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Summary of 2006

25-01-2006 Media and the conflict in Jordan

This is the fourth time we have brought together Israeli and Palestinian media professionals. The series is a cooperative effort of the SFP and the CCRR -- the Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (Wifaq, in Arabic) -- in Bethlehem. Two of the prior meetings also took place in Jordan. The location is not a trivial matter, because it affects participants‘ feeling of security, confidence, and belonging. The meeting‘s location is one more among many issues concerning which there is little congruence between what the Israeli participants feel and what the Palestinian participants feel. The Jews said that the location in an Arab country creates a sense of being a minority, and of being guests; whereas the Palestinians‘ feeling was that the Israelis are more welcome in Jordan than they are and that their own presence makes the Jordanian authorities uneasy.

The group included fifteen journalists from each side, including editors, reporters, writers and photographers. The Israeli group also included representatives from major media like Yediot Ahronot, Channel 2 Television, Y-Net and the IDF‘s Army Radio, along with people from Israel‘s Russian, English, and Arabic-language media.

The meeting offered a rare chance for some cross-border professional networking, and the people from both sides were glad to broaden their contact base. Most of the Jewish Israeli news people rely solely on institutional and official sources, mainly governmental and military, for their information about what happens in the Palestinian territories. The Palestinian participants were anxious to help their Israeli colleagues gain access to a broader spectrum of sources, including Palestinian sources. The Israelis were unaware of utilizing such a limited number of sources and unaware that they are often inaccurate, and in any case did not see Palestinian sources as professional or reliable, at least not prior to the encounter.

This session was originally scheduled for November 2005 but was postponed due to a round of terror bombings in Amman during that period. Most of the participants were very keen to attend and signed up as soon as registration was reopened for the new date.

During the encounter, the groups were asked to make a presentation on Israeli and Palestinian media, respectively. The Israeli group chose an original approach to this task. Earlier they‘d been asked about the considerations that determine what is included and what is not included in news coverage of a given item, and what reasons underlie the decisions. The group selected two news editors to present their editorial approach – one from an online news department and the other from a radio news team. A reporter drafted a simulated newscast for the two editors to finalize. It was fascinating to watch the dynamic as they rearranged the order of the reports and explained why a particular item was deleted, or relegated to marginal coverage. When the reporter brought word of a terror incident, of course, all the news about poverty, economic affairs, sports, and fatal highway accidents was shunted aside in favor of national security coverage. To someone observing this process from the sidelines, the editors seemed well accustomed to this exercise, if by no means persuaded that it is appropriate under all circumstances; yet the "natural" internalized voice of Jewish society dictates a norm stronger than any formal mechanism or judgment, and certainly more powerful than any single editor‘s ambivalence.

28-01-2006 Learning and Teaching Peace in Costa Rica

In January (2006), we were invited by the University for Peace in Costa Rica to give part of a course dealing with conflict and violence. The School for Peace sent, on this unique and interesting mission, Rabah Halabi and Nava Sonnenschein. Our segment was the final week of a three-week seminar, as guest lecturers of the peace education professor teaching the course, Dr. Abelardo Brenes, who holds a B.A. in both psychology and sociology and whose doctoral degree is in psychology. Dr. Brenes taught the first two weeks, mostly lecture-style and dealing mainly with the theoretical aspects of conflict and violence. Our role was to give participants a workshop using the School for Peace approach that would address some real conflict existing between members of the group.

The twenty-three students were from various countries around the world: Bangladesh, Brazil, Guinea Bissau, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Nepal, South Korea, Tanzania and the USA. Dr. Brenes is from Costa Rica. This was our first experience working with such a diversity of ethnic and national identities all at once, and we had some reservations, given that most of our expertise draws on our work with groups comprising two national identities in conflict. Hence, a certain amount of caution seemed warranted in approaching this task. Our plan was to identify, if possible, the central conflict existing in the group and suggest to participants that they focus on that. We saw, in the first meeting, that the conflict that would fit this description is one ranging along the axis of "first world" versus "third world." We so announced to the group and invited participants to examine this.

Resistance
Initially, the first-world participants resisted, arguing that this division would ruin the relationships that had taken shape during the course thus far, and suggesting that there was no reason to invent conflicts that did not exist. The third-world students, on the other hand, accepted the idea immediately, without reservation. Participants from the third world began talking about their lives, mentioning the attitude of superiority they sense from the first world. One participant related an incident that had happened to her on campus, when a few of the lecturers thought she didn‘t know how to use a computer. Language was also discussed – how English is accepted as the obvious candidate for the conduct of studies at the University for Peace (as was the case in our course, too); and how this makes things difficult for students who are not fluent English speakers: a good illustration of the control of the West and the first world.

On the second day, we divided the group in half. The group from the first world sat with Nava, the third-world group with Rabah in a different room. In the first group were all the Europeans and the students from the USA, Japan and South Korea; the latter subsequently switched to the other group. In the third world group were the students from Africa and Asia. The physical separation into two groups was very significant and created a distinct and meaningful group identity.

Thereafter, the discussion in the plenary became more heated. One African woman spoke aggressively against Western volunteers who come to third-world countries to teach people how to live. The three women from Africa and India called on the group from the first world: "Don‘t afflict us, and don’t come bearing gifts – just let us alone!" The group from the first world was in shock from this unexpected attack. Some were insulted. Others accused the African woman of being aggressive, even violent, and hostile.

On the third day, the conflict reached its peak. The group from the third world unified and came back with a counterattack of its own. They accused the first-world group of being impervious and described how Western colonialism grinds them down to dust. One of the men from Asia told a horrifying story about British colonists who, before they left his country, took the trouble to cut off the fingers of women from a certain village who were particularly gifted at weaving sarees (traditional women‘s attire).

On the fourth day, after again separating the group into two subgroups, the first-world participants articulated insights about themselves and the situation overall. They took responsibility for what is happening in the third world. Thereafter a different, more authentic dialogue opened between the two groups. They decided to find out what kind of work each subgroup could do on its own to change the situation.

We began the fifth day with our analysis of the process the group had undergone. We related this to the various theoretical analyses in this field. Later that day, the group summarized the course amazingly well, without any intervention on our part. Two women from Africa took charge and ran the discussion; they made sure that everyone spoke, including those who tended not to talk, and made sure that the group dealt with questions that had remained open. It was a marvelous ending with a marvelous group.

The experience demonstrated yet again how our approach has practical applications for very different kinds of social conflicts in many contexts – including a global conflict in which half the world is arrayed against the other half.

01-02-2006 Training to work with groups in conflict

Every facilitators‘ training course at the SFP has the same three basic aims:
1….To meet the ever-increasing demand for professional facilitators to work with groups in conflict in Israel, incrementally expanding the cadre of SP-trained group leaders conducting professionally-led encounters in this field.

2….To equip participants with the ability to understand and analyze dynamics of group process between groups in conflict in general, and between Jews and Palestinians in particular.

3…..To equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary for conducting encounters between Jews and Arabs, and preparing them to put these new skills and this new knowledge into practice in their work environment.

Keeping the curriculum current: In April 2005, the steering committee for the course sat down together so that we might review the content planned for autumn 2005: Nava Sonneschein, Wafaa Zriek Srour, Michal Zak, Ahmad Hijazi, and SFP Research Center director Dr. Rabah Halabi.We discussed the recommendations that emerged from the previous course and decided how best to implement them. One suggestion was that the lecture part of the course be enriched with new material, since some of the lectures included in the past are available now in our book, Identities in Dialogue.

The 16 participants, young women and men, aged 25 to 35 or so, rolled up their sleeves and set to work earnestly to enrich their understanding of the delicate and complicated dynamics of conflicts between groups, for 160 hours course that began at September 2005 and have end on February 2006. Since most Israelis - Jews and Arabs - are educated and trained to understand conflict as inter-personal, the course introduced a new view of conflict, the inter-group approach. The participants engaged in dialogue first-hand, experiencing the obstacles that arise and learning how to overcome them. This particular group went very deeply into the discussion of the role of the military in Israeli society, a topic not easily dealt with in such forums.

In the second part of the course, the participants had a chance to hone their skills by themselves facilitating sessions of the group and getting feedback about their facilitation. This part received a high score in the evaluation of the program. When the SFP staff led the dialogue initially (in the first part of the course), facilitation appeared natural and easy; when participants had to facilitate the dialogue themselves, the entire spectrum of fears, dilemmas and obstacles emerged. Facilitation, they found, is harder than it looks!

Particularly challenging, people found, was the task of working with a co-facilitator from the other national group. Another salient challenge was the necessity of deciding quickly, in real time, just what is going on between the participants and figuring out what the facilitator‘s most effective input would be at that moment.
Finally, to round out their training, participants observed a youth encounter for three days, further enhancing their own skill by observing a group of youngsters in a real encounter, from start to finish. At that point, they feel ready to make the leap and begin facilitating themselves - making their own mistakes, learning their lessons, and finding their own path.

Outcomes and impact: When the course ends, we ask everyone to complete an evaluation form that assesses the various parts of the training. We are interested in the overall score and in any difference, if such should emerge, between the responses from Jewish and from Arab participants. On a scale of 1-7, most of the scores were between 5 and 6. For the first part, the dialogue, the Jews gave a higher score than the Arabs – a familiar pattern. We believe the explanation for this is that members of the minority group have more contact with and knowledge about the majority group than the other way around, whereas the dialogue is very novel and enlightening for the members of the majority group. In the remaining parts, there were no meaningful differences in the scores.

Many participants said that the tools they got in the course and the experience in dialogue have helped them deal with conflicts in their workplace, whereas previously there had been an avoidance of anything resembling political conflicts in the workplace. When the course was over, they felt able to propose the adoption of new policies in the workplace, whereas formerly they had no awareness of the need or value of such changes or else feared to propose anything “political.” What took place with the public mental health services in the Jerusalem municipality is a good example: Arab psychologists undergoing training in public health clinics have routinely had Jewish senior consultants as mentors; under the changed policy, these Jewish senior consultants will attend a supervision forum with an Arab psychologist to become more fully aware of the implications of their privileged position as members of the dominant group, to better understand the cultural differences between them and their Arab trainees, and to better understand the constraints influencing the Arab trainees in terms of the freedom to discuss issues perceived as political in nature or having a political dimension.

10-03-2006 A working conference of journalists in Jordan

This conference is part of a larger project launched in October 2005, addressing the media and its role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have conducted four encounters for journalists, one for teachers, and one for representatives of NGOs. All the encounters focused on the role that the media plays in the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. We examined the media‘s role critically and tried, together with the participants, to better understand the link between a journalist‘s national identity and his or her professional identity. To this working conference we invited 19 Israeli and 19 Palestinian participants who had attended the previous programs.

Conference program:
Aims
1. Re-examining the connections between national identity and professional identity.
2. Negotiating future solutions between Israelis and Palestinians.

Program for Thursday, March 2
6:00-14:30 travel of each delegation to the hotel in Jordan
17:00 opening
17:30 getting acquainted – all participants – in three mixed groups
19:00 dinner

Program for Friday, March 3
9:00-10:30 Sharing main findings from the Media and the Conflict project: a lecture by Dr. Rabah Halabi on the evolving transformation of the Israeli/Palestinian relationship
10:45-13:00 discussion about the professional vs. national
13:00 Lunch

Negotiations about the solutions to the conflict in 4 committees: refugees, Jerusalem & borders, prisoners & security, and the status of the Palestinians in Israel.
15:00-16:00 uninational: dividing the groups into the four committees and starting to prepare for negotiations
16:15-17:00 first round of negotiations
17:00-17:45 uni-national consultations
18:00-18:45 second round of negotiations
18:45 Dinner

Saturday
9:00-11:15 Negotiations continue, including preparation of final agreements
11:30-12:30 Simulated press conference: each committee will present its solutions or lack of solutions in the plenary.
13:00-14:00 closing session
14:00 Lunch
The Israeli group departs, the Palestinian groups departs the next morning.

Project evaluation – the main findings

The main findings from the evaluation of this project will be published in monograph form later in 2006. In the meantime, the group heard a presentation by Dr. Rabah Halabi from the SFP research center, which is conducting the evaluation based on observations of several of the encounters, interviews with participants, and data from participant feedback questionnaires completed after each session.

We expect that the full report will enhance our understanding of the dynamics in these special encounters. Insofar as we know, this study is the first to have analyzed and reported on what happens between these two groups of Israelis and Palestinians when they meet for dialogue, raising our awareness of issues that are usually not reported or are alluded to only obliquely and indirectly.

Very briefly, these are some highlights of the findings:

Stronger Palestinian group

• The Palestinian groups were very strong, and had a powerful presence.
• This is a fairly new phenomenon; before the Intifada, the Palestinian groups were not as assertive.
• The Palestinian’s strength influenced the way the Israelis reacted in the encounter.

Palestinian goals
• The Palestinian’s strength helped them to achieve their goals, and those were: to state their case and articulate what they want. The Israelis know most of the information about the situation in the West Bank already, but few of them “take ownership of the conflict” or internalize the information in a way that can make a difference. The voice of the Palestinians was not part of their identity before, and after the encounter it became part of their identity.
• The most immediate goal for the Palestinians was to convince the Israelis of their humanity.

Reality is different outside
• The strong presence of the Palestinians gave them a sense that the encounters were on mutual grounds. This sense is very different from what exists in reality. Outside the encounter, the Israelis have military strength and the Palestinians have justice on their side and they felt they were able to reflect that in the encounters.

Identity under threat; identity expanding
• In the literature on groups in conflict, and in the encounters we conduct, we see that when the weaker group is empowered, the stronger group is pushed to a corner and feels threatened. This sense of threat is manifested by a feeling that their identity is being erased.
• The sense that the identity is disappearing brought the Israelis to defend themselves, and attack.
• The encounters enabled or forced the Israelis to see the reality as it is. In all its clarity, including realizing that the conflict is very hard and complicated.
• The encounters are eye-openers for the Israelis but also very painful. The Palestinians became human, in the sense that they had a face, and became part of the Israeli’s lives.

Outward struggle, inner struggle
• There was a struggle all through the encounters; on a deep level, the struggle was about humanity, ethics, and professionalism. The Palestinians came to the encounters with a feeling that the Israelis look down on them and patronize them. Because of this assumption that the Palestinians had, they wanted to prove their humanity and their professionalism. The conflict, any conflict, cannot maintain itself if the strong side cannot persuade itself (and the other side, too) that it is more humane. There can be no control over “an other” if the group that is stronger thinks that the other group is similar to them in every way.
• The Palestinians did not show signs of internalized oppression and this may be instructive about the future for the two nations, a future of equals.

What the literature says
• The French sociologist Michel Foucault wrote that the stronger group also controls the discourse and defines the terminology. Frantz Fanon wrote that objectivity is always, for some reason, against the weak. Edward Said wrote that colonialism means control over land, but you can’t control land without rationalizing that your value system is better. Said mentioned in particular scholars, writers and journalists and said that today there is no classic colonialism (of control over land) but that the control is over information and terminology.

The evolving dynamic
• The Palestinians in these encounters worked hard to make their voice heard and to tell their story. In similar encounters in the past, the staff worked very hard to help the Palestinians speak their mind; this time, perhaps due partly to the setting and partly to the current reality in the Middle East, the dynamic was different.

After a vivid, tough discussion about these findings, we introduced the second part of the conference.

Part Two: Negotiations.

We thought the professional networking that took place at the previous encounters was something positive; many participants took advantage of these new connections in their daily work. We were also glad to see the beginning of a dialogue between participants from the two groups and we wanted to enable them to go beyond the superficial in this dialogue. The negotiating situation is a good setting for further dialogue because participants are unable to hide behind vague statements; they must either agree or disagree explicitly on specific issues. This may not always be an easy or satisfying task, but it helps each participant learn more about his or her agenda, and each group realizes what they are willing to do for a solution.

The negotiations also reflect the larger reality of the relations between the two national groups - hence the experience in the workshop gives participants a window on that broader reality and offers some tools to further understand the situation.

Initially, the Israeli-Jewish group resisted the idea of negotiating on the grounds that, as journalists, it is not their role to negotiate for political solutions. The Palestinians voiced no such reservations. Eventually both groups got very involved in the activity.

Participants divided into four sub-groups and negotiated on one of the topics listed below:

Refugees
The committee must negotiate a solution to the refugee problem, taking into consideration the following:
1. The right of return.
2. Can all refugees return / how many can return?
3. Is compensation an option?
4. Who has the authority to decide about this issue?

Prisoners and Security
1. The policy of targeted assassinations by the IDF.
2. Israel‘s continued, unsupervised nuclear power.
3. The fate of prisoners and detainees:
When they will be released? Can we reach a peace agreement if the prisoners are not released?
4. Who will be released? What about those "with blood on their hands?”
5. While awaiting a solution: Conditions of prisoners can be negotiated.

Borders and Jerusalem
1. Where should the borders be?
2. The Separation Wall.
3. One state vs. two states vs. continuation of the present situation.
4. Borders of the city of Jerusalem.
5. Holy places.
6. Who is the authority in the city (international control, Israel, PA)?
7. The policy of “silent transfer” from Jerusalem.

Status of Arabs of ‘48
1. The Law of Return- should Israel change the law which gives Jews from all over the world automatic citizenship, and to Palestinians from all over the world, no citizenship.
2. Internal refugees.
3. Collective rights in Israel vs. personal rights.
4. Relations with the Palestinians in Palestine (dual citizenship; annexation of Israeli Arab towns to Palestine).

Refugees: the least agreement. The various committees sat together (i.e., with members from both national sides), and later alone, in national forums, in an attempt to arrive at solutions. They discussed their tactics and their red lines, what they were willing to give and what they were not. The most difficult discussion was that conducted by the refugees committee -- not surprising, since this is the thorniest issue confronting Israelis and Palestinians. In this forum, the range of opinion spanned some on the Palestinian side for whom this issue is simply not negotiable, to those who were willing to negotiate. On the Israeli side, opinions ranged from a willingness to acknowledge the wrong done in 1948 and take full responsibility, to the conviction that no refugees can return to their land. The negotiations in the other committees had some points of agreement; in this committee, there were none.

Revelations and disappointments. In the summary session, the Palestinians expressed their disappointment; they hadn‘t thought that the Israelis would take such hard stands in the negotiations. The Israelis, meanwhile, pointed to the more optimistic aspects of the discussions. We are aware of this dynamic, because of the asymmetry on the outside. The Palestinians expect a lot from the encounters - nothing less than support and solidarity, and they are also judged by their society for meeting the enemy, hence it‘s brutal for them to emerge from the process with almost no agreements to show. The Israelis realized they are not so different from the rest of their own society, except that they are highly motivated to try and find a solution, whereas most Israelis these days are apathetic or indifferent.

Back to work… In general, we can say that the participating Israeli and Palestinian media professionals improved their understanding of the situation. They learned more about each other and understood how they can contribute to making changes, as professionals, that could help create positive change in the larger situation. As journalists, they are now better equipped to understand their role in society. In addition, their working relations were enriched significantly, generating many new cross-border alliances between area journalists.

24-06-2006 Palestinian and Israeli course for psychologists and social workers

Between February and November 2006 the School for Peace cooperated with Hiwar, a Palestinian organization from the Azoun region, in order to conduct a course for Palestinian and Israeli psychologists and social workers. The objective of the program was to provide the participants with tools to address the Palestinian – Israeli conflict and to act as change agents in their communities and work places. This was the first of four courses that we conducted this year in the framework of the change agents program. Eighteen Israeli citizens and seventeen Palestinians from the Palestinian Authority participated in the course. Within the Israeli group there were four Palestinians and fourteen Jews. The course consisted of two Palestinian - Israeli encounter workshops that took place in Akaba Jordan. The first workshop took place from February 15th to 19th, and the second one took place from April 20th to 26th. Each workshop was followed by a series of uni-national meetings conducted separately by each group in Palestine and Israel.

The First Workshop

At the beginning of the meeting the Palestinian and Israeli participants conducted dialogue in small mixed groups. The dialogue in each group underwent a similar and familiar process. Palestinian participants wanted to make their voices heard and deliver a message to the Israelis about the oppression that they endure under occupation. Some of the Palestinian participants wanted to improve the image that the Israelis had of them and they wanted to become familiar with sides of the Israelis that they do not have a chance to see under other circumstances. The Palestinians expect the encounter to lead to significant activity that can help end the occupation. The Jewish Israelis spoke of their desire to create contact, to hear the Palestinians and to gain an understanding of the situation. They want to hear about life under occupation and to conduct joint activity that can change the reality and deal with the guilt and the despair. They also express interest in meeting their peers on a professional level. The Jewish participants speak about wanting to get closer to Arab culture, but they do not want the meeting to hide the difficulties and make life easy for them. They seek recognition as being from the forces of good, and not among those who are to be identified with the occupation. They also want the Palestinians to acknowledge the threat that they feel from terrorism.

The first signs of tension appear after the Jewish and Palestinian participants establish initial acquaintance with each other. The ability to trust each other is questioned in different ways. The Palestinians do not allow the Jewish participants to separate themselves from the occupiers. The Jews are told that they strengthen and support Israel as an occupying power regardless of their declared opinions, and that it is the Palestinians who are the victims of the situation. The Israeli Jews reply by asking why the Palestinians elected the Hammas, pointing out their responsibility for terrorist attacks. The Palestinians put the attacks in proportion, saying that the Israelis are occasionally struck at places of entertainment, while they, the Palestinians have forgotten what entertainment is. The Palestinians go on to speak of the on-going collective punishment that they suffer and their fear of drawing open the curtains in their living rooms. One participant spoke of a tank that intentionally squashed his car and another spoke of his pupils who were murdered. A Jewish participant asked the Palestinians if they are happy when a shahid is sent to Israel. The Palestinian response continued to lay out the details of the humiliation they suffer at the military checkpoints, their inability to conduct a normal working day, and the indiscriminate arrests of relatives while the soldiers go unpunished for their killing. The pattern of mutual accusations at this stage of the encounter is familiar to us as each side tries to lay all of the responsibility for the conflict on the other.

Tensions reach their climax as the participants define terror, arguing over differences between terror that comes from a struggle for liberation as opposed to terror from an occupying army. One Jewish participant expressed mixed emotions that arose from the discussion saying that she does not want to use the security consideration to justify everything that the Israelis do, nor does she want to bow down and apologize to the Palestinian people. She said that the Israeli struggle is just as legitimate as the Palestinian one, and while she does not justify or take responsibility for soldiers‘ abuses at the military checkpoints, she is relieved every time she hears about their success in catching a shahid. Another Jewish participant claimed that the situation at the military checkpoints is symmetrical despite attempts to present it otherwise. The Palestinians responded assertively to this claim stating that there is no room to compare the force of the soldiers at the checkpoints to the fate of the simple people who are at their mercy with no control over the situation and no ability to express an opinion about it. There is no place for Israeli soldiers in Jenin and Nablus. A Jewish participant states that the soldiers did not choose to go there. The Palestinians continue to list examples of the routine suffering caused by the military presence: one participant‘s mother who almost died on her way to the hospital because she was held back at the checkpoint, a twelve-year old girl who was shot and killed by the soldiers, the inability to acquire higher education because students cannot count on being able to get to their university... The Palestinians speak about the attacks on Jews as the weapon of the weak. There are Palestinians who are prepared to give up their lives for the struggle because they have nothing left. One Palestinian spoke of her work as a social worker in a situation in which the villages have been cut off from each other by Jewish settlements that continue to expropriate Palestinian land. Eighty percent of the Palestinians in her region live below the poverty line.

A particularly dramatic moment was reached when a Jewish participant asked an Israeli Palestinian why she joined the Palestinian group when the participants were divided for uni-national discussion. She answered by describing her feelings as a Palestinian in Israel, and the discrimination and racism that she experiences. The other Palestinians said that they will not abandon their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Israel and they spoke of the day when Acre and Jaffa will return to a united Palestine. This shocked the Israeli Jewish group into silence. Finally a Jewish participant said that if Nazareth is Palestine then there is nothing to talk about. She went on to say that she wants to stay in Israel and is prepared to return to the pre-‘67 borders, but if you, the Palestinians, want everything, then there is no reason to continue the discussion. The Palestinians went on to make the distinction between principles, dreams and reality. They claimed the right of return to all of the land that was taken from them, including land within Israel, and that they want to see a single state solution. When the Jews asked about their place in the picture, the Palestinians said that they can recognize the difference between their dream and the reality. And why be afraid of a dream? Having made the distinction between dreams and expectations, a Jewish participant said that she was now capable of listening to the Palestinians‘ aspirations without fear. At this point the discussion entered a new stage. It became a more relaxed and genuine attempt to communicate with each other.

A Jewish participant asked the Palestinian group if in their eyes she has a right to live in her home after returning occupied land to the Palestinians. Returning to discussion of the fantasy the Palestinians answered that if the Palestinians were in control the Jews would not suffer discrimination and their rights would be respected. One Palestinian said that he did not just come to Akaba to meet Jews. “Speaking in my own name I chose to come out of recognition of each side‘s existence. The Jews do not know how much Palestinian society suffers from them.” He went on to say that up until that point he had chosen not to share with the group the details of the pain that he suffered at the hands of the Jews, because he did not want to feel weak. “As the threshold of pain rises we feel it less. But it is important to state here that there is a victim and a perpetrator.” He said that he came because he is sitting down to speak with people, and that he does not want to deny the reality and the humanity in the other.

The Palestinians said that the Jews, the side with the power, constantly call upon the Palestinians to recognize the Jews‘ moral right to a Jewish state, while the Palestinians are in the midst of a daily struggle to maintain their own physical existence. Such analyses seem to advance the group towards change, as a Jewish participant responded expressing her shame for Israel‘s treatment of the Palestinians. She said that she initially thought that it was naïve on her part to expect the Palestinians to recognize them under any conditions. The Palestinians told her that the Jews are a part of their reality that they cannot deny.

The participants in this encounter tried to preserve their respective groups while broaching the most difficult and sensitive issues of the conflict. The Jews seek recognition of their national existence. Since that recognition does not come in the particular way that they want to hear it, they must work hard to understand it. On several occasions it was the Palestinians within the Israeli group who helped the other participants to understand that each group was in fact receiving the kind of recognition that they sought. The Palestinians sought recognition for the asymmetry of the political situation, the injustice, and their suffering. Once there were sufficient indications that that was acknowledged, it was possible to satisfy the mutual demands of the participants and move the dialogue a step further. However throughout the process the Palestinian group continued to present a serious challenge for the Jewish Israeli group.

In the next stage of the encounter each side presented professional questions that preoccupy them in their work as psychologists and social workers in Israel or Palestine. These presentations were made in the plenary forum. The differences were enormous in every respect. Resources and training available to Palestinian and Israeli mental health services were incomparable. The Palestinians from Palestine presented a relatively new system, under-staffed, and overwhelmed by problems that stem from the Palestinians‘ day to day struggle for existence. The Palestinians from Israel discussed issues that they face in their work in East Jerusalem: the Palestinians‘ difficulty of reaching the clinics, problems of racism, their difficulty in receiving services in Arabic, and even cases in which they were forbidden to speak to their patients in Arabic. The Jewish participants presented a mental health system with long-term training courses and a variety of branches specializing in different problems. They spoke about the legal standing of the profession and patients rights. They spoke about work with holocaust survivors, victims of terror, soldiers suffering from shell-shock and other conflict - related issues. The Israelis asked the Palestinians about their training frameworks. The gap was a particularly painful subject leading two Palestinians to leave the room.

At the end of the meeting the Palestinians said that they had a need to speak, as if it was an opportunity to face a soldier and get what they had to say off of their chests. It was an opportunity to dream and speak out loud, even if they knew that the dream would disappear in the morning. They wanted to know what change the other side underwent and what could be done in reality.

The Jewish participants said that the encounter diminished their suspicions and that they discovered people who they would want to have as partners in peace (as opposed to the Israeli government that insists that there are no partners). Several participants mentioned their concern about returning to the reality outside, and about their concern for the Palestinians‘ well-being. They spoke about the difficulty of processing the experience. One participant spoke about how moved she was by hearing the others‘ personal experiences first-hand and that she was now thinking about how she can pass that experience on to others.

The Palestinian group ended the encounter feeling strengthened in several ways. The opportunity to articulate their moral claims in front of the Jewish group and the realization that the Jewish group seeks their recognition were very empowering experiences. The fact that the location of the encounter was in an Arab country, and that the Palestinians (including the four from Israel) outnumbered the Jews may have contributed to their empowerment. It created conditions that were the reverse of those to which the Jews and Palestinians were accustomed. It appeared to be a difficult experience for the Jews to be outnumbered and to have the moral values of their group identity questioned. The groups underwent an intensive and painful process that brought them from mutual accusations to mutual trust – a trust that was built on a better understanding of each other‘s needs.

The Second Workshop

The second meeting opened with participants discussing what they underwent over the two months since they had parted. The Jewish participants said that their new awareness of the situation of the Palestinians made them more attentive to events in the Territories and concerned about the well-being of their new friends. They also spoke of confronting other Jews with issues that they learned about the occupation. Several said that their new awareness had made them feel more isolated from their peers and from their surrounding environment, but they felt that they would be betraying the Palestinians if they did not do everything they could to pass on the messages that they heard in the first encounter. They also felt a responsibility to do more than talk, saying that they must find more effective ways to raise awareness of the situation.

The Palestinians expressed despair with the deteriorating situation. Since the victory of the Hammas they feel that not only the IDF but the whole world is against them. There are no salaries, there is increasing hunger and there is no hope. They spoke about the destruction wreaked by Israeli bulldozers and the humiliating Israeli invasion of the Jericho prison. Palestinians from Israel also spoke of their helplessness. During the morning of the second day the participants analyzed the processes that they had undergone since the beginning of the course. They prepared analyses on both the group and individual levels and presented them in the plenary forum.

During the course of the second workshop the participants did an exercise exposing them to issues relating to facilitation skills in order to help them to read group process and gain sensitivity to the kinds of intervention that enable the group to work. The participants took turns facilitating six 45-minute units of the discussion. They received feedback from their peers and from the SFP and Hiwar facilitators. The issues addressed in these units were issues that arose out of the process that the group had already been undergoing. The participants addressed their expectations for common action, their fears that the violence will jeopardize their cooperation and they spoke about issues of mutual trust. The Palestinians spoke about peace activists who were wounded by soldiers while demonstrating against the wall, and they asked to what extent the Israelis are really prepared to take risks involved in political activity against the occupation. They expressed doubts about the ability of such activity to end the circle of violence. The Israelis confirmed that the fear to go out and demonstrate against the wall has become a factor in keeping them away.

The peer – facilitating sessions were followed by a panel in which four participants presented dilemmas connected to the Palestinian – Israeli conflict that appear in their professional work. The panel consisted of two Palestinians from the Palestinian Authority, one Israeli Jew and one Israeli Palestinian. The panel discussion was interesting in that each participant was very critical about the issues that they presented. One Palestinian spoke about dealing with murder within Palestinian society over questions of family honor. Another Palestinian connected the rising level of violence within Palestinian society to the rising level of Israeli military violence against Palestinians under occupation. The Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian panelists spoke about obstacles that majority – minority group relations present in their treatment of individuals.

The workshop included two lectures. The director of Hiwar, Abd al-Karim Shamsaneh, spoke about the historical and religious roots of the conflict. The second lecture was given by Nava Sonnenschein and Muhammed Joudeh on facilitation in the uni-national forum.

On the last day of the workshop the participants tried to identify fields in which they might cooperate. The participants divided into three groups: Palestinians from the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians from Israel and Jewish Israelis. Each group chose a chairperson and they formulated directions of work that interest them and expectations that they have from the other groups. The Palestinians from the PA repeated their doubts about whether the Israelis were really prepared to do what it takes to end the occupation. They commented that if the Israelis were prepared to take a stand like Rachel Cory then they could talk about cooperation. Cory gave her life demonstrating against the occupation by standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer which proceeded to run her over. The Palestinians were disappointed by the Israeli Left in general which was not doing enough to change the situation, and they were skeptical about the chances of cooperation. A number of them rejected every suggestion made by the Jewish participants. The Jews on their part said that they are prepared to do many things, but not to risk their lives. The negotiations were exhausting. The chairpersons finally pushed the participants to reach agreement on a number of

projects:

1. Study days for Palestinians and Israelis in the mental health services in which the effects of the occupation on Palestinians‘ physical and mental health would be examined. These activities would take place at military checkpoints. The organizers would seek press coverage and other means to raise Israeli public awareness of the problem.
2. In-service training courses for Palestinian mental health workers on the treatment of trauma.
3. Aid in opening an access road to Kufar Kadum that had been blocked by Israeli settlers.
4. The creation of a website in Arabic and Hebrew for Palestinian and Israeli mental health workers.
5. The organization of further dialogue groups.
6. Aid in acquiring permits for Palestinians to enter Israel.

The group from Israel met four times after the second workshop in Akaba. The participants received lectures on post-colonialist theory and theories of identity and of conflict. One of the meetings took place during the course of the latest war in Lebanon. In these meetings the participants discussed the content of the lectures, the influence of events going on around them, and their progress in the activities that they took upon themselves in the framework of the course.

Participants‘ Initiatives

The following are some examples of initiatives that grew out of the course:

The Israeli group visited the Palestinian village Kufar Kadum in order to learn about the problems that the residents face as a result of the occupation in general and the harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers in particular. After their visit they sent letters to the Minister of Defense and to MK Haim Oron describing the consequences of the internal military checkpoints, the obstruction of the village‘s road by the settlers, and the authorities‘ persistent refusal to provide the village with electricity.

Members of the Israeli group joined the villagers to help with the olive harvest. Aside from the work hours, the real importance of their participation in the harvest was to be present during the regular physical attacks by neighboring armed Israeli settlers who try to maximize the villagers‘ despair by keeping them from taking care of their trees and from making any kind of a living.
One Israeli group member sent a letter to the Minister of Defense in an attempt to release a Palestinian student who had been arrested trying to get to his university.

Course participants have drawn up a plan for a study day on trauma.

Participants drew up and publicized a petition against the war in Lebanon in which they described the consequences of the war on the state of mental health in Lebanon and Israel. One thousand mental health workers signed the petition. The media publicized the petition even further by conducting interviews on it.

Participants met each other in a series of demonstrations against the occupation and against the war in Lebanon.

Members of the group helped twelfth – grade Palestinian students from East Jerusalem get past the military checkpoints in order to reach their state examinations on time.

Members of the group have been cooperating with Mahsom Watch in organizing a program called “Psychological Barriers.” The program is a study tour for mental health workers including a visit to a Palestinian center for psychological consultancy in Azoun, where visitors meet the staff and receive a lecture from Dr. Muhammad Aa‘raj. Afterwards they visit the military checkpoints surrounding Nablus accompanied by women from the Mahsom Watch organization who provide an explanation of the situation.

A number of the Palestinian and Israeli participants have met each other at least twice by the ar-Ram checkpoint in order to plan study days. The aim of the program is to raise Israeli awareness of the consequences of the wall and checkpoints within Palestinian society. The first study day is planned for January 2007.

Course coordinators: Muhammad Joudeh from Hiwar
Nava Sonnenschein from the School for Peace

Facilitators: Muhammad Joudeh, Liron Tal, Att. Muhammad Abu Sneineh, Nava Sonnenschein, Ahmad Hijazi

Translators: Maisoun Bedoui and Maya Rabia.

This report translated by Bob Mark

30-06-2006 Teacher Training Course

During the 2005-06 school year, we ran a year-long teacher training course for staff at the Reali High School in Haifa and Al Muhalis High School in Nazareth. These two schools have worked together for several years in various programs, with this teachers’ course the latest component of their joint activity. The course is the initiative of a teacher a Reali who recruited the social activities coordinator at Al Muhalis and, together, they built a program dealing with various elements of the conflict. The teachers chosen to participate from the Reali HS are mostly veteran staff members who have participated in encounter workshops in the past. From Al Muhalis, most of the teachers participating were younger staff members for whom this was their first organized encounter with Reali teachers. The program was largely funded by a contribution obtained by the Reali HS from the Rabin Center. This background has become part of the landscape of such encounters in Israel in recent years, and the fact that the project is the initiative of a Jewish teacher, and that the money came “with” the Jewish school is also significant. The SFP created the program for the course in cooperation with teachers from both schools. Seven Jewish teachers (six of them women) and six Arab teachers (five of them women) participated.

Course goals: To develop teachers’ awareness of the Jewish-Arab conflict and their place in it; to develop critical thought about relations between Jews and Arabs; and to offer theoretical and practical tools for coping with racism and tensions between groups at the respective schools.

The course ran 56 hours, with a two-day intensive encounter at Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam and ten meetings of four hours each held alternately in Haifa and in Nazareth.Toward the midpoint of the course, the teachers were asked to think about a final project, presenting a new perspective on their work at their school.The group worked in several ways: lectures and discussion, bi-national dialogue, and national dialogue (each group separately).

Lecture topics were:
(1) Language as a bridge and an obstacle: Michal Zak from SFP.
(2) Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam, living jointly, challenges and dilemmas: Ahmad Hijazi.
(3) Developmental theories of ethnic identity and racism and theories from social psychology: Dr. Nava Sonnenschein of SFP.
(4) The work of Paulo Freire and its relevance to teaching work: Dr. Rabah Halabi of SFP.
(5) Arabs’ citizenship in Israel: Attorney Ayman Odeh of Sikkuy-Association for Advancement of Civic Equality in Israel.
(6) Screening of the film, “Paradise Now.”
(7) Critical reading of literary texts: Dr. Hana Abu Hana.

Each lecture was followed by a discussion among the participants, for which the guiding principle was that the discussion should start from the individual identity of the teachers, move on to a discussion of national identity, and thence to professional identity. During the course, participants prepared and presented a history lesson and a literature lesson to the other teachers in the course. These model lessons included a critical perspective on curriculum materials and exposed the teachers to suppressed narratives like the Palestinian narrative of the 1948 war.

Each group had its own expectations. The Reali teachers, feeling that they had already engaged in dialogue in the past, wanted to move on to the phase of joint work and lesson planning. The Al Muhalis teachers, meanwhile, wanted to engage in consciousness-altering dialogue. The Arab group gradually worked on their self-awareness and voiced their Palestinian identity. They talked about their confusion as Palestinian Arabs living in Israel and thereby were able to identify better with the difficulties their students faced in dealing with the subject. They were able to voice the anger they were feeling inwardly at the Jewish establishment and at the situation, something they had worried about at the start of the process. The Jewish teachers understood that the desire to go straight to action could serve to maintain deeper patterns in the life of the school (national and military-related patterns, for example), and that sometimes coping with the familiar and the routine is harder than working on a more ambitious project. They understood that to continue dealing with these issues on a daily basis, within the existing routine, would not be a simple task and would require a lot of energy and resources.

One of the high points during this course was the encounter, at the penultimate session, in which the groups’ final projects were presented. Despite the difficulties in carrying out this assignment, the Jewish group prepared four projects: An alternative English lesson; Arabic lessons; a course in identities and narratives based on films and a narrative-based tour of Haifa. The Arab group prepared a broad, shared project that included school-wide work in three spheres of identity – the personal, the social and the civic. This was designed as a weekly program for the entire Al Muhalis school.

After presentation of the projects, the Arab group proposed that at the final meeting of the course, everyone would do the proposed “narratives tour”, and so they did. The two groups set out together for a tour of Haifa. One of the Jewish teachers who had been born and raised in Haifa said of this tour: “I have lived in Haifa all my life and never was in this place, and of course have never heard this story (from a Palestinian perspective).” That same teacher, at the outset of the SFP course, had said that she thinks she contributes knowledge to the other side but doesn’t learn much from the Arab group.

Staff: Amjad Moussa and Rachela Yanay.

30-07-2006 Palestinian- Israeli Educators Course

This course was the last course in a cycle of four courses that the Hewar Center and the School for Peace facilitated together with different professionals from Israel (both Jewish and Palestinian citizens) and the Occupied Territories. The goal of the course was to train the participants to be change agents in their respective fields and in the larger society. The course focused on issues that pertain to their common field and questions of national identity and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This particular sought to train educators – teachers and principles – as change agents. On account of the many obligations and time limitations that characterize the life of an educator, we decided to have one long meeting rather than two. The course took place in Istanbul from July 21st to the 27th, 2006; it began only eleven days after the outbreak of war with Lebanon. Due to the war, there were a number of Jewish participants that were not able to leave the country. In the end, there were twelve participants from Israel, among them eight Jews and four Palestinian citizens of Israel. Four were principals and eights were teachers. The Palestinian group was made of fourteen participants, among them two principals, one overseer, and eleven teachers.

The program of the course included three sections. The first, experiential, segment was dedicated essentially to open dialogue between the participants. The second segment dealt with professional identity in relation to national identity. The third segment of the course was the applied part, with personal guidance and consultation and a meeting with the group within Israel that dealt with theory and practice at the participants‘ schools. The training included issues such as militarism in the educational system; looking critically at the school‘s way of marking nationally significant dates and searching for an alternative approach for these commemorations; Paulo Freire’s theories; and how to deal with racism in the classroom.

The first section began with a workshop in which the group was divided into two bi-national groups. In this activity, a Palestinian participant expressed opposition to sitting in a group with another participant, a woman from Israel, who lived in the Golan Heights, who he considered a settler. The Heights were captured by Israel from Syria in the War of 1967 and remain disputed territory to this day. Another Palestinian participant offered to replace him in the group and in that way the conflict was solved temporarily. Naturally, the subject arose again in the separate dialogue groups. An impassioned discussion developed on the different views on this particular area, especially in the realm of terminology and proprietorship. While the Palestinians view the Golan Heights as occupied territory, the Israelis make a distinction between the Occupied Territories of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza, in their view) and the conquered territory of the Golan Heights. The discussion led to the question of why and how these different perspectives prevail and why the subject elicited such intensity of emotion.

For the rest of the workshop, the two groups came together and conversed on a broad range of topics relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During this exchange, the dialogue largely revolved around the present situation in the Territories, in particular the hardships that the Palestinian participants face in the educational system. At the time of the course, because of the crisis of funding since the rise of Hamas to the government, employees of the Palestinian educational system had not been paid in half a year. The teachers told about the hopelessness of this situation. It is impossible, they explained, to provide for their families without searching for additional work, which in turn subtracted from the time and energy they could put into their work at the schools.

Another issue that was raised by the Palestinians was the effect the separation wall and the checkpoints have on the daily life of inhabitants of the Territories. The Palestinian participants recounted stories of students who had trouble arriving on time for their graduation exams because of problems created by the checkpoints, the separation wall, and the destruction of school buildings. They also told about the disruption of their classrooms through the absence or trauma of students who were left in critical condition after violent encounters with the Israeli army.

The discussion touched on wider political issues as well. For example, Palestinian participants brought up the issue of the refugees. They spoke about the centrality of the issue and about the Nakba, and they described the situation of the refugees today. For the Palestinians participants, it was indispensable that any proposed solution to the conflict take the problem of the refugees into account. They offered several options for solutions to the problem. The Jewish participants responded with some degree of agreement. Though they recognized that the problem was very difficult, they added that the return of the Palestinian refugees to Israeli territory would annul the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Rather, they suggested, the majority of the refugees should settle in the Palestinian state that will be founded in the presently occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza.

The next activity took place the following morning. It was devoted to the dilemmas raised by the conflict in the educational context. First the issue was discussed in uni-national groups and then it was presented in the bi-national group. There were four presentations: Palestinian educators from East Jerusalem; Jewish educators from Israel; Palestinian educators from the Territories; and Palestinian educators from Israeli schools.

The Palestinians from East Jerusalem spoke about the unique problems that plague the school system there. According to their description, the educational system in East Jerusalem suffers from oppression and limitations similar to what was common in the Arabic school system in Israel in the first decade of the state. The checkpoints and separation wall prevent students and teachers from arriving to school on time. Every teacher that wants to teach in East Jerusalem must undergo a thorough security check by the Shabach (the General Security Services, responsible for administering security and intelligence in the Territories). The teachers are allowed to teach Palestinian curriculum but Palestinian textbooks that are more national in perspective are forbidden. It is prohibited to observe Palestinian national holidays such as the memorial day in remembrance of the Nakba. Additionally, if the Israeli army kills a Palestinian, it is forbidden to observe a day of mourning or to speak to the children on the subject in the classroom. Sometimes the teacher’s main dilemma is that, on the one hand, he wants to nurture the students’ Palestinian identity and their parents share that interest, and if he doesn’t do that he is viewed as a collaborator with the forces of occupation; but on the other hand, Israeli officials bring a lot of pressure to bear to keep this kind of material out of the classrooms.

The Jewish group presented dilemmas that dealt with the clash between civil and military society. For example, there are certain school programs that are connected to Ganda, the youth corps of the military. These programs teach students of Arabic and encourage them to go into army intelligence. The army has enormous weight in the economic and educational systems of the country. As educators, they felt a dilemma in how much to emphasis the civil aspect of the state over the military aspect. On the one hand, the Jewish educators asserted that they want to minimize the weight of the army in the school’s curriculum and culture, but on the other hard they feared that it was impossible to diminish its prominence. Additional issues were posed as well. Among them were questions of how to deal with racism in the classroom and how to integrate the narrative of the Other into the curriculum.

The Palestinians from Palestine spoke about the psychological effects on their students of the occupation, especially checkpoints and the damage to school buildings. Palestinian teachers face the difficult question of how to address this horrible reality. If they organize a day of mourning or a work stoppage in protest, it is with the knowledge that the children will pay an additional price of missing school and being vulnerable to violence by the Israeli army by being on the street.

The Palestinians from Israel had formed into their own separate group in the preparation for the bi-national discussion. They spoke about the prohibition against teaching national poets such Mahmoud Darwish. A school principal presented one particular dilemma that involved a sporting event in which the top female volleyball players of the school were chosen to play in a national tournament. They subsequently won the tournament. At the beginning of the game, when the Israeli anthem was played, a small of group of Arab students that were watching the game had refused to stand. [[The principal understood their stance, but he was put under pressure to convince them to stand.]] On the one hand, he didn’t think that he should obligate the students to do something that they were ideologically opposed to. More than that, he respected their bravery for standing up for what they believed in. On the other hand, word came down to the principal that the volleyball players, who had worked so hard to win the tournament, might be disqualified because of the incident. The principal was even called to the Ministry of Education to explain himself, and there was a threat to throw the group out of the tournament and nullify its championship. As a condition of the team’s continued participation, the Ministry of Education demanded that the school conduct an educational program to reinforce loyalty to the symbols of the state.

The second part of the course dealt with issues at the intersection of nationality and profession dealing with teaching the narrative of the other. One day was devoted to the question of how to teach the War of 1948 and the Nakba. The group split into uni-national groups to prepare a class lesson. When the group reconvened, the Jews presented their class lesson first, followed by Palestinians. In each presentation, the uni-national group simulated a classroom with a teacher and “students.”
The Israeli lesson was characteristic of the classic Zionist pedagogy. Some of the “students” tried to stress Jewish victimhood at the hands of the world and at the hands of the Arabs. Teaching the series of events leading up to 1948 took up nearly all the time allotted for the class so that there was no time left to describe the events of 1948 themselves. Perhaps this came out of reticence to deal with these issues directly in a bi-national group.

In the discussion that took place after the lesson, the participants responded to the national aspects of the presentations, mostly through the questions of the “students.” Palestinian participants reacted to the fact that the Israeli-Jewish group didn’t even reach the events of 1948 and their consequences. Afterwards, there was an in-depth analysis of the differences of the two presentations.
The Israeli group was surprised that the Palestinian teacher also presented the Zionist point of view, which contradicted their image of how history is taught in Palestine.
On another day, time was devoted to teaching a literary text as a possible way of generating identification with the narrative of the other. The Palestinian group chose a poem by the Hebrew poet Dalia Ravikovitch, “B’tsafon kof’im” (They are freezing in the north). This choice was evidently linked to the war taking place at that same time. The lesson featured a lot of involvement on the part of the “students,” and focused on the writer’s criticism of the first Lebanon war. The Jewish group chose a story by Ghassan Kanafani, “Land of the Sad Oranges.

” The lesson featured mention of literary themes and the gradual introduction of the students to coping with the refugee question. Both groups invested heavily in preparing for these lessons. In the discussion afterwards, several topics came up. The Jews identified strongly with the refugee situation and Kanafani’s story. The participants thought that the method of gradually approaching this sensitive subject had helped in forging empathy among the “students.” The Jewish group that observed the Palestinian lesson on Ravikovitch’s poetry talked about a sense of ownership of the creative product, as if the others could not fully understand it. This proprietary attitude toward the creative assets prevented some of the participants from seeing the strong points of the lesson the Palestinians presented. During the concluding discussion, participants said that they see literature as a most important tool for accessing the other’s narrative and that they would try to use it more in the schools where they teach.

In the implementation phase, the groups divided into four smaller, mixed groups. The first group looked at the subject of parents and the importance of involving the parents in the educational activity, especially curriculum against racism. The second group spoke about the integration of the narrative of the Other in the school’s curriculum. This group advised that the Israelis learn about the Nakba, the Palestinian refugees, Land Day, Sabra and Shatila, and October 2000; in parallel, they thought the Palestinians should learn about the Zionist movement, the Holocaust, the waves of aliya, and the Jewish connection to the land. The third group dealt with issues of racism and its pervasiveness in society. They came to the conclusion that one of the main components in addressing racism was to see the other side as human beings. Lastly, the fourth group advised joint learning days with curriculum on the Nakba, Jerusalem, refugees, and the Holocaust.

Coordinators: Muhammad Joudeh from the Hewar Center and Nava Sonnenschein from the School for Peace.
Trainers: Muhammad Joudeh, Uri Gopher, Sha’adi Hanun, and Nava Sonnenschein.
Translators: Maison Badwai and Maya Rabiya.

12-08-2006 A Course for Doctors and Health Professionals

The project included 17 from Israel, among them 5 Palestinian citizens of Israel and 12 Jewish Israelis, and 18 Palestinians from Palestine. There were 16 Israeli and Palestinian doctors from various specialties, and 20 female and male nurses and other health professionals. The Israeli group included 6 men and 11 women; the Palestinian group, 13 men and 5 women.

The first part of the program March 2006 in Aqaba.

After the participants had spent some time getting acquainted, the people from Hewar and the School for Peace made presentations about their work.
Later each national group prepared a presentation as well, on the medical profession in its society. The gap in resources, access to professional training, working conditions, and facilities between the two health systems, and the difficulty of working under occupation, were vividly obvious.

The dialogue in the groups was very honest and powerful. The Palestinians showed the other side the suffering under occupation. They presented appalling medical cases, including what happens when the checkpoints prevent them from doing their work properly; the shortage of medicines; the fact that salaries are not being paid. The Israelis mentioned the suicide bombings. The Palestinians, tried to convey to the Israelis everything that‘s encompassed by life in the territories, mainly the hardships encountered by medical professionals. They told a great many stories about sick people denied medical care because of checkpoints; patients who died as a result of this; and doctors wounded, even killed, while attempting to provide medical care to patients.

In the separate intra-group meeting, the Israelis talked about how hard it was to hear about such awful cases and take in what was being said. They talked about shame and impotence; about the assault on their group‘s image, which was considerable; about how hard it is to be blamed all the time.

The Israelis found it very hard indeed to listen to these stories and they frequently responded by bringing up the issue of the suicide bombings. The Israelis wanted very much for the Palestinians to listen to them, too; to understand their side, their distress, and their insecurities. But as the workshop went on, the Israelis increasingly realized that the situation is not symmetrical and there is no similarity between their sense of insecurity and their situation, and the situation of the Palestinians.

Some in the Israeli group spoke of their desire that the state keep its present definition as a Jewish state, a desire fueled by their fear of losing their Jewish identity.
The Palestinians who are citizens of Israel talked in different voices, bringing their dilemmas into the group. Some spoke of their multiple identities as Palestinians and Israelis, and their attempts to integrate their professional identity into their other identities.

Leaving the workshop and heading home is very difficult for the Palestinian group especially. While the Israeli participants feel that they‘ve undergone inner changes, the Palestinians feel that in another few hours, despite the egalitarian dialogue just experienced in the workshop, they will be back in the humiliating reality of checkpoints and occupation, beginning with the Allenby crossing from Jordan into Israel and on to the first of many checkpoints. The contrast, the gap between what can be attained in the workshop and the ever-deteriorating reality waiting at home, is terribly frustrating and painful for the Palestinian group.

The second part of the programmeMay 2006 in Istanbul.

The goals for this segment focused on the dilemmas of the dual loyalty to nationality and to one’s profession in medicine, and how all this relates to the conflict; the human rights issues that arise; sharing each other’s professional experiences in the context of these dilemmas; acquisition of theoretical know-how relevant to cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians in medicine; formulating the directions in which the members of the group wish to go.

After the members of the group had shared what had been happening to them since the previous workshop, Dr. Abdallah Hewari, a surgeon from Al Mokassad Hospital and a lecturer at Al Quds University School of Medicine presented an overview of the Palestinian Health System, highlights of which appear below (see Appendix).

That evening, there was a panel in which four participants talked about their prior experiences with cooperation. The panelists were Dr. Ali Husseini, Dr. Nazih Asali, Dr. Ophir Bar On, and Dr. Eiman Aniyye. Their comments will be useful in planning future cooperative programs:

Dilemmas of the occupation
The next morning, Dr. Abdallah Hewari gave another talk, this one about the complicated dilemmas and situations that the Palestinian doctor encounters in the context of the occupation. (See summary in an appendix.)

After that, there was a workshop led by Ms. Hadas Ziv, Director of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, and Dr. Ze‘ev Weiner of that group. The workshop opened with Dr. Weiner‘s talk on dual loyalty in the medical professions and the relationship between dual loyalty, bio-ethics and human rights. Thereafter the group discussed cases presented by the lecturers.

Saturday was devoted to planning projects that the group wanted to do as a continuation of the workshops. The projects formulated during the discussions are described below.

Task Group No. 1 -The group addressed raising public awareness in Israel, and recruiting human and financial resources. The group focused mainly on the question of getting contributions of donated medicines.

Task Group No. 2-It was decided to build teams of experts from the two sides for specific areas they want to develop trainings and evaluate the activity. The two projects planned thus far are: (1) to organize training for public health professionals in the Qalqiliya area so that they in turn can provide training to others locally; the training will include treatment of smoking; exercise and walking; correct nutrition; stress management, etc.; and (2) empowerment of women in the Qalqiliya area.

Task Group No. 3-This group addressed medical cooperation; specific participants took individual responsibility for specific tasks. The goal was medical cooperation, via: (1) medical days in the West Bank; (2) mobile clinics; and (3) medical cooperation

Summary discussion
An Arab physician from Israel: "I didn‘t expect this encounter to change reality. The little things we are doing, that‘s what we can do to make things better; this can be a tool for a certain impact on something small."

A Jewish physician: "I‘m sad that it‘s over, and what‘s important to me is that it have some continuity in the form of the programs we did here. And I think that the things we‘ve agreed on can be implemented. I hope we can meet in Area C and that this won‘t be the end of it."

A Palestinian woman: "I don‘t know what to say. I‘m very sorry to part from you. It‘s not easy. For me, it‘s very hard. I really hope we can continue in reality and that what we proposed won‘t just remain on paper."

A Palestinian doctor, a man: "In another two months when there’s a suicide bombing, what will you be feeling? Will what we’ve done together evaporate?"

A Jewish woman responded: There was a suicide bombing between the [dates of] the two workshops, and when I sat with my good friends, I felt that I could talk about the Palestinians, explain why suicide bombings happen, what brings people to that. It’s not that I justify it, and I am horrified, but immediately after the incident, I could sit with friends and present the Palestinian side."

What emerges from all of this is that the Palestinian group wants action and not just talk – both in medical terms, and in political terms. Right now there is a lot of enthusiasm for cooperation on the medical plane. On the political plane, Israelis are doing things at their workplaces, but there is as yet no joint political action with Palestinian medical people. Perhaps that will come later. As one of the Palestinian doctors from Israel said, "The political [action] will follow the medical cooperation."

Course directors and trainers: Muhammad Joudeh of Hewar; and Dr. Nava Sonnenschein of the SFP
Trainers: Mahyoub Abu Ruwes and Eliana Almog
Translators: Shireen Najar, Maysoun Badawi
Funding for this program: USAID

01-10-2006 Israeli- Palestinian Media Professionals Course

This project is one of the four courses to train Israeli and Palestinian change agents in the workplace, conducted by the School for Peace and the Hiwar Center during 2006, financed by USAID. The program addressed the point of intersection between nationality and profession in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thirty media professionals participated in this course; eighteen were from Israel, including four Palestinian citizens of Israel and fourteen Jews, and twelve were from Palestine. The participants came from different media fields: print journalism, digital media, television, and radio. The first part of the course took pace from the 7th to the 10th of June, 2006, during the period when there were many attacks by the IDF on Gaza. In one extremely shocking episode, the army killed nearly all of one family, the Ghalia family, while they were sitting on the beach. The second part of the course took place after the Israeli-Lebanese war in the summer of 2006. These violent events had an influence on the course and on the processes that occurred in it, as we will describe below.

The first workshop
The first part of the course was essentially dialogue about the conflict. The dialogue was colored by the occurrence of these particularly horrible events; the Palestinian participants were acutely affected, both from the facts of the occupation and in their role as professionals. They talked about the restrictions on their freedom of movement and the injuries the IDF inflicted on Palestinian journalists during the course of their work. Journalists have no defense against the army and work in continual fear of injury, or worse, given past incidents of injury and death to Palestinian media professionals at the hands of the Israeli armed forces. The groups spoke about the general situation in the Occupied Territories, the hardships wrought by the checkpoints and the security barrier, the continual violence and daily humiliation that Palestinians suffer from.

The Jewish group was divided. Some spoke about guilt feelings and the importance of listening to Palestinians; others had become hard-hearted and said they had trouble listening repeatedly to descriptions of the suffering of the Palestinians. Encountering the reality of the occupation becomes very frustrating, as we know, and facing up to the ugly realities is especially hard when you yourself are part of the same system of occupation. Participants vent some of their frustration via opposition to the method of facilitation employed, or to the facilitation itself. Note that, although the bi-national discussions were difficult, there was a lot of interaction among the participants during breaks in the meetings and in the evenings. The schedule gave people as much free time as possible to talk informally in small groups, sitting around the table over a cup of a coffee.

During the professional presentations in the plenary, the dynamic that developed was along the lines of what took place in the other change agents courses , highlighting an even more pronounced gap between the conditions under which the respective groups do their work. The Israeli journalists spoke of the very limited journalistic freedom on the Palestinian side and were of the opinion that the Palestinian journalists didn’t dare challenge the authorities; the Palestinian journalists described, in highly critical terms, precisely this situation on the Palestinian side while also noting instances of critiques of the authorities.

On day three of the workshop, the groups were asked to sit in uni-national groups and to prepare case studies of dilemmas illustrating the conflict between loyalty to one’s profession and loyalty to one’s nation. These cases were to be presented in the plenary. That same morning, reports began arriving about the deaths of seven members of the Ghalia family in Gaza, and the atmosphere grew very sad and tense. In the plenary, the Palestinians brought up the dilemma of participating in a workshop with Jewish Israelis while the Israeli army was murdering seven members of a family vacationing at the seashore. The notion that this constituted a “professional dilemma” to be raised in the meeting angered the Jewish participants. They felt uncertain about presenting their dilemmas dealing with the rift between loyalty to the profession and loyalty to the nation, while the Palestinians were not raising parallel professional dilemmas. They also felt that the dilemmas they had prepared for presentation seemed minor by comparison with the terrible realities. Claiming that the Palestinians were breaking the rules, the Jewish journalists also said that it still wasn’t clear under what circumstances the family had been killed.

The Jewish group found this stressful; the discussion induced a feeling of moral inferiority and severely challenged their pretensions to a liberal identity. They resolved their discomfort by taking refuge in their professionalism which they felt afforded them a degree of superiority. At the end of the workshop, a Palestinian participant from Israel proposed that the group write a letter of condolence to the Ghalia family to be signed by all the members of the group. After the workshop, a Palestinian participant from Israel composed the letter, translated it to Hebrew, and sent it to all the members of the group, both from Israel and from Palestine. There ensued a prolonged discussion via email about the content of the letter and in particular about the use of the word shahid. [martyr]. Some of the Jews objected, claiming that use of this word would preclude their signing the letter. A different Palestinian participant from Israel sent the Jewish participants an email explaining that this word is the Arabic counterpart to the Hebrew term used to designate “one who fell for the sake of his homeland” ("halal" in Hebrew) and that it has the same meaning. This discussion via email between Jews and Palestinians from the Israeli group, during the interlude between the first and second workshops, was significant. It was a continuation of the dialogue that the group went through. Eventually, the majority of the members of the group from both sides signed the letter, including some who had initially been opposed to signing it, and it was sent to the Ghalia family.

The second workshop
In July, war broke out between Israel and Lebanon. We decided we ought to check with the participants to see how they felt about continuing with the second workshop. With the exception of two participants from each side, everyone thought it was not only necessary but even crucial to go forward with the second part of the program as planned, rather than postpone or cancel it. Hence the second part took place as planned from September 7th to 11th, 2006, in Istanbul. This segment focused on dual loyalty – national vs. professional – in media-related professions.

The workshop opened with a general update on people’s experiences during the interval since the prior workshop. They talked about the war in Lebanon. The respective groups – the Jewish participants on the one hand, and the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine on the other – used very different terminology to describe the actions of Hezbollah and the actions of the IDF. The disagreement was vociferous, with the Palestinians from Israel challenging the Jewish group’s narrative. Afterwards, the Palestinians from Palestine told of the deteriorating situation in the Occupied Territories and recounted how, during the war in Lebanon, the IDF was also attacking and killing many Palestinians in the Territories.

In a simulated editing room scenario, the participants were asked to split up into three groups (simulating a Palestinian newspaper, an Israeli newspaper, and a mixed newspaper) and to select the front-page content for their (imaginary) newspaper, drawing on a pool of about forty headlines taken from actual current Palestinian and Israeli newspaper stories. The results of this exercise were not dissimilar to the real thing. Interestingly enough, participants chose to stick close to the known, familiar product in spite of the novel opportunity to create something new. Commercial considerations in many cases trumped social issues of significance. At one point, Palestinians from Israel wanted to insert an article reporting on discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel in the assistance given to people injured in the war with Lebanon; the article exposed racism in Israel, they said. Some Jews in the group protested that the article was not reliable and, in the end, it was not selected.

The front-page discussions were very revealing. One argument was about emphasizing that the IDF had killed Palestinians, rather than reverting to the passive voice (“Palestinians were killed…”), a technique often found in the Israeli newspaper reports. A few participants voiced a desire to include articles that incorporated the narrative of the other. In the mixed group, substantial effort was invested in achieving consensus, sometimes driven by the occasional “odd man (or woman) out” who was unable to compromise on some cherished principle. An interesting similarity eventually prevailed between the Israeli and the Palestinian editions. Also of interest was the treatment in all three papers of the death of the Egyptian Nobel Laureate in Literature, Naguib Mahfouz.

The program for that day ended with a lecture by Dr. Motti Neiger in which he talked about journalists in crisis, mutually contradictory values, and dual loyalty. This presentation drew on examples from what the group had been doing in the workshops earlier to illumine the relevant theoretical literature. Both the Jewish and the Palestinian participants found the lecture interesting.

On the following day, a panel discussion addressed instances of dual loyalty and self-censorship. One case aroused much interest in the group. A Palestinian journalist from Israel recounted how, after an interview with a Jewish Israeli colleague during which she had spoken out against the war in Lebanon, she was severely rebuked by her editorial and management superiors at the channel where she works. She felt ostracized. It was a heavy price to pay for having voiced her opinion forthrightly.
The issue of solidarity during wartime or conflict, when people generally rally round the flag, is problematic in Israel. At a time like that, if a journalist comes out against the consensus, his colleagues have a hard time supporting him. Jewish Israelis in some sense enjoy more legitimacy when they criticize government policy than do Palestinian citizens of Israel; most Israeli Jews expect the latter to be loyal to the government and even to declare it publicly.

The morning of the fourth day of the workshop was dedicated to the presentation of material by the participants. People brought video clips and also written excerpts. The video clips were presented and discussed but unfortunately, there was not enough time to delve into the written material. The first work shown was a series of six cartoons by a Palestinian cartoonist addressing the consequences of the separation wall. The work portrayed different aspects of the occupation, the ongoing oppression, and the separation wall in a very powerful manner.

The second work presented was a Jewish participant’s film about the children of Palestinian political prisoners. Sometimes children as young as five or six travel alone to visit their fathers or brothers in an Israeli prison because their mother or other adult relatives did not receive permits to enter Israeli. The group viewed a short, powerful clip from the film and the filmmaker explained the process of producing it. The Palestinian participants were moved to see that films of this kind were being made on the Israeli side. In their experience, few movies on the Israeli side deal with the suffering of their people.

Both workshops confronted the Jewish group with the necessity to come to grips with very difficult issues. This task was hard, and at times it was very painful, as various assumptions about ethics and Jewish Israeli identity were called into question. The timing of this workshop, immediately following the war in Lebanon, may have exacerbated the difficulty of assimilating these different perspectives. One of the participants said outright that she felt she hadn’t yet digested fully the effect the war had on her and that it left little psychological room to take in the things that the Palestinians were saying. Also, in certain situations in the workshop, some of the Jewish participants seemed to be competing over victimhood and seeking to establish symmetry with the Palestinians’ suffering. In other groups that met during the same year, the need for such symmetry was usually weakened by the second workshop.

During that same afternoon, we discussed possibilities for cooperation. Three groups formed. One group talked about starting an organization of Israeli and Palestinian journalists that would work on worthy issues demanding attention, such as: freedom of movement for Palestinian reporters; legal immunity and defense for journalists; sharing information; etc. A second group discussed the construction of a shared website for media professionals, and a third group discussed the idea of benefiting from one another’s experience through reciprocal visits.

Following the course, two journalists from one group (Jewish and Arab) put together a television program that focuses on Jewish and Arab relations within Israel at the television station at which they both work. We know of additional similar initiatives that are underway, as of this writing. [Note: more material to come.]

Course staff:
Coordinators: Muhammad Joudeh from the Hewar Center and Nava Sonnenschein of SFP
Facilitators: Rachela Yanai and Muhammad Joudeh, Raid Rabuah and Nava Sonnenschein
Lecturer: Dr. Motti Neiger

Reported by Nava Sonnenschein
Translation by Joanna Steinhardt; editing by Deb Reich

25-10-2006 Opening the year

Once again, we gathered to mark the opening of the School for Peace program year. This gathering has become a tradition, every autumn. We meet to talk about the programs and learn something together. This time, we began with an Iftur meal following the Ramadan fast, a pleasant social occasion to talk with friends.

Official greetings were conveyed by Dr. Youssef Nashef, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the School for Peace. During the past year, Youssef has participated in two projects that brought together Israeli and Palestinian mental health professionals, and took this occasion to share his impressions of those programs. The opportunity to address questions of national identity and political considerations in a professional context is rare, he noted – indeed it is perceived as almost subversive for practicing psychologists. The School for Peace programs provide a way to examine professional boundaries and the dilemmas that arise around the encounter between the two peoples.

Next, Wafaa Zriek Srour, director of the School for Peace, reviewed the political situation and spoke mainly about the most recent war. She noted that the conflict is continuing; wars happen because of the reigning imperviousness, exaggerated use of force, and the absence of dialogue between the parties to the conflict. At the SFP, we stand for dialogue, however difficult it may be and despite the disparities in power, which remain constant, even with goodwill on both sides. Wafaa then presented the programs for the coming year. These include seven scheduled youth encounter workshops; courses at Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa; a course at Netanya College, a course for women at Ben-Gurion University, the annual facilitators course and an additional session of the mental health professionals’ course.

Wafaa also noted that the School for Peace had received a USAID grant to continue to work with Israeli and Palestinian professionals. SFP also received a new grant from the European Union, this time for a new project that will monitor a group of Israelis and Palestinians who will establish a forum for negotiating a resolution to the conflict.

The gathering then heard a lecture by Dr. Nava Sonnenschein on the findings of her doctoral research, examining the development of identity in a group of Jews engaged in an ongoing encounter with students, in a School for Peace program offered jointly with Tel Aviv university. Among the findings cited by Nava: that the Jewish group delineates its identity by contrast with the other, the Palestinian, and as superior to it. The Jewish group dehumanizes the Palestinians by seeing them as extremist, in three situations:

1… When the Jewish group feels weakened by the painful encounter with its own immorality in relation to the Palestinian minority. This immorality contradicts the humane image the Jews have of themselves. One way to deal with this distress is to highlight the inhumane image of the Palestinian.

2… When the Palestinians demand civic equality. Preserving the inhumane image of the Palestinians enables continued justification of discrimination. Holding on to the extremist image of the Palestinians permits reinforcement of cultural and national hegemony at their expense.

3… The Jewish group employs the image of extremist Palestinians again when trying to restore its own power, or preserve it.

The Palestinian group battles against this imposed image of inhumanity in diverse ways. Its perseverance in proving to the Jews that Palestinians are humane does not, in and of itself, change the Jews’ outlook. But change in the Jewish group is evident as an outcome of the Palestinian’s insistence on confronting the Jews over their responsibility for the wrongs done by the occupation, and as a result of the Palestinians’ assertiveness and perseverance, alongside their demonstration of compassion and their ability to see the humanity of the Jews.

Nava addressed processes of change that the Jewish participants underwent. When the Jewish group acknowledges its power, relinquishes its sense of victimhood and feels less threatened, it also relinquishes the extremist images of the Palestinians. Within the Jewish group, a critical discourse develops that is able to contest the essentialist conceptions and fundamental beliefs of cultural control and superiority. The participants who, prior to this process, saw the Palestinian side in cultural terms as cruel, as educated to hate, as wanting to kill – can now see more cultural commonality than difference. The cultural differences are understandable in the political context and the value placed on human life, by both sides, is seen as equal.

Another finding relating to the sense of threat felt by the Jewish group: Persecution, the Holocaust, and the existential threat are a significant component in the national identity of the Jewish participants. The sense of existential threat is transferred to the Palestinians via repetitive images. Holding on to this existential threat enables preservation of the inhumane images of the Palestinians without overt reference to them. The Jewish group treats the most minute instance of threat, even imagined threat, as an existence case. The slightest movement – the words “we are Palestinians,” or “a state of all its citizens” – and the existential threat looms. An assertive and articulate Palestinian group also evokes this threat. Often the Jewish group hangs on to the existential threat as a tool to preserve its power and justify its control of the Palestinians. We have seen that sometimes, the sense of threat evokes inhumane images of Palestinians, but quite often it is the other way around: an inhumane image of the Palestinians evokes the sense of threat.

The Jewish group has difficulty shedding the component of existential threat in its identity, but over the course of the workshop it develops an awareness of the role this element plays in its identity and is able to look critically at the uses it makes of this. The group begins to understand the perceived threat as an excuse to maintain control over the Palestinians and sees how it offers legitimacy for aggression perpetrated against Palestinians. This awareness develops alongside the Jewish group’s developing awareness of its own power. The participants gain greater awareness of the circular process, a kind of repetitive impasse, in their need for the existential threat as a component of their identity.

The threat to hegemony is the most resistant to change. On the plane of the Jewish participants’ readiness for equal power-sharing, it emerged that when Palestinians talk nationalism, are assertive and resolute in their opinions, the Jewish participants feel an existential threat, especially at first. The Jews, who are not used to assertive, powerful Palestinians, experience an imaginary connection between the experience of losing power in this process and their anxiety about a loss of Jewish hegemony in the country as a whole, and they interpret this as an existential threat. The Jewish group tries to recapture its power. Later on there are moments of equality in the group, but they are very fragile.

The moment the Jews feel even the most temporary inferiority, they move to regain their power. In contract, on the ideational level, there is perceptible change from the point at which the process began and the end point at the conclusion of the workshop with regard to Jewish hegemony in the country. Prior to this experience, the majority of the group believed that the state must be a Jewish state. At the end of the workshop, five of the nine participants thought that the solution should be a state of all its citizens, two were not sure but inclined in that direction, and two believed that the state should remain a Jewish state. One of the possible explanations for the gap between the ideational and the behavioral level is that it is harder to give up power in practice than to give it up in theory.

The fourth dimension of the threat felt by the Jewish group over the course of this ongoing process with the Palestinian group involves the moral value of the national identity. This is the biggest change concerning the existential threat. In a gradual process, the Jewish group reconstructs its identity and redirects it via an interaction with the other. The change takes place over in successive stages, the most decisive of which is the transition from denial about the existence of a problem between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, to a situation of inner dilemmas around the beliefs and values that the Jewish participants believe in and the immoral reality that the Palestinian group forces them to see in their own society. This situation of inner conflict is difficult for the Jews and creates simultaneously a sense of guilt and also a strong identification with their national identity.

The Jewish participants experience an inner conflict about the question of how they ought to respond to the arguments made by the Palestinians. When they understand that in many situations, they are creating the threat they feel, and when they understand that they are preserving this existential threat and reinforcing it in order to reinforce their national identity and preserve their control, they are slightly freed of the sense of threat. Under these circumstances, they are freer to see the vulnerability of the other. At this stage, the Jewish group relinquishes the sense of victimhood and acknowledges its own power. This leads to an acceptance of responsibility for the harm inflicted on the Palestinians in the past and in the present. The participants also take a certain amount of responsibility for their stance of superiority. In this way, the Jewish participants reclaim their own humanity. This is the transformation that the entire Jewish group undergoes.

15-11-2006 Between National and Professional Identity:

This was the second group of mental health professionals from Israel to attend this program at the School for Peace. In November of 2005, 15 Palestinians and 15 Jews from Israel participated; this time around, the group comprised 14 Palestinians and 17 Jews from mental health fields.

Composition of the group. The group included a few people from senior levels; most participants were civil servants. Most were psychologists; some were clinical social workers. Some of the participants work in mixed Jewish-Arab settings with clients from both peoples; only a few of the Jews have never been exposed to an Arab population at their workplace. Assembling this group was very difficult and demanded a great many resources because this was not a regular, officially recognized in-service training course for clinical practitioners. We sensed that the Arab participants were very skeptical about such meetings, based on long experience with similar meetings that did not yield the kinds of results they were looking for. In this light, we defined the goal as: To learn about the connection between national identity and professional identity, as Jewish and Palestinian mental health professionals, and to learn how this connection preserves the status quo. Formerly, a dialogue about Jewish-Arab relations was a goal in and of itself. This time, the dialogue about the relationship became a means to an end. Dr. Youssef Nashef and Dr. Tirza Bar Hanin, both professionals in the field and graduates of the School for Peace Course for Facilitators, initiated this project and were tremendously helpful in recruiting participants.

During the concluding session, Arab and Jewish participants expressed satisfaction with this program, alongside a sense of feeling rattled and pessimistic. They expressed the wish that the content of these encounters become part of the general training for mental health professionals nationally. Some wanted to continue meeting, and there were suggestions for an additional meeting to include more people so as to expose them to the content of the encounter. This desire to meet again was familiar to us from other groups and is natural at the moment of parting, but we are examining some of the suggestions in more depth, such as the idea of create a discussion paper with recommendations for the authorities about how to change the modus operandi at state-run mental health clinics.

During the weekend sessions, we could see the impact of recent events on the encounter, particularly the recent war in Lebanon, which raised questions among the Jews about the fidelity of the Arabs to the state – or, as one Jewish participant put it: “We accept the Arabs only when they fit our image.” But the most trenchant things that came up were the deep-seated perceptions of the Jews, partially internalized by the Arabs, according to which Jewish culture is preferable, less violent, more ethical. One byproduct of these ideas is that Jewish therapists are seen as more professional, or as one Arab woman stated, “A Jewish [woman] psychologist asked me whether I am subject to mandatory reporting if I hear of a case of domestic violence,” it turned out that there are Jewish professionals who have lower expectations from Arab professionals, for example they suspect that the Arabs don’t process such cases using the same codes and values as Jews would. These are very sensitive subjects, difficult to address; they touch on the entire apparatus of Jewish control of the mental health system, and beyond.

Decisions about who and what are professional are made by the Jews, by the West, which is where Israeli clinical disciplines look to. Hence to foster an alternative discourse to that of Jewish superiority is very difficult. Likewise one could see that the reigning conception is that the therapist is neutral, although nearly everyone testified to the fact that national identity influences their work. Such influence is often perceived as deviant, not as something that could profitably be examined at work. In the best case, national themes are perceived as important, but there is tremendous suspicion about working with them. Generally, people reported that these subjects were ignored at their workplace. Evidently the task of creating a non-dichotomous discourse, with either professional or national emphesis, is a difficult one that challenges the professional assumptions common in clinical training in Israel.

Arab participants also talked about discriminatory practices that most of the Jews were not aware of, such as the fact that Jews treat Arab patients but not vice versa. The major dilemma on the agenda at this encounter was the extent to which mental health professionals in general, and Arabs in particular, comprise a professional elite that obstructs social change, using therapeutic practices and discourse as camouflage.

The staff was comprised of senior facilitators of the School for Peace: Michal Zak, Dr. Nava Sonnenschein, Ahmad Hijazi, and Amjad Moussa.

Dr. Rabah Halabi lectured on the role of intellectual and professional elites in reinforcing colonial elements in society.

The encounter was supported in part by the New Israel Fund.