El Ein: A women’s program at Ben Gurion University

The program at Ben Gurion University took place in spring 2007 with 28 Arab and Jewish participants. There was a long preparation phase that included a process of negotiations with the university staff. Although the program took place in 2004 for the first time, it was transferred to a new department at the university, therefore much work was invested with the new partners.


In addition, the first program in 2004 was a pilot program and much was learned from that. For example we noticed that it was a mistake that both the staff of trainers and the lecturers that we brought were not from the South. This had a negative effect on the group that felt patronized and alienated. The decision was that in the coming program the staff will be mainly from the South. It is important to know that there is a socio economic and cultural gap between the North and Center of Israel and the South which is poor and neglected. There was a lot of work invested in preparing the new staff. In addition a group was formed, both of Arab and of Jewish women. This is a big task, that involves cooperation with local women activists who help us recruit the participants.

The program opened at the Ben Gurion university campus, in February 2007 with 13 Arab women, and 15 Jewish women. The Arabs were from Rahat and the Jews were from Beer Sheva. The course was conducted in cooperation with the department for gender studies at the BGU and our partner is DR. Henriette Dahan Calev. The director of the School for Peace, Wafaa Zriek Srour is in charge of this program on behalf of the School for Peace. This is the first time that our women’s department is cooperating with an academic department, the last El Ein course was conducted in cooperation with the department for training programs at BGU.


The program ran for 14 weeks and each meeting included a lecture and discussion groups. Most of the meetings took place at BGU, one at Neve ShalomWahat al Salam. The team included the facilitators; Ifat Hillel, a SFP graduate, who lives in Beer Sheva and works at the university, Maisoon Badawi, also a SFP graduate, and a Bedwin from the north, which we thought is important since the Palestinian women are all Bedwin. The lecturers included both Jewish and Arab women from the university who talked about issues that concern women, from a variety of angles, including personal issues such as sex education, to social issues such as women and power and women and poverty, to historical and political issues such as: Palestinian women’s memory of historical events. All the lectures were given in the language of the lecturer, with translation to Arabic or Hebrew. The discussions after each lecture were conducted in uninational forums, the Palestinian group met with the Palestinian facilitator, and conducted the discussion in Arabic and the Jewish group met with the Jewish facilitator and conducted the discussion in Hebrew. The first ten discussions were in uni national forums and towards the end of the course we conducted three bi national meetings, all focused on the Jewish- Palestinian conflict. One of those meetings took place at Neve ShalomWahat al Salam (NSWAS). The participants spent a day in the village, which included in addition to their group discussions also meetings with members of the NSWAS community.


The outcome: One of the outcomes that the Jews talked about was that they came out of the course confused. We see this as a positive stage in the learning process, since what was clear and evident has become more complex, and hopefully they can even look at their reality with some criticism. For the Arabs, as we mentioned above, the mere fact that the course took place at the university was empowering and enriching. Through the course they found a voice, which they could not express in other life situations. We know that when working with groups that are not in symmetric status, each group goes through a different learning process, the group that is the more powerful has a chance to learn about its power and its abuse of power, and the group that is powerless has a chance to make their voice heard. This program is very complex because it deals with the Arab- Jewish conflict and the gender discrimination. From our experience we know that when ever there is a national conflict, this conflict take president over other social conflicts, such as gender, the uniqueness of the program is that it does not try to move one of these issues aside, but learn about the two in an integrated and experiential manner.