An Analysis of Wartime Dialogue Sessions Between Palestinians and Jews at the School for Peace

October to December 2023

The School for Peace was established in the late 1970s. Since then, the School has faced many periods of immense crisis, the events of October 2000 and May 2021 as two notable examples. In recent years we have witnessed the rise of an extreme right-wing government, the state’s blatant neglect in the matter of personal security and crime among Palestinian citizens of Israel, the deepening of the occupation and of land grabbing in the West Bank, the continuation of the siege on Gaza, and a regime overthrow that led to deep divisions in Israeli society. Amidst this unstable reality, the School for Peace provided many people with a consistent and stable space for an egalitarian and just political alternative. Among these people: our team of facilitators, groups participants, our alumni community, the residents of the village of Oasis of Peace, as well as different bi-national professional teams across the country. The fact that we remained committed to our egalitarian values and to a radical political discourse – which enables a free space for everyone to collaboratively discuss, process, and act – has enhanced and solidified trust between us and various individuals and organizations.

On October 7th, we saw the beginning of the war following the violent attack by Hamas on the Israeli villages near Gaza and the deadly violent response by Israel in Gaza including the transfer and displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s residents. The trauma, the shock, the despair, and the ongoing helplessness has deeply struck us all. If that weren’t enough, amid the war, additional crimes against Palestinians are occurring and expanding in the West Bank. Palestinian citizens of Israel, alongside Jewish-Israelis who criticize the war, are silenced and persecuted more intensively than ever.

In the midst of all the difficulty, fear, silencing and complexity, about 13 organizations, educational institutions and hospitals contacted us so we can advise and support their mixed teams (with Palestinian and Jewish members) on how to move through this difficult period and reduce the tension within the team. In addition, we held dialogue and processing sessions for the School for Peace facilitators’ team, as well as for 5 of our alumni forums. We also went ahead with all the courses that were planned to begin in October or that already started before the war: agents of change in the nationally-mixed cities, agents of change in the field of environmental and climatic justice and dialogue for Israelis and Palestinians living in Europe. Thus, from October to the end of December 2023, we held meetings attended by approximately 800 participants.

There is no doubt that it is an immense challenge to carry out dialogue between two groups whose relation is forged and shaped by the occupation; to carry out dialogue between the occupier and the occupied. Such an act raises many political questions, including the question of whether having the dialogue in the first place actually legitimizes and normalizes the unequal reality; whether even the agreement and desire to carry out such dialogue actually cements this unequal reality as an acceptable, manageable norm. In times of war, the power relations are especially extreme, and the political questions rise to the surface more than usual. In such times, the oppression becomes more pronounced and exposed, outside and within the dialogue sessions, and affects the possibility of creating a safe and respectful space for everyone. Within this context, the School for Peace facilitators had to confront a political dilemma, clearly articulated by one of our Jewish facilitators: “How can we have any real dialogue… when the current dialogue is highly asymmetrical? … We bring Palestinians to the meeting because their organization has asked them to participate… Organizations shut employees’ mouths and send them to participate in dialogue… It’s absurd that people are put in this situation and that we normalize it.” The feelings of silencing and fear did not just affect the participants in the groups but took a toll on facilitators as well. One of the Palestinian facilitators shared: “I led a dialogue session in a mixed team that is involved in an educational field… At first, I was afraid to intervene – to highlight and reflect back the oppression the Jewish participants were exerting towards the Palestinian participants. I felt that I did not protect the Palestinian participants in the group and left feeling suffocated and incompetent.” Despite these dilemmas and challenges, we continued the dialogue sessions while working to learn and improve participants’ and facilitators’ sense of agency and flexibility within them.

Why Persist? What is the Role of Dialogue in Such a Time of Crisis?

“Safe space” is the first answer we received from all the facilitators and participants. Safety is a very basic need for humans, and in such moments of crisis, when safety is compromised, people go into survival mode in an attempt to protect themselves. Restoring this sense of safety can help bring people out of survival mode and enable them to act in a balanced, compassionate, and considerate way. What emerges from the analysis of the dialogue sessions is that the safe space can only emerge in the presence of the “other” as the cause for the current ongoing lack of safety is rooted in the traumatic relationship with the “other”. To borrow from psychoanalytic theory, we can use Winnicott’s concept of “Potential Space” (Winnicott, 1971). Within the framework of a potential space, we put a pause on the question of what comes from the outside and what comes from the inside, and instead notice how the inside and the outside interact and touch one another in such a movement of dance that allows a person to discover something new and to be surprised even by themself (Jemstedt, 2000). This mental space, which is halfway between objective reality and subjective experience, is the basis for both creativity and the ability to expand concrete daily experience (Winnicott, 1971).

The participants enter the potential space with initial fantasies of having their personal needs met by the other. In most cases in our sessions, the Jewish group demanded the Palestinian group to fully condemn the actions of Hamas. For example, according to one of the facilitators: “They received condemnation of Hamas’ actions from 80% of the team, and they wanted to hear it from the remaining 20%… What activates them is those 20% who didn’t condemn Hamas.” The way we can explain this, is that the Jewish group demanded such condemnation in order to regain the sense of control that was usurped when the war broke out. The demand for condemnation is a ritualistic practice that manifests a fantasy of controlling Palestinians and what they say. Still, the fulfillment of such a fantasy – that is, hearing condemnation from the Palestinian group – only results in a short respite from Jewish participants’ underlying anxiety and does not last for the long term. On the other hand, the Palestinian group held on to a fantasy of the “other” taking responsibility by equalizing the power relations within the group and creating a safe space. A Palestinian participant shared in the group: “I came here to confront” meaning “I came here to put everything on the table and talk about it. Not in an attempt to create a partnership, but just to talk. This enabled other participants to also demand we talk from a safe and genuine place.”

Despite the shared desire by both parties to create a safe space for all, both groups are left with a feeling of suffocation. As a Jewish facilitator shared: “We are left with the same feeling of suffocation, and that it’s probably a fantasy that cannot be realized… The Jewish participants also feel that they are suffocating… They don’t share their emotions because they don’t want to hurt the other side… The fantasy on both sides is to voice oneself and to be heard…”. The uniqueness of this potential space in a time of crisis is that it enables, for each group, personal and group experiences that are triggered by this encounter of the subjective inner world and the objective world. Following such an exposure to a variety of feelings and opinions, the participants begin a processing journey which can shed light on existing thoughts as well as raise new questions. Especially when the external reality collapses, and when it seems that there is no space capable of containing doubts and criticism, the importance of the ‘potential space’ created in our dialogue groups – a space that is safe and allows for complexity and creativity – intensifies. This space had room for people who chose to doubt, explore, take risks, and reveal themselves, which helped restore a sense of personal and professional agency.

The Role of Uni-national Dialogue within a Bi-national Space in a Time of Crisis

We always hold uni-national sessions as part of the bi-national process, and the demand for such sessions has intensified during this time of crisis. The Palestinian uni-national space enabled the group to unite and share sadness and pain together. One of the Palestinian facilitators described that: “The Palestinian uni-national dialogue served as a place to grieve and share sadness, because they are not allowed to express this sadness elsewhere. They feel that this group alone will understand their feelings.” The Palestinian grief was banned in the Israeli public sphere, and those who expressed their grief were persecuted by state security forces and by private Israeli citizens. This violated a most basic and intimate need to be able to feel sadness and anger. This, in turn, led to an intrusive and oppressive persecution which, among other things, split the internal connection between emotions and physical sensations. One of the Palestinian participants shared that she “feels that she does not even have the right to exist in the world, and that her identity is worth less with no meaning or right to exist; that she is not even allowed to feel feelings of helplessness, frustration, sadness and deep inner despair.”

The Jewish uni-national dialogue was characterized by enabling in-depth exploration around the question of how the group conceptualizes change, and what is the extent of their commitment to change as a Jewish group. It was also a space to explore the Jewish group’s expectations of the Palestinian group and of reality. For example, according to one of the Jewish facilitators: “In the Jewish uni-national sessions, they find a way to talk about the oppression carried out by Israel and their responsibility for the oppression”. In addition, the Jewish uni-national space was used to recognize the Israeli pain when such pain is not being politically exploited: “Our conversations during our sessions… suddenly connected me to the Israeli pain… I was unable to connect to the Israeli pain before because I know how it is politically exploited to justify the war. And here I was able to connect to this pain for the first time because it was free of that exploitation.” It seems that being able to share in a potential space enabled the Jewish participants to be in authentic contact with the Israeli pain. The opportunity to be in a space that gives room for participants to experiment with removing their masks, allowed both groups to be exposed and connect with authentic feelings of pain. 

The dilemmas that come up around holding such dialogue sessions in this difficult period are still with us. Did we succeed? Did we make a change? Is enabling dialogue at this moment truly significant? These are essential questions that should always be asked in educational-political work, and we believe the answer to be in the affirmative. In our harsh reality – one that is full of death and the need to survive – we managed to create a space for a sense of being alive, for playfulness and experimentation. We were able to restore the sense of personal and professional agency to some of the participants and helped with individual and group exploration processes.

We see our responsibility in the School for Peace to tend to any remnants of Palestinian-Jewish relations as well as maintain the hope for their improvement. We also feel responsible to constantly learn and develop in doing this work.

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Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Penguin.

Potential space: The place of encounter between inner and outer reality. Jemstedt, Arne. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol 9(1-2), Apr 2000, 124-131.