-national discussion. Here they begin to discuss issues of military service in the occupied territories. They bring up difficult stories and discuss their revulsion towards the occupation. Along side of their political positions, they also deal with the racism in the images that they have of the Palestinians.

In the Arab uninational meetings there was tension between two approaches towards the Jewish – Arab dialogue. There were those who spoke of the need to reach out to the hearts and conscience of the Jews in order to encourage them to use their position of power to make concessions and work towards change. Others saw this as demeaning and claimed that the language of power must be answered with a language of power. This is the language that is understood and the only one that can bring about change. The Arab group agreed that they may not have physical power, but they have other points of strength that they must learn how to use. They reached the conclusion that all of the Arabs want to change the nature of relations with the Jews, but they are not agreed on the way that this could best be done.

On the seventh meeting the group spoke about the army. The Arabs expected the Jews to refuse to do military service. A few of the Jews agreed that they should refuse to serve, and others claimed that military service is a part of their identity despite their opposition to the occupation. The discussion of military service and armed struggle leads to a competition over which group is more humane. Both of the groups appear to be strong at this point, though the Jewish group succeeds in putting up a more united front.

The ninth and tenth meetings focused on the definition of the state. The Arabs call for “a state for all its citizens”. The Jews regard the question as a dilemma. One Jewish participant said, “A state defined as Jewish cannot be altogether democratic. But if we no longer make a conscious effort to maintain the Jewish character of the state, we will lose our ability to defend ourselves.” The Jews at this stage advocate a policy of maintaining a Jewish majority. According to their images, the state would not be democratic if it had an Arab majority and it would not ensure the existence of Jews in the country.

The next meeting was a weekend in Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam together with the Jewish and Arab students from the SFP course in the Haifa University. The meeting was characterized by competition between the Tel-Aviv students vs. the Haifa students rather than Jewish vs. Arab groups. The question implied in the competition was about which group had progressed more. The Arabs in particular seemed to be competing over which group had more success in influencing the Jewish side. Simulated negotiations over the character of the state led to particularly serious and in-depth discussion. The weekend together has a significant influence on the group, followed by meetings with a more conciliatory tone including discussion about personal connections between the Jewish and Arab students.

In the final meeting the participants spoke about the changes that they underwent during the course. The Jews spoke about the difficulty of adopting positions that were outside of the consensus. One Jewish participant said, “I suddenly asked the question whether I need the State in order to maintain my identity. The State may be a mechanism cultivating fears that have to be deconstructed, and I am now at the stage of reexamining concepts that were drilled into me from my earliest education. Maybe it‘s not my identity, but the definition of the state that has to change.”

An Arab participant concluded, “I came to the course in order to express myself. The course contributed a lot to me. It was important to me to take an active part in the dialogue and I regret every moment that I could have spoken but didn‘t.”

Jewish student: “The encounter with the Arabs made me understand that not only aren‘t we as liberal and concerned about equality as we thought, but our whole outlook is based on racism and oriented towards confrontation. And all of this is because we are scared”.

Arab student: “I felt that I could express feelings and deal with the difficult issues that we face as a part of our daily routine. Even if there were moments that I could not be one hundred percent open, or find the exact words to say what I wanted to, the course became a place from which I could develop my identity. As a Muslim, a woman, a Bedouin, and a Palestinian, there are so many identities to deal with and no one of them can come at the expense of the other”
.

The participants courageously addressed the most burning issues of the conflict. Their sincerity and mutual respect was admirable. They created an atmosphere that enabled them to gain insight into the most painful issues that concern them about Jewish – Arab relations.

Haifa University course
The SFP cooperated with the Psychology department of the Haifa University to conduct a dialogue course for seven Jewish and six Palestinian graduate students. The SFP has been conducting this course with the Haifa University every year since 1997. This year the SFP facilitators were Omar Aghbaria and Eitan Bronstein. The course consisted of 14 meetings that took place in the first semester of the year. The meetings were conducted as an on-going dialogue workshop, interspersed with lectures by Prof. Ramzi Suliman. The course also included a weekend workshop in NS/WAS together with participants of the SFP - Tel-Aviv University course. Most of the students were working towards an M.A. in psychology though there were a few students from other departments who joined with special permission. The course was observed by Prof. Suliman along with four students who participated in the course during the previous year and were writing papers on the group.

The objective of work was to enable participants to analyze and connect their personal experience to theories of group process and majority – minority group power relations. One of the things that made the Haifa course unique was the presence of two Druze students in the Palestinian group. The Druze in Israel are required by law to do military service. In the Palestinian uninational session there were stormy discussions over the place of the Druze as a minority within a minority. The Druze students were in a particularly complicated position as they are attacked by the other Palestinians for accepting military service and they are embittered by disappointment with Israel for not keeping the promise of full equality in return for military service. The tension between the Druze and the other Palestinians went through a fascinating process in which the Palestinians examined the social and historical factors that brought the Druze to the position that they are in today. The Druze issue led to discussion of internalized oppression and awareness. It enriched the perspectives of the Jewish and Palestinian students as they developed an awareness of the different roles played by majority and minority groups and the different responsibilities that each group has.

Commenting on the course experience one of the Palestinian students said, “I‘ve grown accustomed to the role of the oppressed minority - getting angry, screaming, demanding rights, being ignored, and seeing nothing change. I don‘t know what to do with this new situation in which I really feel that I have been listened to and that someone has been moved by it.”

It took time for both groups to get used to the kind of communication that developed between them. Both groups felt that they benefited on a moral level from their dialogue, but they were careful about translating their new understanding into practical conclusions regarding what should actually be done. The weekend meeting in NS/WAS in which they met with the students from our course at Tel Aviv University, provided them with an opportunity to examine how prepared they were to work towards change. The workshop included a simulation game in which the participants negotiated questions of the definition of the state as Jewish or democratic, the Palestinian right of return, reforms in education, budget allocation, land distribution, military service and the occupation. They reached agreement on more than they expected. The course ended and the students‘ parting from each other was emotional as they realized what they had gone through in order to build the kind of trust and friendship that they developed.

25-06-2005: An Encounter between Israeli and Palestinian Media Professionals.

The is the third encounter that we have conducted together with the Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation, as part of a program about the media and the conflict. In this encounter there were 14 Israelis, including representatives from the media in the Arabic language and in the Russian language, in Israel. In the Palestinian group there were 15 participants including representatives from private television stations, representatives from foreign media and from newspapers. The encounter took place in Amman, between 2-6 of June.

The program provided an opportunity to get to know each other and to discuss the political situation. In the first part most of the discussions were about life under the occupation and about the consequences of the occupation on Palestinian society. After that we continued with discussions on professional topics. This included a presentation of the Israeli Media by the Israeli group, and a presentation of the Palestinian media by the Palestinian group. In another session we asked the groups to share ethical and professional dilemmas from their work as journalists. We concluded the workshop with a practical activity. Participants undertook joint tasks, among them writing an article together, and creating a dictionary of terms about the conflict that journalists on each side of the border use.

Having conducted three workshops for journalists we can start to see some processes that repeat themselves. We believe that these encounters teach us something about our social and political reality. Some of the patterns that we will share with you might be relevant for understanding Israeli-Palestinian relations these days. The first has to do with the different way Palestinians and Israelis present themselves in the opening session: The Israelis present themselves as human beings, in the universal, or international sense, and as professionals. It is hard to place them as a party in this conflict, or as people of the Middle-East. On the other hard, among the Palestinians, there are those who present themselves as refugees, or as ex-prisoners. They stress their national identity. On second thought, the Israelis also stress their national identity. This is an identity which hides national elements and stresses “Tel Aviv” elements, or universal elements. These differences are evident in the opening sessions. It is easier to understand the Palestinians who are in a state of national struggle for independence. They are a part of a mobilized society struggling for their rights. The Israelis are harder to understand. They hide the more nationalist elements of their identity. Maybe they are uncomfortable to display them in front of the Palestinians, or maybe State institutions like the government and the army do that work for them, and they can be free to just be “human beings”. It is important to mention that in the context of the encounter, a person who expresses universal attitudes, as though she or he is not concerned with national identity, is considered by most Israeli participants as a higher being.

On the second day, the groups are asked to present the media of their country, to the other side. In this workshop the two groups took the activity very seriously and prepared detailed presentations which were very different from each other. The Palestinians, like in the previous two workshops, prepared a thorough historical lecture about Journalism in Palestine. It is no coincidence that they stress the historical aspect. This could be a means to emphasize their long – standing existence in our area. It is an answer to the often - heard argument over “who was here first.” The Israelis in the last workshop chose to present their media according to the degree of exposure to the public. They began by describing the medium of television. In a previous workshop the Israeli group chose a different parameter, describing how the media deals with the conflict. None of the Israeli groups stressed the historical aspect. It is also interesting what they chose to omit. Two out of the three Israeli groups did not include in their presentation the Arabic-speaking media in Israel. Two out of the three did not mention the fact that the Israeli media is owned by a very small number of wealthy families. In the last workshop there was a focus on the “Tel Aviv” culture and its effect on the media, as part of their attempt to describe the culture of escapism that is prevailing in Israel. Two of the three groups mentioned in depth, the issue of censorship and the relations the media has with the Israeli Army Spokesperson Unit. One of these groups was very critical when talking about this Unit. We could say that the presentations are dependent upon the individual members of each group, but since we have three groups to compare, we may be able to make some generalizations about the way Israelis and Palestinians choose to present the media in front of the other.

We will conclude this example with a quotation that can teach us a lot about the Israeli state of mind. It was the opening sentence of the Israeli presentation in one of the workshops: “The Israeli media is developed, Western and influenced from things that happen in the world, it does not take much interest in news and it takes more interest in sports and lifestyle”

Another incident that we found interesting came from our request to present dilemmas that the participants faced in their professional work as journalists. Each national group sat separately, shared dilemmas and chose what they wanted to present in the plenary. Again we saw how the universalist self-image of the Israelis influenced their choices. The Israelis presented dilemmas that journalists anywhere might face, such as the classic dilemma of whether to continue filming an atrocity, or to intervene and give the victim a hand. The Israelis also shared dilemmas, which leave them looking good, liberal and pro-Palestinian. One of the stories in this category had to do with the question of whether to tell the Israeli viewers that the Palestinian fighters had not put down their weapons, as they promised Abu-Mazen, and that they are still functioning as militias while telling the public otherwise. Reporting this would expose the Palestinians in a way that they did not want to expose them, and not reporting this is showing loyalty to the Palestinians. In none of the workshops did the Israelis tell about their loyalty to the Israeli Army, nor did they describe how blind they can be to the fact that they write and report from a Zionist and patriotic point of view. Only in the first workshop, towards the end of the encounter, did one of the journalists share such a dilemma. It happened after a Palestinian pushed the Israelis to a corner, showing them how the Israeli media miss-reported about Camp David, put all the blame for the failure of the talks on Arafat, and called Barak’s offer a generous one. In a moment of true soul searching, the Israeli journalist described how he visited the Jenin Camp and wrote a report about a Palestinian woman who was shot while standing on the roof of her house. The report was in the newspaper the next day, and the journalist received a call from a Palestinian friend who helped him get the story. The Palestinian friend thanked him for the good report, and asked why he reported that the woman was shot by a stray bullet. The Israeli told us that until that phone call he had not even noticed that he used this term “stray bullet” and that he did not have any way of knowing which kind of bullet it was. It seems that, unconsciously, it was hard for him to imagine, that the Israeli Army can have impure intentions.

When the Palestinians shared their dilemmas they used the “stage” in order to tell of horrible and tragic events that they experienced, including loss of close relatives and friends during the Army invasions. They told these stories in detail, as if they are post-traumatic. Another pattern that we noticed was that they talked about the tension that they have between their loyalty to the national struggle, and their professional role as journalists. They were very open in front of the Israelis and did not hesitate to tell of cases when they chose to be ‘less professional and more Palestinian’. This openness took the Israelis by surprise.

It is always good to go back to the words of Paul Sartre, in his preface to the book “Wretched of the Earth” by Franz Fanon. Sartre writes to the French: “Fanon explains you to his brothers and shows them the mechanism by which we are estranged from ourselves, take advantage of this, and get to know yourselves seen in the light of truth, objectively. Our victims know us by their scars and by their chains, and it is this that makes their evidence irrefutable”. An encounter, and a dialogue with the other, is one of the best ways to help us, Israelis, with this task.

01-07-2005 Youth Encounters at the School for Peace

The School for Peace held five Youth Encounter programs during the fall and spring semesters of 2005-06.
We share with you some of the results from the most recent groups in the youth encounter program

We have worked with many of the schools participating in our youth encounter programs for the last twenty years, and we maintain cordial relations with the teaching staffs. Speaking to teachers recently, we received updates on some highlights of the impact they have observed on their students who attended SFP workshops in the last year, two years, even three years – sometimes the impact, they stressed, is evident not immediately, but rather over a period of time.

Our staff reports that the students say that this was a very significant experience in their lives; that it helped them look at things they had never considered before; and that they‘d decided that they need to revise how they look at the conflict. The participants say forcefully that they have grown up somewhat, and taken responsibility for what is happening around them; that the process was far from easy, but was extremely worthwhile.

We bring some examples of Arab students’ respond to the encounter:

• One group of Arab students reported on their experience in the encounter to the Student Council at their school, and proposed a series of uni-national meetings to debate the question of having productive dialogue with Jewish students.

• An Arab student, who participated in a youth encounter when she was in High School, was inspired to go on and take the facilitators‘ course and later went to work in an organization focusing on social change and social justice.

• An Arab student later said that, because at school no one teaches about his identity as a Palestinian, participating in this program made him take an interest in his history and he began collecting oral histories from family members. This is many times a very emotional task since a lot of the histories include stories of explosion, trauma and humiliation, which many of the elder people have a hard time to tell.

• One group of Arab and Jewish students kept in touch afterwards and requested a continuing series of meetings.

Jewish students’ respond
• At one school, a group of Jewish students decided to tell the story of their encounter and what they‘d learned there, to an assembly of their entire school. This may sound ordinary but, given the objection in Jewish Israeli society to any kind of reconciliation, these young people have to be very strong and determined to even propose such a thing, and stand in front of their peers.

• Jewish students who didn’t usually read a newspaper, after the encounter suddenly reported that they began reading the newspapers regularly and voicing critical opinions.

• A Jewish student set up a student group to provide continued programming on the subject and persuaded the school principal to bring conscientious objectors as speakers to address the students and explain how they arrived at their stand.

• Jewish male students who later enter their compulsory army service come back a year or two later and tell their teachers how the encounter experience gave them a different point of view from their fellow soldiers and how they tried to talk to other soldiers about the dehumanization of the Palestinians.

Teachers who accompany their students to our seminars frequently ask afterwards to attend a similar seminar for Arab and Jewish teachers. Hence in 2000, the SFP began holding an annual seminar for teachers, to meet the demand. Several dozen teachers have participated in these special encounters to date. (Note: in the 25 years we have been conducting seminars for young people, an estimated 750 high school teachers, Jewish and Palestinian, have been touched by the youth encounter programs at the SFP. This influence is geometric because each succeeding class they teach derives tangible and intangible benefit from their experience at the School for Peace).

STATISTICS – Some recent youth encounter programs by the School for Peace, including numbers, locations, dates and a comment from the staff summery session- to give a feeling of the issues that we deal with.

1….Arab school: Nazareth Municipal High School, Nazareth, and
Jewish school: Brenner High School, Givat Brenner
February 19, 2006 - 27 Jewish participants; 29 Arab participants
From the staff summery session: In one group, the Arab students decided to speak entirely in Arabic… and the Arab facilitator was asked to translate every sentence spoken, in both directions! This was a burden of the Arab facilitator, but also a source of pride, that the students wanted to express themselves in Arabic.

2.…Arab school: Al Mujhalis High School, Nazareth, and
Jewish school: Reali High School, Haifa
February 5-7, 2006 - 39 Arab participants; 29 Jewish participants
From the staff summery session: a suicide bombing that took place [in the real world] on our second day did not prevent the workshop from going forward as planned. On one hard it raised the tension and suspicion between the Jews and the Arabs, on the other hard it motivated the students to prove to each other that they can deal with the conflict in a different way.

dg3…. Arab school: Illaboun High School, Illaboun, and
Jewish school: Einot Yarden High School, Amir
January 29-31, 2006 - 28 Jewish participants; 37 Arab participants
From the staff summery session: The group tried to maintain the social relationships, at the expense of in-depth dialogue on the conflict, leaving the facilitators feeling that not much work was done; yet, the students seemed to leave changed, and moved nevertheless… The facilitators need to examine this gap in peception.

4….Jewish school: Tzafit High School, Kfar Menachem
Arab school: Dir Hanna High School, Dir Hanna
December 4-6, 2005 - 29 Arab participants, 27 Jewish participants
From the staff summery session: Not atypically, the Jewish group complained that when the Arab groups speak Arabic, it hurts the quality of the communication… Also not atypically, the Arab group felt the Jewish group did not take the encounter seriously enough. Each group deals with different issues, overcoming different things.

30-07-2005: An Encounter Between Israeli and Palestinian Educators in Anatolia

In July 2005 the School for Peace and the Bethlehem – based Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (CCRR) took a group of Israeli and Palestinian educators to Antalia, Turkey for a week-long encounter workshop. The workshop was one component of a broader program jointly conducted by the SFP and CCRR and funded by the European Union. In addition to the work with teachers, the program included three encounter workshops for Israeli and Palestinian journalists and other professionals in the media. The aim of the program is to examine the role of the media in the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. The teachers‘ component was an attempt to turn to the consumers – those for whom the media is their primary source of information about the political reality. We chose teachers as our target group because they are the media consumers with perhaps the most influence over others. The SFP and CCRR each have extensive connections with schools (the SFP with Israeli schools and the CCRR with schools in the Palestinian Authority) and we easily organized a group of 16 Israeli and 15 Palestinian participants. The Israeli group was made up of 13 Jewish and 3 Palestinian citizens of Israel. The group included principals, teachers, program coordinators, an educational supervisor and a college lecturer.

The workshop program was planned with three spheres of dialogue in mind. The first sphere was the dialogue directly addressing the social and political reality of the two peoples. The second sphere was the dialogue between professionals in the field of education. Each group described the structure of their educational system and presented some of the questions that preoccupy them in their work. These presentations invited questions, comparisons and further discussion between the groups. The third sphere was the workshop‘s defined agenda – the place of media. The participants examined the way various events were presented by the media, the way that participants interpreted these presentations and the images that the participants have of their own and of the other group‘s media.

While the division into three spheres of work provided us with a clear methodological base in planning our work, in practice these three spheres were never isolated from each other. Obviously the social and political context accompanied every moment of the discussion on education and media. The participants‘ professional identities as educators cannot be divided from their national identities, particularly within a reality of national conflict. As organizers and facilitators it was important to us to raise the participants‘ awareness of these connections. As a people in a national struggle, the Palestinian group seems to be more aware of the professional and political connection. The Jewish group tends to be less aware of the extent to which their attitudes are tied to their national identity. They are prone to regard their own work as purely professional while regarding the Palestinian teachers as being mobilized and therefore less professional.

All of the participants reported that their personal encounter with individuals from the other side was a very significant experience, and that to some extent their new personal connection made it difficult to confront the other group with some of their more burning issues. We have become familiar with a certain tension that emerges from our work approach – an approach based on dialogue between individuals but that stresses the inter-group character of the encounter. This point is common to all of our groups. However it is interesting that in comparison to other groups that we work with e.g. Israeli and Palestinian journalists, university or high school students etc. these educators had a particularly hard time overcoming this tension. More than once they chose to avoid confrontation in order to maintain a more pleasant atmosphere. We now wonder if this trait is characteristic of this particular group alone, or if it is also connected to the nature of their profession. In receiving their salaries from the establishment, teachers may have to develop a certain caution that perhaps just comes with the job – a caution that would have implications for their educational work as well. We will be keeping the question in mind as we continue.

16-09-2005: The Opening of the 2005-6 Activity Year

On September 14th 2005 we formally and festively opened the new activity year in the presence of some fifty group facilitators and residents of Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam. As usual in the School for Peace every few years the executive committee elects a new school director, with alternate terms for Arabs and Jews. This year a ceremony was held in honor of the changing of directors. The executive committee chairman Dr. Yusuf e-Nashef and the village

g secretary Abd e-Salam Najar congratulated Wafaa Zrieq-Srour on entering the director‘s office for the upcoming years. They also thanked Nava Sonnenschein who has finished a three year term as the school director. They noted Nava‘s great contribution to promoting the School for Peace, her dedicated work over the years, and her devotion to school goals.

Later in the ceremony Nava thanked all those who co-worked with her in recent years, and concluded her term as a director. She congratulated Wafaa and promised to help her in successfully completing her mission. As her term as director comes to its end Nava is taking a new mission upon herself: to develop a new intervention model for

professionals who serve Jewish and Arab publics. The ceremonial part was sealed with words delivered by Wafaa. She thanked Nava with warm words and promised, being trained in the facilitator‘s course of the School for Peace, to follow the steps of her predecessors.

As the ceremony ended Dr. Rabah Halabi and Michal Zak presented the results of their study of the youth encounters in the School for Peace during the years 2001-2003. The main findings, as introduced in this convention, show that the encounter gives the Arab participants the opportunity to express their opinions, pain, and frustration in front of the Jewish side – an opportunity they don‘t have in their daily lives. The encounter empowers the Arabs and strengthens their sense of identity, but it also causes some of them to gradually feel frustrated and disappointed. On the other

hand, the encounter enables Jewish participants to get to know the Arab side – an opportunity their daily lives do not provide, for they never meet Arabs in their close environment. The encounter also causes Jewish participants to feel confused, and to have a more complex view of reality. Some of them even come to identify with the pain and suffering of the Arabs. We are glad to announce that a full report of the study‘s results will soon be published in Arabic, Hebrew and English.

The day after the ceremony, on September 15th 2005, the annual facilitators training course was opened. This is the 16th course that is held in its current format lasting this time until January 2006 (a 130 hours course). This year eight Jews and eight Arabs will attend the course; among them are psychologists, therapists, educators from the formal and informal education systems and academics. The book "Identities in Dialogue" has served so far as the basis for the knowledge we convey in this course. Since the book was published the School for Peace team has labored to develop new materials, and so this course will be the first to enjoy, aside from the book‘s information, some new information and thoughts that were developed in our studies and from our work experience.

30-12-2005: Palestinian-Palestinian encounter: Women and the media

The most recent SFP workshop, given in December 2005, was designed to bring together Palestinian women from women‘s organizations in Israel and the PA, to focus on women‘s issues from the standpoint mainly of women‘s image in the media – past, present, and future. The program is part of a larger media professionals program mounted in cooperation with the CCRR in Bethlehem, and took place in Egypt, with 32 participants, 16 from each side of the border.
Participants from Israel in the December seminar were mainly from NGOs dealing with women‘s issues. These organizations included A-Zahara in Sakhnin, established by a graduate of the SFP Women in a Time of Change program -- A-Zahara focuses on Arab women‘s empowerment; Sidri, in Laqiyya, a Bedouin town in the Negev, which focuses on advancing the status of women; Al Sawwar, a center serving Arab women victims of sexual abuse or assault; and Zochrot, the organization working to educate Israeli society about the Naqba. From the Palestinian side, there were representatives from an economic NGO, Daliya, a women‘s cooperative in the West Bank; nurses working in clinics serving women; and women journalists.

Part one of the program featured discussions of the social status of women on either side of the border; the women were surprised to see the degree of similarity between their experiences – e.g., with respect to so-called "honor killings" of women thought to have damaged the family‘s name by their behavior. Within each group, women in subgroups (northern and southern Israel, for instance) had stereotyped images of women from elsewhere, which these discussions enabled them to revise. Other issues where the women discovered much more similarity than difference included discrimination at the workplace and the division of labor within the home.

Moving on to images of women in the media, the group analyzed women‘s magazines, the emphasis on physical beauty and so forth; and they examined the lack of representation in media dealing with the workplace and the political arena. The participants, all women, also had an opportunity to focus on their own role in this reality and their internalization of the problematic roles and images. Awareness, they agreed, is the key to change.

Initially, the women were resistant to the structure that separated them into two groups, and wished to be considered a single group. Gradually as the program progressed, they realized that there are also things that separate them, notably the stronger civil society in Israel and the larger representation of NGOs, compared with the Palestinian side; hence the women from Palestine came more "from the system." The women from Israel talked about civil society and its struggles; the women from Palestine talked forcefully about today‘s activist women in local and national Palestinian politics.

The staff was impressed with the professional connections made between the members of the two sundered sides of this torn society and at the significance attributed to this encounter by the participating women.