Moving toward a cross-border peace movement in Israel/Palestine

“The word ‘peace’ has become hollow. It has lost its meaning,” said one of the participants. “That may feel like the case,” said another, “but we cannot let the voice of despair and violence re-appropriate our language for the world we hope to build.”

This excerpt came from a recent gathering of Israelis and Palestinian peacebuilders meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. The gathering was billed as a “consultation” of bi-communal field experts. Over the course of three days, twenty participants—10 Israelis and 10 Palestinians, ranging from their late twenties to their early sixties—acted as a think-tank to envision the seemingly impossible, the reemergence of a cross-border peace movement in Israel/Palestine.

“Giving up is not an option:” a consultation that brought Israeli and Palestinian peacebuilders together

October, Istanbul, Turkey: I have been meeting with a group of 20 carefully selected Israelis and Palestinians for a consultation to explore possibilities for future peacebuilding initiatives in the region. I know almost all the participants through former programs within Israel/Palestine or through their attendance at the CONTACT annual peacebuilding program at the School for International Training. It has been over 10 years since I had seen some of the group members, who include both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis as well as West Bank Palestinians. Group members found it very meaningful to meet each other again, as most had been connected through common networks. Currently, cross-border work hardly exists, so there was a special sense of pleasure and inspiration in being together.

Weaving the fabric of grassroots peacebuilding in Senegal

Five young men and a woman file into our midst and take their seats in a row. Their teacher stands in front of them and calls the roll. He gets to one young man who’s dressed in traditional costume. He berates the student for appearing in such dress and dismisses him. The young man next to the dismissed student stands, confronts the teacher angrily and follows his fellow student out of the class. The teacher continues with the roll call. Another student stands, and respectfully explains to the teacher that the student in traditional garb is required to dress that way during his period of circumcision. In older days youth in the process of circumcision did not come to school, but now they’re required to. If he wore regular clothes he would be in trouble at home. “Please, respect his culture and allow him to return.” The teacher coughs gruffly and assents, and the roll call continues.

The scene I describe above was a role-play—the last moment in a workshop for journalists of grassroots radio stations in the Casamance region of southern Senegal, West Africa. In July, I traveled to the Casamance to facilitate workshops as a Karuna Center associate, practicing ways to weave ideas about peacebuilding into these journalists’ radio programming.

Dialogue Without Borders: South Asia news from CONTACT

• Check out the latest newsletter of CONTACT’s work in South Asia: Dialogue Without Borders  – Fall 2010 (PDF).

CONTACT, or Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, is a training program for emerging leaders from around the world who are engaged in responding to conflict, promoting social change, and building sustainable peace.  Karuna Center and CONTACT work closely together by sharing faculty, referring students, developing materials, creating visibility, and enhancing knowledge.