Groping towards a common ground

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.