This is a summary of the last meeting of the forum for graduates of planners and architects courses, run by the School for Peace and the Arab Center for Alternative Planning.

Written by: Dr. Nava Sonnenshcein.

The School for Peace, supported by the New Israel Fund, runs a project dedicated to encouraging Palestinian graduates to run for seats on professional committees. The upcoming election is for the Israel Planners Association (held online between November 9^th and 13^th, 2022). We were very happy to answer the call. I (Nava) spoke with about 20 planners course graduates, 4 of which decided to apply. Unfortunately, no women applied. Hisham Shaaban and Ameer Bisharat applied for seats on the association’s union, Eyad Balaom is running for the role of union chair, and Amal Oraby applied for the committee’s rookie niche.

To aid in their bid, we have decided to start a campaign to support their races. To that end, we held a meeting of the forum with members of the Arab Center for Alternative Planning on October 21, 2022 to discuss the matter. Approximately 20 Jewish and Palestinian participants met at the Fred Siegel memorial library in Neve Shalom-Wahat al Salam. One of the four candidates, Ameer Bisharat, attended and presented his vision for the union’s future activity. We are currently collecting candidates’ photos and CVs, which we will disseminate online.

It has been a year since the forum’s last meeting, which made this one especially moving. The last meeting was held in November 2021, and consisted of an excellent tour of Akko, organized by Shlomit Zonenstein and Hazar Badin. The current meeting started with an open discussion of the upcoming elections. We then heard a talk by Dr. Leena Dallasheh, historian and researcher of Palestinian society in Israel, affiliated with the Arab Center for Alternative Planning. She spoke about the Palestinian struggle for citizenship in the context of land rights in the first years of the nascent country. The lecture was captivating and stirred many questions, which led to deep dialogue about its subject, as well as a discussion of the national Knesset elections.

After lunch, we discussed salient projects presented by participants and staff alike. Dr. Enaya Bana presented her educational tour program for national and municipal planning union members. The goal is to increase committee members’ awareness of Palestinian needs and concerns through a series of edifying tours. Raneen Ouda explained her “Place Making” project, in which participants select a neglected area of a Palestinian town, and cultivate it for public use. Heba Bawarda told us of the private office in which she is employed, that helps Palestinian towns win government grants for construction and planning.

Finally, we prepared for the upcoming planners union elections. Among other things, we decided that 3 annual forum sessions and annual 1 tour would be a reasonable number of meetings looking forward. The representative team from the Arab Center for Alternative Planning, most of which consisted of female graduates of our agents of change courses, contributed greatly to the meeting’s discussions. We would like to extend our thanks to Shlomit Zonenstein (middle figure in the first picture) for leading regular forum activity, as well as its different projects this past year. In her new position, Shlomit is acting to guarantee that trees are planted in every town in the country – we wish her luck. Noor Abo Ras and Dr. Nava Sonnenschein, author of this report, facilitated and led the meeting.