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Groping towards a common ground

By Dvir Abramovich - posted Tuesday, 12 December 2006


The recent heartbreaking and bloody conflict in Lebanon, and the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab conflict, would appear to embody W.B Yeat's feeling that "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart".

And indeed, the July fighting in Lebanon may have reinforced people's perception that hatred, irreconcilable differences and hopelessness are the prevailing moods between Arabs and Israelis.

Yet, another tale is slowly emerging. Although the news reports tend to focus on the religious division, tension and violence, the truth is that reconciliation efforts between Israelis and Arabs are quietly gathering momentum.

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Small and faithful acts of hope, they form part of a continuum of peacemaking possibilities propelled forward by tireless warriors who are driven by the belief that the mightiest tree may grow from the tiniest seed. Determined not to allow extremists like Hezbollah and Hamas win, Arabs and Israelis have been doggedly attempting to build peace from the ground up, breaking through the years of distrust and suspicion and boldly trekking towards co-existence.

Searching through the deepening morass that bedevils the two peoples, bold activists can see beyond the seemingly hopeless circumstances. For it has become common wisdom that the solution to the Israeli Palestinian divide necessarily requires vigorous and imaginative principals who, groping towards a common ground, are able to lift the combatants out of the chaos.

David Makovsky, former executive editor at the Jerusalem Post contends, “there is no other way to resolve the endless conflict between Middle Eastern Muslims and Jews than a long dialogue modelled on the successful talks that took place between once mutually suspicious Jews and Roman Catholics”.

Despite the overwhelming reports and images of violence that have apprised us of the suffering of both peoples and have engendered a sense of irreconcilable difference and hopelessness, there is another perspective to be considered within this rubric.

Because of the media’s penchant for chronicling only the carnage and havoc associated with the Arab-Israeli clash, the meetings and forums in which Israelis and Palestinians have engaged with each other, have listened compassionately and without judgment and have built relationships, have gone under the radar. The dialogue groups, projects and stirring initiatives explored herein are driven by Gene Knudson Hoffman’s dictum that “an enemy is one whose story we have not heard”.

This principle is dramatised in Yossi Klein Halevi’s At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope With Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land (2001), a sobering and illuminating search by one of Israel’s finest reporters on the religious dimensions of conflicts in the Middle East.

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A senior writer for the Jerusalem Report, Halevi endeavours to embrace religious empathy in order to discover whether faith could be a means of healing rather than intensifying the conflicts in the region. And as one Palestinian poet observed, “Moderate voices have to speak more loudly. We have to shout as moderates, even though it is not our style.”

It is also worth considering the philosophical tenets of Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the Jewish journal Tikkun (in Hebrew - repair of the world) who heads the Tikkun community, a peace lobby group.

In his instructive study Healing Israel/Palestine Lerner first advocates stopping the blame game (2003). He then posits that this is to be followed by a new spirit of generosity, heart-to-heart reconciliation and a true commitment to find non-violent roads to peace, even when violent elements have momentarily taken over.

Lerner’s progressive middle path has the goal of producing a public climate which will induce grass roots leaders, as well as policy makers who previously were weary of taking risks, to deny hard liners and strive for a just peace. For decades, a single track approach was deployed in the Israeli-Arab conflict in an attempt to make peace from the top down.

One could argue that earlier efforts to solve the conflict, for instance the 1993 Oslo Accords, failed because the leaders were ahead of their constituencies. By not building trust between citizens, the architects of the Oslo Accords did not enable their respective populace to possess the confidence to make peace and did not involve the ordinary “person on the street” in the process.

There is little question that in the post September 11 cultural landscape, the need for tolerance among peoples of different faiths has become more urgent, especially in the war torn Middle East, where religion inspired violence often turns homicidal and catastrophic.

Rabbi David Rosen, a Jewish American leader, shrewdly observes that “if there is no peace among religions, there can be no peace among humanity”. Lacking a charismatic leader, activists for dialogue between Jews and Arabs face various challenges in getting their message out and appealing to a public conditioned to scandals and fiery demagogues, who routinely seize the spotlight and command worldwide followers.

Another difficulty is that often Israelis and Palestinians cannot communicate, or see beyond their cultural barriers, each clutching their own prejudices and perceptions of the other.

As a host of theorists have appositely remarked: identity constructions among Jews and Palestinians largely evolve around the conflict between the sides. In this conflict, each national group historically holds extreme monolithic constructions of the other group as the enemy, as inherently evil, and of itself as just, right and moral. Such constructions justify one’s own right to self-determination and fulfillment of identity and security needs, while denying and delegitimising such rights for the other side.

This state of affairs undermines the ability of Israelis and Palestinians to jettison deeply entrenched exclusionary mind sets. More fundamentally, the varying historical circumstances from which Arab and Jewish cultures have surfaced means that different communicative patterns have emerged, making verbal intercourse tough.

In the spirit of building understanding and unity, four Israelis and four Palestinians scaled an icy mountain and braved rough seas in Antarctica as part of the "Breaking the Ice" expedition in 2004. After reaching the top, the group named the snow capped point, "Mountain of Israeli-Palestinian Friendship". Their joint statement read: "We have proved that Palestinians and Israelis can co-operate with one another with mutual respect and trust ... We hereby declare that our people can and deserve to live together in peace and friendship."

Then there is “Hello, Salaam! Hello, Shalom!” - A telephone hotline that allows Israelis and Palestinians to talk with someone on the other side. Within the first seven months of the launch, more than 80,000 people from across Israel and the Palestinian areas have called the telephone line talking for about 300,000 minutes.

Consider also the Open House initiative, a centre situated in the Arab town of Ramle that is devoted to building trust and friendships between Muslim and Jewish children. Among its programs is a summer camp for 100 Jewish and Arab teenagers and an Arab and Jewish parents' network, as well as a day care centre that caters for Arab children.

Noteworthy is the Yakar Synagogue-study centre based in Jerusalem which has, since 1981, allowed Arab students and their Jewish counterparts to learn that there are many ways of looking at parallel stories from the two religions. And in Neve Shalom-Wahat Al Salam (Oasis of Peace) a Nobel Peace-Prize nominated community in Israel founded in 1972, Palestinians and Israelis live harmoniously side by side and teach their children the histories and national narratives of both peoples.

The eminent Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim has created the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of young Jewish and Arab musicians, including participants from the Palestinian territories, Syria and Egypt. The collection of talented players has performed in Britain, Brazil and Argentina.

In August 2003, Barenboim received a wonderful reception after performing to a packed house in the West Bank town of Ramallah. The renowned pianist and conductor played a program of Beethoven and Brahms, including a duet with Palestinian pianist Salim Abboud. His patent message of reconciliation was applauded during three standing ovations from the audience of 350 Palestinians and a group of international diplomats.

A champion of Arab Israeli conciliation, Barenboim’s mission was to reach the Palestinian people in a creative and soulful way.

In his collection of essays, Death as a way of Life, Israeli author and essayist David Grossman focuses on Middle East conflict and the environment of menace and death that decades of violence and bloodshed have fostered. Indeed, one of the essays ends with a frightening reminder of the savage immediacy and human fragility Israelis face.

Grossman reveals, “as I type this, the radio is announcing a warning that terrorists with an explosive belt are now roaming the streets of Jerusalem”. To his credit, despite the despair that engulfs his daily living, despite the suicidal bombings that have struck hotels, nightclubs and coffee shops, despite his frustration and pessimism, Grossman never once loses the capacity to see through the darkness into the humanity of Israel’s enemies.

For Grossman, the Palestinians have legitimate claims - they too are also victims who have suffered both mentally and physically from the Israeli occupation. Incredibly, Grossman refuses to submit to the death grip enmeshing many Israelis who have been the subject of continuous hatred and murderous attacks. Instead, he insists on knowing them as human beings, for he understands that turning away or suspending one’s soul or anaesthetising ourselves to the shocking hostilities would mean being transformed into “a suit of armour that no longer has a knight inside”.

Particularly significant is the "Pathways to Reconciliation" project, an inspiring program that sends about 80 Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinian educators to Turkey to participate in a conference entitled "Continuing Dialogue in Times of Crisis". Upon their return, the teachers are ready to strengthen the peace education program that has been running for seven years in 60 Palestinian and Jewish High schools. Much of the program's power comes from the tremendous change it foments in the mindset of the participants.

In June 2003 a group of about 250 Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, and Jews and Muslims from France took part in a four-day journey to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Krakow. Amid the ghastly images, the group walked along the railway tracks where the diabolical selection of Jews had taken place and entered the gas chambers, the crematoria and prisoners' huts.

After hearing the testimonies of survivors, the group erected a small memorial near the Death Wall, where Jews were lined up and shot. Then, the Arab participants read out the names of the mission's Jewish members' relatives who perished there. At that moment of shared charity and compassion, the delegation began singing traditional songs of the Holocaust.

One cannot avoid mentioning the bereaved parents, who have lost loved ones to in the violence. Israeli Roni Hirshenson lost his eldest son Amir in a bus bombing only to lose his second son Elad when he committed suicide after his best friend was killed in a suicide bombing.

Rather than choose vengeance, the shattered father remarkably chose reconciliation, believing that only by erecting common interests between Israelis and Palestinians can the senseless slayings stop. He heads up the Parents' Circle Relations committee, an interfaith organisation composed of 200 bereaved Jewish families and 200 Palestinian bereaved parents who lost children in the protracted violence. The group has lectured to more than 50,000 students, in addition to stageing political rallies and donating blood to each other's hospitals.

It is clear to most observers that governments may sign treaties, but only people can make peace. Let's hope that reconciliation continues, an endeavour that in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless".

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About the Author

Dr Dvir Abramovich is the Jan Randa senior lecturer in Hebrew-Jewish studies and director of the University of Melbourne centre for Jewish history and culture.

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