I believe in the goodness of human beings and in our ability to transcend above and beyond our painful history to find ways of coping and healing. Over the past two years there has been growing skepticism about the impact of people-to-people projects, especially among the young generation. It is extremely challenging to find people from both sides who are interested in meeting and listening to one another. People are tired of even talking! The cynics say we have tried negotiation and dialogue for over fifteen years, and it has gotten us nowhere. The other side is not genuine and does not seek peace. Yet these voices do not recognize that we have also tried force and violence for over fifty years, and that, too, has gotten us nowhere.

As Israelis and Palestinians we have been living in a cycle of violence for so long that each side’s sense of victimhood has only become stronger with time. Both sides have constructed a narrative that is rooted in this sense of victimhood and righteousness – a narrative that dehumanizes the other; we are the good people, they are the bad ones, we seek peace, they seek war, we are the victims and only defend ourselves against their aggression, we stand alone and the entire world supports them, etc. Both narratives have been created to bolster our sense of victimhood and righteous cause.

As a result of this sense of victimhood, our brains and senses become selective. We see the world in black or white, right or wrong, with us or against us. We become increasingly judgmental and only speak the language of “facts” and the only “truth.” Interestingly, we only see what confirms our narrative and pre-constructed worldview. Throughout the years of my work in the field of peacebuilding, I have been struck by the level of ignorance and negative images both sides have of one another.

Setting Aside Stereotypes

Palestinians and Israelis from all sectors and spheres must meet each other to change these stereotypes and behavior of prejudice. Teachers must collaborate to create a dual narrative that acknowledges each side’s connection to this land, and to present a more human story of the other to the next generations. Business people must find ways where both nations can build on their capital so that communities might prosper. Journalists and media people must find ways to present constructive stories that help people become hopeful and realize the other side’s dignity. Politicians must work to find creative ways to find a proper political framework and solution that address  the needs of all sectors and parties. Religious people must meet to find ways to prevent this conflict from becoming a religious one.

When the two sides come to the table, Israelis come to build a personal relationship with the Palestinians as if the occupation does not exist, and Palestinians come hoping such a meeting will end the conflict and overlook the impact of building a personal relationship. Palestinians fail to understand the collective fear experienced by Jews, and Israeli Jews fail to understand the Palestinians’ sense of loss and pain as a result of the Nakba [“catastrophe” in Arabic]. Both sides seek acknowledgment of their feelings of loss and pain. This is what any dialogue process tries to address. It tries to provide a safe space for the parties to discover the other’s humanity and have their identity needs (i.e. recognition, acknowledgment, and dignity) met.

Unlearning Hatred

Interestingly – and this is the good news – individuals and groups that engage in dialogue programs do have a positive shift in their attitudes. However, the bad news is that this shift is not sustained beyond the encounter (or the life of the project). Also, the change does not go beyond the individual to impact on the surrounding. It is naïve to believe that people will have a positive and sustained shift in attitude from one or two encounters. It is very easy to hate, and is even natural in such an intense environment. It is too painful to engage with the enemy and try to unlearn years of hatred and fear in order to trust and listen deeply. If it took people years to learn and experience fear and hate, how many years do we need to replace it with courage and acceptance?

For people-to-people encounters to succeed, they must take place within a political framework or process. The absence of such a process leaves most dialogue encounters sorely handicapped, and they fall short of having a larger impact on both societies. Relationship-building projects must coincide with progress on the political plane; otherwise the positive impact that such encounters may have will regress with the next escalation or increase in violence. Nonetheless, this does not mean we should wait for the resumption of negotiations in order to legitimize people-to-people encounters. People must meet and continue to dialogue. We need to increase the level of exposure Palestinians and Israelis have for each other, especially in light of the separation between the two peoples, and the filtered and biased news.

During the past year Palestinians witnessed an increase in so-called “anti-normalization” voices, which try to pressure and sometimes prevent Palestinians from meeting with Israelis. Despite my understanding of the rationale my fellow Palestinians try to present here (i.e., not to show that we have a normal relationship with Israelis until the occupation ends), I disagree and find it counterproductive. I believe Palestinians have a duty to engage with Israelis to get their message across, and counter a narrative that tries to delegitimize and dehumanize them. I have witnessed people change and maintain this change over a long period of time as a result of their exposure to the other narrative.

First Steps

The dialogue process begins with finding the “right” candidate and convincing him or her to engage. This in and of itself is a process of dialogue and unlearning! How do you convince people to join such projects? The personal connection is the best strategy. The core of this work is trust-building, and this involves us as workers in the field. Maintaining and expanding our relationships within and across communities – with the presence or absence of actual projects – is very important, so when the time comes people feel confident and ready to start their journey. It is extremely important to maintain our credibility within our communities and embody our values. Furthermore, people think dialogue programs must only take place between people who have not been exposed to those from the other side, or have negative perceptions. This is true to some degree, but some peacebuilding programs must also aim to energize, mobilize, and recruit active people who are willing to work for the dignity of the “other.”

I have come to realize that having a diverse group (which include people with positive experiences and perceptions of the other) is the best way to accelerate the humanization process. By witnessing the differences in opinions and positions among members of the same group, we can create the first fracture in the generalization and stereotyping of the other group (no longer do all the members of your “enemy” group look the same; some of them are actually good)! This fracture is like a seed that the dialogue process aims to plant and water. Also, those same agents help bridge the gap between the two divides because they can communicate with both sides and model the desired attitude.

Anti-normalization or convincing people to engage in dialogue are not the only challenges we face when it comes to people-to-people projects. The biggest challenge is to help people maintain open channels of communication at times of increased violence. When such incidents happen (i.e. Gaza or the Lebanon War) the dialogue process comes to halt and the goal becomes how to prevent what we have built so far from deteriorating. Sometimes one feels as if we are starting over from square one. And even in the absence of escalation in the conflict, maintaining a positive shift and relationship among group members for a long period beyond the project’s duration is a major challenge on its own.

Peacebuilders Unite!

In order to address many of the above-mentioned challenges (anti-normalization, conflict escalation, maintaining relationships and positive attitude shifts), we as peacebuilders – individuals and organizations – must think big and bold.

First, peacebuilding organizations might benefit from creating an umbrella body that could unify this effort to become more effective and efficient. Peacebuilding groups and organizations would largely benefit from having one voice, and a coordinated focused strategy to maximize their impact within their communities. Changing the culture from competition to collaboration and synergy among organizations and groups (i.e., sharing resources, expertise, and data of best practices and participants) is the best way to have long-term programs instead of short-term projects.

Second, peacebuilding organizations must transform their efforts towards a peace movement in both societies. Their efforts must be seen and heard publicly. The more peace organizations work in the shadow, the more they harm themselves. Therefore, the work must make it to the streets of Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Becoming vocal, especially at times of escalation, and taking initiative instead of reacting passively is the best strategy – not only to fill a vacuum that is caused by lack of a political process and filled by extremists and anti-normalization voices, but also to increase and regain the public’s confidence.

Here To Stay

Many people – and I am one of them – believe the two-state solution is almost over. However, this propels us to more engagement as two people to find new ways and solutions. We have no choice but to learn how to live and share this land with each other. We know we cannot defeat each other militarily, and that each nation is here to stay.

As peacebuilders we must not shy away from the challenges we face. We fight for the freedom and dignity of every individual and human being, Palestinian and Israeli, for our generation and generations to come.

This is not a matter of choice; it is a matter of destiny.
* * * *

Fadi Rabieh, who earned his master’s degree in conflict transformation as a Fulbrighter at 91����Ƶ, is co-manager of the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, working out of the Jerusalem office of Search for Common Ground. He released this essay on Nov. 20, 2012.

Our Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) was launched in 1994-95 to fill a need for people trained to address intractable conflicts in creative, skillful, knowledgeable, non-violent ways. CJP’s founders – who had worked in war and conflict zones of Northern Ireland, Latin America, Africa and Asia – had no illusions that sowing the seeds of peace in deeply divided societies would be easy or even that results might be seen in one’s own lifetime. This long-term view has proven necessary for peacebuilders working in the Middle East.

This issue of Peacebuilder highlights a remarkable group of people who have come through training of some kind at CJP, usually through the master’s degree in conflict transformation program or our annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). They are persisting against what often seems like impossible odds to plant seeds for peace in the Middle East. They hope to see significant improvement in their lifetimes but, if that hope is not realized, they all talk of persisting on behalf of future generations. In the words of Dr. David Brubaker, one of our professors, “Optimism is often not warranted in our work with intractable conflict, but hope is something that has to be sustained.”

To date, 29 men and women from the Middle East – largely from Jordan, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and Syria – have completed our master’s degree in conflict transformation. Nearly 200 people from the Middle East have taken SPI courses. Twenty-five of these alumni were interviewed and photographed by writer Andrew Jenner and photographer Jon Styer, sent to the region by 91����Ƶ in February 2012. The reports Andrew and Jon brought back are both heartbreaking and heartening.

As this issue was going to press, we learned that the new president of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, attended 91����Ƶ’s 2001 SPI. Mohamud ran for an election on a peace-centered platform of representing all the clans and classes in Somalia. We wish him success in this long-term endeavor.

Our thoughts and prayers are with our alumni and partners in the Middle East, Northeast Africa and other regions where the important work of sowing seeds of peace continues on a daily basis, but must be carried by a vision that may take years to become reality.

In Peace,

Lynn Roth
Executive Director

91����Ƶ’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) has long enjoyed close ties to Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). In fact, it exists in large part because of MCC.

In the late ’80s MCC staff in its Akron offices began discussing the need to train more peacebuilders by combining practical experience in conflict resolution with the field’s growing academic side, preferably in a faith-based setting.

Before long, John Paul Lederach (fresh from MCC work) and other members of the faculty and administration at 91����Ƶ were exploring the possibility. In 1994, the vision became reality with the establishment of CJP – then known as the Conflict Transformation Program. Most of the program’s early faculty and staff were former MCC volunteers themselves. Now, about half of CJP’s full-time employees have extensive MCC experience, including executive director Lynn Roth, who spent 30 years with MCC, most recently as director of its U.S. East Coast program.

As soon as CJP was up and running at the university, MCC began sending staff from its partner NGOs and church organizations in the Middle East to receive training at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI). To date, MCC has sponsored 60 representatives from its partner organizations in Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel to attend SPI.

“Sending trainees to SPI has been an integral part of MCC’s overall peacebuilding program in Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” says Alain Epp Weaver, a long-time MCC volunteer in the Middle East now serving as its director of strategic planning and learning.

A rehabilitation program at the East Jerusalem YMCA, as just one example, now uses conflict sensitivity principles in its work with Palestinians disabled by Israeli military attacks, after MCC sponsored its director to attend SPI, according to Epp Weaver. Several staffers from the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem have also received training at SPI, during which they were able to gain broader background in peacebuilding theory and skills, as well as share insight with others on their experience using traditional Palestinian reconciliation processes.

And in Jordan, MCC has begun working with SPI-trained staff from a partner organization to sponsor peacebuilding workshops and training to Syrian refugees in Jordan, as well as to Jordanians living in communities that host a growing number of Syrians fleeing the war in their country. — AKJ

Grateful acknowledgement: In researching and reporting this issue of Peacebuilder, Sarah Adams, Daryl Byler (’79 91����Ƶ grad), Rachelle Friesen and Ed Nyce (’86 91����Ƶ grad) – MCC staff in Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and the U.S., respectively – were extremely helpful.

Peacebuilding is an inherently optimistic endeavor. While it can involve different means, there is a constant focus on an end – something different, something better, something yet to come. If you have no hope whatsoever, say many of the alumni interviewed for this issue of Peacebuilder, it would be impossible to do the kind of work they do. And yet, the track record in the Middle East seems to amount to little more than a growing list of dashed hopes and disappointment, of failure, of eyes blinded for eyes, leaving everyone blind. As this issue goes to press in September 2012, the Syrian civil war is estimated to have killed nearly 25,000 people over the previous 18 months. The possibility that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon, and that Israel or the United States will use violence to prevent it from doing so, continues to loom fearfully large in people’s minds. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has all but been abandoned, leaving intact deep, systemic forms of violence that traumatize both sides.

For some, these realities inspire pessimism and frustration that threaten to snuff out hope.

“You have to be hopeful,” says Fadlallah Hassouna (SPI ’10 & ’11), executive director of the Development for People and Nature Association, which works among youth in southern Lebanon.

But he speaks slowly, shaking his head, then admits he can hardly believe his own words, that he is afraid of what tomorrow might bring. Conflict is never far from the surface in Lebanon, he says. It seems inevitable again, and so he hopes that perhaps his work will at least serve to minimize its impact, to mitigate its effects.

Structural Solutions Absent

In Jordan, Raghda Quandor, MA ’04, lists off the big challenges facing her country: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees arriving over the past two decades, water insecurity, the status of the Palestinian people (more than 2 million of whom live in Jordan, according to most estimates).

“We have a peace that’s not a peace,” says Quandor, who has worked for several international NGOs, and conceives of peacebuilding at the structural level.

Large-scale change, though, seems impossible to enact. People feel powerless, they are more focused on day-to-day survival. It is a chaotic time, a hard time to think about and work toward a better future. If Jordan’s problems are a dripping faucet, she says, the solution so far has been to simply keep emptying the bucket. Quandor wishes she could fix the faucet.

“You need to create systems that resolve issues,” she says. “[But] I don’t think anybody’s interested. In some ways, I feel sad.”

In Ramallah, Palestine, Ruba Musleh, MA ’08, says the seeming hopelessness of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has led her to focus her attention inward, toward her own people.

“I don’t see anything changing in the near future, and that’s why I focus on working internally instead of with the other side. I think we need to build ourselves up first.”

Twenty years ago, she continues, Palestinian youth were energetic and motivated. They believed they had the power to change and improve their lives. Today’s youth, having grown up during and after the violent Second Intifada, have lost that sense of confidence in themselves, she says. Sometimes, if she thinks too hard about these kinds of things, it becomes tempting to throw up her hands and leave peacebuilding for a better-paying job in the private sector. The thing that has kept her at her work – managing a project to enhance entrepreneurship and employability skills among Palestinian youth – has been a desire to some day look back and realize that she did, in some way, make a difference . . . a motivation fed by her experience at CJP.

Can’t Give Up

Like Musleh, several other alumni place themselves somewhere between total defeat and blind optimism, discouraged by what they see but unwilling to give up.

“Nothing’s happening. We’re full gas on neutral,” says Maysa Baransi (SPI ’09), the co-director of All For Peace, the first joint Israeli-Palestinian radio station, though she still holds onto abstract hope for the future. “As a Palestinian, I can’t give up. Eventually we will get there. I just hope it will be in my years.”

Sonia Nakad (SPI ’09) says a curious paradox exists regarding public perception of “peacebuilding” in Lebanon, where she coordinates the Peacebuilding Academy with the Permanent Peace Movement.

Many people, especially ones from older generations, write off the entire field as misguided idealism, a nice concept, perhaps, but not something with power to effect change.

“Few people believe that this is the way to make things better,” Nakad says.

At the same time, everyone is sick of constantly fighting, and there exists widespread agreement that violent conflict resolution benefits no one. One project of the Peacebuilding Academy, aimed in part at encouraging broader society to invest in alternatives to violence, is the publication of peacebuilding manuals for Middle Eastern audiences, written by Middle Eastern experts. Democracy looks different in different places, she continues. So should peacebuilding.

“You cannot just move in a technique from outside,” Nakad says. “You have to take into consideration beliefs, culture and history.”

What applies in one place does not necessarily apply elsewhere. And what applies in one situation does not necessarily apply in another, says Fadi el-Hajjar, MA ’06. A long-time peacebuilding practitioner in Lebanon now managing a “strengthening civil peace in Lebanon” project for the United Nations Development Programme, el-Hajjar has begun to think more and more on the importance of wisdom.

After more than 15 years in the field, he has discovered that “the more you know, the more you know you need to know.”

In Search of Wisdom

From this position of humility, el-Hajjar looks to the past for guidance for the future. Peacebuilders in the region, he says, should learn from mistakes, adapt, replace absolutes with nuance.

“If we balance things in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ there’s going to be simplified decision making,” el-Hajjar says. “But if you take into consideration the complexities, the long-term and other variables, you need some wisdom. Even if you are ‘right,’ I think sometimes we need wisdom.”

For example: when a war is happening, the people caught in the middle don’t care so much about who is right and who is wrong. They want the shooting to stop. Later, everyone can talk about who bears responsibility for what and why. Wisdom is pragmatism, el-Hajjar says; wisdom avoids absolutes. He hesitates when asked about using violence to stop greater violence. It is a very difficult question.

“When you think in terms of black and white, you think in terms of limitations,” el-Hajjar eventually responds. “When you think of these as the edges of the spectrum, then we have wide room to maneuver.”

Lessons From the Empty Tomb

Make no mistake, says Zougbi Zougbi (SPI ’98 & ’02; STAR ’03), these are incredibly difficult times, in Palestine, where he lives, and in the wider Middle East. All around him, he sees demoralization, degradation, social breakdown, injustices and spiritual poverty. Life in Palestine is life in a pressure cooker as a result of the illegal and unjustified occupation, he says.

“Now, we are at our worst time,” he says. “Though you are tempted to be very angry in this situation, we don’t want to think of alternatives to nonviolence. We as Palestinians would like to deprive the Israeli government of an enemy.”

At the Wi’am Center, a mediation and conflict resolution organization Zougbi founded and directs, he sees the symptoms every day. Husbands fight with their wives. Landlords quarrel with their tenants. Brothers dispute a few square meters of inherited family land, while thousands of dunams are confiscated to build housing for Israeli settlers. You can’t blame everything on the occupation, Zougbi says, but it is pervasive. It is everywhere, and it is inescapable.

With a staff of 10, plus around 100 volunteers and interns from across the world, Wi’am offers programs in mediation, diplomacy and trauma-coping (“healing” can only begin after traumatic experiences end) to numerous different groups throughout Palestine. Its primary goals include confronting injustice, promoting dignity for and dialogue between all people, and spreading values of peace, justice, democracy and human rights. The organization was recognized in 2010 with World Vision’s Peace Prize.

Despite the difficult and worsening conditions facing his work and his people, Zougbi looks to the future with a profound but cautious hope drawn from multiple sources. He finds hope in his faith, in which he sees transformative power. He says the stations of the cross parallel the Palestinian experience – terrible, cruel, oppressive – and yet, leading inevitably, some day, to the empty tomb that represents salvation and victory.

This Too Shall Pass

He also finds hope in his adult children, who turned down opportunities to live and work abroad, and came home to Bethlehem.

And he finds hope in history. The Berlin Wall fell down. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa. Everything crumbles and returns to dust some day; though it defies imagination from the current vantage point, he is sure the occupation of Palestine, too, shall pass.

“I believe that oppression will be defeated. Political, economic, social and spiritual oppression will be defeated. Hope is based on restorative justice that redresses injustices rather than avenging them. Hope is a form of nonviolent struggle. Hope keeps us sane and alive.” Zougbi says. — AKJ

Barry Hart, PhD, professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, pointed to recent neuroscience suggesting that humans have an innate desire to bond and empathize with one another. Framed in different terms, pervasive physical and structural violence is at odds with our own biology, and therefore will someday, somehow, come to an end. “You feel that in your bones,” says Hart. “That gives you not only hope, but strength and patience to go forward.”

Though often used interchangeably, hope and optimism represent different concepts, says David Brubaker, PhD, associate professor of organizational studies. Optimism, or lack thereof, is short-term, pragmatic and based on specific facts. Hope, though, looks above and beyond specific facts; it is rooted in an idea often referenced by Martin Luther King, Jr. – that the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

The distinction is an important one for peacebuilders working in challenging environments that don’t justify an expectation that things are soon to get better.

“Optimism is often not warranted in our work with intractable conflict, but hope is something that has to be sustained,” Brubaker says.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the reality of despair and disillusionment that often accompanies peacebuilding work.

“We do the field of peacebuilding a disservice if we only cast our work within a utopian future vision,” says Carl Stauffer, PhD, assistant professor of development and justice studies.

There are no quick fixes in “deeply complex, nuanced and layered” conflicts like those faced by alumni in the Middle East, he continues, although that should not be mistaken for ineffectiveness. Doctors are still valuable, Stauffer notes, despite the fact they have yet to eliminate disease. While he also finds hope in the idea that seemingly impossible conflicts will be resolved – the end of apartheid in South Africa being one example – he says that peacebuilders should not be afraid to acknowledge and discuss “discouragement or despondency among practitioners in a tough place like the Middle East.”

Better networking among CJP and its alumni working in challenging environments was identified both by alumni interviewed for Peacebuilder and CJP faculty as one way to address the discouragement they sometimes face. In its new strategic plan completed in the spring of 2012, CJP sets forth developing new programs to strengthen alumni networking for this very reason.

To Jayne Docherty, PhD, professor of leadership and public policy, the shifting dynamics of conflict in the Middle East and the combination of hope and despair these elicit from alumni, also present CJP with an opportunity to evaluate its own role in peacebuilding.

“When the world changes around them, peacebuilders need to hold hope, practice humility and revise their practices,” she says. “What are we at CJP and in the U.S. peace community doing differently in response to the new realities in the Middle East? Have we examined our premises and our assumptions? Or, are we still promoting old practices [like] dialogue or taking the side of the oppressed? What can we learn from our graduates?” — AKJ

Peacebuilding Takes Time

After a brief but bloody war between Israel and Lebanon in the summer of 2006, the international funding floodgates opened. Enormous amounts of relief and development aid poured into Lebanon, which had lost much of its infrastructure during the month-long conflict.

The Development for People and Nature Association (DPNA), a peace and development organization in southern Lebanon directed by Fadlallah Hassouna (SPI ’10), was one beneficiary of this wave of international support. The DPNA’s budget rose to $2.5 million, allowing it to work across Lebanon with a staff of 64 and about 1,500 volunteers.

But attention spans are short, and before long, other countries had risen to the top of international donors’ priority lists. The Arab Spring, in particular, diverted significant funding to Middle Eastern countries that experienced more upheaval and social change than had occurred in Lebanon. By 2012, Hassouna’s DPNA had just 10 staffers and a budget of $500,000.

Similar experiences have proven frustrating for other Lebanese SPI alumni, who have seen projects end and funding shrink in recent years.

“[Peacebuilding] is not something you can see. It’s a long-term process,” said Sonia Nakad (SPI ’09), who coordinates the Peacebuilding Academy for the Permanent Peace Movement, a Beirut-based NGO that promotes peace throughout the Middle East.

Nakad noted that the real work of peacebuilding begins only after overt violence has ended, and requires years of work across a wide spectrum of issues to create conditions for lasting peace. Funding commitments that end after a few short years, she said, leave this work undone and risk negating earlier achievements. Despite this problem, she and her colleagues are carrying on as best they’re able with whatever resources remain.

“Alone, we cannot do everything,” said Nakad. “We’re trying. It’s not easy, but if you believe in peacebuilding, you will be able to achieve something.”  — AKJ

Last December, as Egyptians gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the military council then ruling their country, a shocking video of security forces beating a woman protester was posted on the Internet. The “blue bra woman,” as she became known (named for the undergarments exposed during her beating), inspired further protest against Egypt’s military leaders, and became a symbol across the world of women’s empowerment.

Women’s equality has long been at the top of the American foreign policy agenda, points out Muzna al-Masri, MA ’05, a Lebanese peace activist, consultant and candidate for a doctorate in anthropology. At the same time, however, the United States supported the very military regime responsible for the beating of that empowered woman in Tahrir Square. To al-Masri, this shows the political hypocrisy embedded in the peace and development projects funded by Western governments.

The same week that video of the blue bra woman appeared online, al-Masri received an invitation to lead a U.S.-funded meeting on empowering Iraqi and Afghan women. Al-Masri turned the offer down, feeling it would have been dishonest to participate in a U.S.-funded project for people from countries under American military occupation.

Funding, she continues, is an immense problem in the world of peacebuilding and development. A huge proportion of aid to the Middle East comes from USAID and other government agencies, most with attached political agendas. One example is USAID’s policy barring its consultants from working with people or organizations associated with “terrorism,” as defined by the U.S. government, which al-Masri says often correlates simply to opposition to American foreign policy. One of the groups labeled “terrorist” is Hezbollah, which, separate from its armed wing, operates as a political party with elected representatives in the Lebanese parliament and enjoys widespread support throughout much of the country.

“I find it unacceptable to claim to engage in peacebuilding efforts when under [that policy] I would be unable to work with anybody related to a political group that represents at least a third of Lebanon’s population,” she says.

Furthermore, the perceived bias of international aid projects within the Middle East has made them the targets of attacks, leading to a “securitization” of aid and peacebuilding work. Is there not something fundamentally wrong, she asks, about the increasingly common practice of armed security contractors accompanying peace and development workers into the field?

For all these reasons, al-Masri – who became involved in rights and peace activism as a college student 20 years ago – is selective in the peacebuilding work she undertakes for pay. She refuses work from any project or organization funded by USAID or other donors whose involvement is not ultimately in the best interests of the people the project claims to serve. Al-Masri adds that she does not consider herself a purist, because scrutinizing sources of funding is a responsibility of all peacebuilders.

“I will continue to be at the margin of peacebuilding work now,” says al-Masri, who has turned down more than a dozen job offers because of their funders. (She attended CJP as a U.S.-funded Fulbright scholar, noting that she respects that program’s mission to promote mutual understanding between Americans and people from other countries.)

She points again to Egypt, where countless foreign government-funded projects spent countless dollars trying to foster democratic change, empower women, organize youth and achieve other, similar goals. As it turned out, however, actual change – the kind demanded and effected by the crowds in Tahrir Square – was driven by bloggers, labor unions, the young and frustrated, and others at the margins of professionalized peacebuilding and development.

In 2010, Masri began working on her PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London. This was her way of escaping being tainted by externally funded peace and development work. She plans to earn her living in academia, while remaining involved in peace work in Lebanon primarily as a volunteer activist.

That is how it was when she first became involved in the field nearly 20 years ago, and that is how al-Masri sees that it was for the blue bra woman in Cairo – her impact superseding the billions spent by USAID.  — AKJ

Arts should be cast in lead role

Raffi Feghali, SPI ’10

In one of the programs he uses in trainings, Raffi Feghali assigns each person in the room a simple, two-part task: (1) Find an object that can make noise; (2) use it to create a simple rhythm that carries some sort of personal meaning.

This accomplished, Feghali has each person perform his or her rhythm and explain its significance. Next, he pairs participants with one another, instructing them to coordinate their individual rhythms into a duet. Next they form quartets, octets, and eventually, the entire group gives a joint performance of their new rhythmic composition. Doing so requires negotiation, cooperation and compromise on everyone’s part.

“When they sit down to talk about how it came together, everything we learn about conflict transformation actually surfaces from this process,” says Feghali, who focused at SPI on using the arts for peacebuilding.

Originally trained as a computer scientist, Feghali eventually left that profession to pursue his passion for joining the arts with peacebuilding. He is now pursuing a master’s degree in expressive arts for conflict transformation and peacebuilding through the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Feghali also runs an organization he founded called Live Lactic Culture, dedicated to promoting improvisational theater in Lebanon and applying its techniques to social activism. He discovered “improv” theater at a festival in Amsterdam several years ago and was immediately struck by the form’s potential for peace activism. One of his current focuses is working with Lebanon’s Syrian refugees, fleeing the ongoing civil war.

In improv, he notes, there exists a concept called “Yes … AND.” When one actor does something, the others immediately accept and build upon it to create a scene for the audience.

“Let’s bring ‘Yes … AND’ to life and see what happens,” Feghali says. “You’ll see lots of magic, just like the magic on stage.”

Furthermore, he is convinced that the arts are not simply one of many peacebuilding tools. The arts, he says, are the only way to truly transform conflict and build peace, by speaking to people on multiple levels and by establishing deeper connection to the youth who will be dealing with conflicts in the future.

“T��� arts talk at all levels with people – it’s intellectual, emotional, physical,” Feghali says. “Arts is not a tool. It’s the only way.”

Raffi Feghali will be co-teaching an arts and media-based peacebuilding course at SPI 2013.

Hearing each other’s stories

Carol Grosman, MA ’08

Personal stories, says Carol Grosman, MA ’08, have soft edges. They transcend the rigid opinions that entrench and exacerbate conflict in the Middle East. They present people with the opportunity to connect, to approach one another with empathy, to build understanding of those on “the other side” of an ideological chasm.

Grosman, a writer, storyteller and the director of the Jerusalem Stories project, relates a personal example from a storytelling lesson she taught at an Arab school in East Jerusalem. That day, she prompted students in the class to tell each other stories about cooking mishaps. As part of the lesson, Grosman told the class about how, soon after her parents’ wedding, her mother attempted to impress her father by frying a chicken. Unfortunately Grosman’s mother went to work in a kitchen set up by her new mother-in-law, and she mistook powdered soap for flour when breading the chicken. Afterwards, one of the students – who wore conservative Islamic dress and likely held many opinions different from Grosman’s American Jewish mother – announced that the same thing had happened to her.

“This is the place of human, personal stories,” says Grosman. “T���y take us to a whole different place where we can empathize, where we can both exist and where we can notice ‘the other.’”

Grosman founded the Jerusalem Stories project in 2002, when she began collecting stories from residents of Jerusalem about how they have been affected by conflict and what the city means to them. In collaboration with the photographer Lloyd Wolf, she has since organized exhibits, led workshops and staged performances that tell the personal stories of dozens of people who call Jerusalem home. The project’s goal is to promote empathy, increase communication, and spread a sense of shared humanity among Israelis and Palestinians who live in Jerusalem and help them deal with the conflicts that frequently divide them.

To reach a wider audience, Grosman is now working on a book and a film based on her Jerusalem Stories interviews. She describes her work as “powerful communication from a safe distance.” An example would be using a Palestinian actor to tell an Israeli story in Arabic to a Palestinian audience (or, vice-versa, an Israeli actor using Hebrew to tell a Israeli audience a Palestinian story). This technique, she says, can be a gentle way to reach groups of people who would be uncomfortable or unwilling to interact directly with “the other side.”

“Mutual recognition of each other’s needs, fears and histories will better prepare Israeli and Palestinian publics for a positively shared future,” wrote Grosman, in a description of the Jerusalem Stories project.

The work so far, she continues, has been “difficult, but very beautiful.”

Playback, despite murder and arrests

Ben Rivers, SPI ’10

Working with an arts and cultural center called The Freedom Theatre in the Palestinian city of Jenin, Ben Rivers (SPI ’10) uses a form of improvisational drama called “playback theater” as a tool for trauma response and conflict transformation.

During a playback theater performance, members of the audience are invited to share personal stories. After hearing each of these stories, the cast acts it out on stage. When used as a trauma-response tool – one of its primary purposes in Rivers’ work – playback theater allows people to relate, understand and process traumatic experiences as part of a larger community.

“T��� man who tells a story about torture is no longer alone with his memories and feelings of violation. Nor is he powerless in the way that he was,” Rivers wrote in a 2012 paper on the subject. “He chooses to enter the stage. He volunteers to tell. He casts the actors. He gives the final comment. The actors join him in a form of deep accompaniment. They are not only listening. They also embrace his subjective reality in an empathetic, embodied and artistic response.”

This art form also represents “a potent force against hegemony” – it serves to draw attention to the difficult realities of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation, says Rivers.

Playback theater also fills important advocacy and consciousness-raising roles, key early steps in transforming an asymmetrical conflict like that between Israelis and Palestinians, he continues. Many members of The Freedom Theatre have been arrested recently on insubstantial grounds, Rivers says, which he takes as evidence that its work undermines the Israeli occupation. (In April 2011, The Freedom Theatre’s half-Jewish, half-Palestinian co-founder, 52-year-old Juliano Mer-Khamis – a former Israeli paratrooper – was murdered by a masked gunman by the theater.)

As part of his work with The Freedom Theatre, Rivers is leading the Freedom Bus tour from September 23 to October 1, 2012. The tour includes Playback Theater events in 13 communities in the West Bank, as well as community visits, seminars led by Palestinian scholars and artists, and concerts. The initiative was inspired by the “Freedom Riders” who challenged racial segregation in the southern United States during the Civil Rights era.

Rivers says he benefitted from his experience at SPI by developing significant relationships and gained valuable opportunity for in-depth study of trauma and conflict transformation theory.

Growing up in Israel’s Hula Valley, Amaya Galili (SPI ’10) heard stories about her grandfather, who had lived in the same area and died when she was young. Though Jewish, he had Palestinian business associates, good relations with his Palestinian neighbors, and was involved in the community’s joint Palestinian-Jewish clinic. He even spoke Arabic.

Galili did not know any Palestinians herself. When she was a child, she did not stop to wonder where they had gone. It wasn’t something people talked about. In school, her history lessons focused on the founding of Israel, but were silent as to what had become of the Palestinians who had once lived nearby.

As she got older, though, Galili began to think more critically about the stories she heard about her grandfather, including ones about his involvement in local politics and military intelligence during the ’40s. It became apparent that, for specific reasons, her grandfather knew Palestinians and she did not.

While studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she learned about the nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe,” used to describe the deportation of more than 700,000 Palestinians from the newly founded state of Israel in 1948. She read The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (1988) by Benny Morris, one of the first Israeli historians to write about how the Israeli military played a role in the event by expelling and intimidating Palestinians into leaving. This, she realized, explained why she never knew any Palestinians. During this time, she also discovered that her grandfather took an active part in the deportation of his Palestinian neighbors in the Hula Valley.

Since 2007, Galili has worked for Zochrot, an organization based in Tel Aviv that works to promote peace by raising awareness of the nakba within Jewish-Israeli society. The ongoing implications of the nakba – particularly, questions surrounding Palestinian refugees’ right of return – remain among the thorniest challenges to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. At the same time, Galili says, Jewish-Israeli society remains largely ignorant about the event.

“T��� nakba is not part of who we are [as Israelis],” she says.

As Zochrot’s educational coordinator, Galili has produced and promoted an educational guide called How Do We Say ‘N�������’ In Hebrew? Since its publication in 2009, several hundred teachers have taken copies and participated in seminars sponsored by Zochrot; Galili hopes to someday see the group’s materials included in school curricula throughout Israel.

Zochrot’s mission remains highly controversial in Israel. Earlier this year, three people were arrested for disturbing the peace at a Zochrot-organized demonstration in Tel Aviv during which they read aloud the names of Palestinian villages that existed in the area before 1948. Some of Galili’s own family and friends oppose the work that she does.

Nevertheless, she believes that honest discussion about the nakba is a key to establishing lasting peace in Israel.

“Talking about refugees and the nakba and the right of return is the fundamental, basic element that can lead to peace and justice and coexistence between Palestinians and Jewish people,” she says. “It opens possibilities for peace. What we are trying to do is look backward in order to move forward.”

“Zochrot is a place of hope,” says Galili. “It is a place where people can talk about the fundamental elements of our problem and look for new and creative ways to build a just and lasting life together here.” — AKJ

Editor’s note: Some of the terminology used in this article – particularly the use of “Palestinian” to refer to Arab residents of Israel prior to that country’s establishment in 1948 – is controversial and politically charged within modern Israeli society. Galili uses the terminology as a way of declaring her view that broader understanding and acknowledging the nakba is important for her country’s future.

On the day a reporter and photographer for Peacebuilder visited Maysa Baransi (SPI ’09) in her East Jerusalem office, the All for Peace radio website was down, the work of hackers hostile to the station’s mission. Since co-founding All for Peace, the first joint Israeli-Palestinian radio station, Baransi has gotten used to this kind of thing.

To promote peace and mutual understanding, the station exposes listeners to a wide variety of perspectives and opinions – which means it has supporters, and more worrisomely, detractors on both sides of the conflict.

“We have lots of negative feedback but when [that happens], we know that we’re getting to the right target group. We’re here to convert the unconverted, not the converted,” says Baransi, 36, now the station’s executive director.

Having previously worked for the first private Palestinian radio station, Baransi knew that both Israelis and Palestinians are big consumers of media. Inspired by radio’s potential to reach an enormous audience in the region, she and an Israeli partner, Mossi Raz, co-founded All for Peace in 2004.

From its studios in East Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a small staff and numerous volunteers produce around 50 programs on political, cultural and religious topics. The station’s hosts likewise report and comment on issues from divergent points of view. The official purpose of the station is to provide a platform for alternative voices and to promote coexistence, peace, mutual respect, pluralism and social justice. The effort has stretched both the station’s audience and its staff.

“It was very challenging for the other to see the other, not only as Israelis and Palestinians, but for the seculars to see a religious person coming in here and talking about their own beliefs,” says Baransi, who was raised as a Christian in a Greek Orthodox family from Galilee. (A 2007 article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Baransi telling her daughter, “T���re was the first prophet, Moses, and people didn’t listen to him and then God took the second prophet, Jesus, and he wasn’t listened to either, and then God took the third prophet, Mohammed, and people don’t listen to him. But God is the same God.”)

All for Peace’s mixture of programming intentionally pushes listeners out of their comfort zones. The audience attracted by one particular show inevitably will be exposed to very different points of view expressed on programs aired just before and after. All for Peace produces programming in Arabic, Hebrew, Russian and English, and began broadcasting in two frequencies – one Hebrew and one Arabic – in 2010. For their work, Baransi and Raz received the Outstanding Contribution to Peace award in 2010 from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting. Earlier it received a United Nations Award for Intercultural Innovation.

Angry phone calls and hacker disruption of the radio station’s website, however, amount to sideshows beside official crackdowns. In November 2011, the Israeli Communications Ministry issued a shut-down order. Claiming that All for Peace was broadcasting illegally into Israel (its transmitter is in the West Bank), the ministry initially justified the decision on the basis that the station’s Hebrew advertising caused economic harm to legal Israeli stations. A conservative Israeli politician later said All for Peace was shut down for “incitement.”

Denying the charge of illegal operation, All for Peace appealed the ministry’s decision to the Israeli Supreme Court, which had not ruled on the case as of early September 2012. In the meantime, the station’s Hebrew frequency has been taken off the air, reducing its advertising revenue by 90 percent, according to other news reports (though, with grant and foundation money, the station is not wholly dependent on advertising sales). The station continues to broadcast online, as well as through its Arabic-language frequency in the West Bank.

For the moment, Baransi and All for Peace Radio remain caught in a limbo, awaiting the court ruling on the station’s future. In a way, it serves as an allegory, Baransi says, of the frustrating, up-and-down, one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of the entire peace process.

“Sometimes you feel very encouraged,” she says. “And sometimes you look back and say, ‘My God, I’m just going backwards.’” — AKJ

Postscript: As Peacebuilder was being readied for publication, we learned that a rubber bullet shot from an Israeli checkpoint shattered Baransi’s rear car window on Aug. 10, 2012, as she drove with her daughter between Ramallah and their home in East Jerusalem. In seeking to understand the reason for the shooting, Baransi was told that a riot had recently occurred in that area and that Israeli officials were still in a response mode to that event.