We launched a brand new program for the first time – a dialogue group between Israelis and Palestinians living in Europe. The program includes 9 online sessions over 4 months, and is facilitated by two trained SFP facilitators – one Palestinian and one Israeli-Jew – who are living in Europe. The goal of the group is to explore together, through the SFP dialogue method, the experience of living abroad as Palestinians and as Israeli-Jews, the specificality of the dialogue between the two national groups when living outside of the conflicted homeland, and options for reality-change action from where they are.

The first meeting was scheduled for October 8 – a day after the war broke. While in Israel and Palestine it was mostly impossible to hold bi-national meetings at that moment, the participants of this group – which we recruited in advance for the past few months – were even more eager to meet up and start the programs. The facilitators were surprised and happy by the high motivation of the group and so they started the meetings as planned. They report that in the two meetings that already took place, even though there are sometimes disagreements between the participants, the conversation is mainly characterized by a lot of mutual respect and understanding. The participants say that the meetings makes them feel less alone in light of the harsh news from the war, and that this special space they are creating in the dialogue is so important because it is very different from the polarized general public space where you can be either pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli.