ר"ע תיתד תונויצל ינויערה גוחה ,םולשו זוע
"Terrorist", "primitive", "patriarchal"; arrogant", "untrustworthy", "expansionist". These are just some of the stereotypes that a group of Israelis and Palestinians came up with during a joint workshop on misperceptions of each other. The location was Elsinor –home to Hamlet's castle – and, for two weeks, home to some thirty educators from the Middle East - Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians , Egyptians and a Tunisian. The conference, "Learning to Live Together in the Middle East", was funded by the Danish Foreign Ministry and I came as a representative of the religious peace group Netivot Shalom.
We arrived, Valium in hand to ease us through the first tense days that we had been warned awaited us. But in fact, greeting us at the folk school campus on a rainy summer Sunday afternoon, was the Palestinian delegation comprising powerfully impressive individuals committed to peace and dialogue; and my acquaintance with them immediately challenged my stereotypes. For example, the leader of their delegation, a lecturer in physics from Nablus, and poet, sat before us on the first day, arm in sling looking like a victim, and shared with us the peace programs he is involved with, in a quiet, committed voice. He is actually a victim. Not on account of his arm -broken while playing football with his son - but because of the five years he spent in Israeli jails in administrative detention without charge or trial. Next to him sat a young man from Ramallah who told about the pilot scheme he was running with eight Palestinian and eight Israeli schools where each side learns about the culture of the other, principles of tolerance, active listening and dialogue in preparation for joint activities. A young teacher of English from Ramallah involved in the project later asked me to provide her with Jewish source material on love and neighbourly relations. She had recently been appointed deputy head of a unique Palestinian school where Hebrew language instruction was part of the curriculum. A woman from East Jerusalem showed us a copy of a new newspaper she is editing for Palestinian youth. As it is partially written in English we discussed possibilities of recruiting Israeli readers too, so that the youth of both sides can get to know each other.
Striking features of Middle East dynamics were reflected in the interactions between us. The Jordanian, Egyptian and Tunisian participants, who felt more distant from the core Israeli-Palestinian conflict were often successful facilitators in dialogues between the Israelis and Palestinians. On the other hand, the concept of "pan-Arabism" was also strongly expressed as the Arab delegates joined together to sing in a makeshift choir and, of course, converse in their common language. The place of the three Israeli Arabs within the Israeli delegation was particularly interesting. At some stage they formed their own group and presented piercing questions to each of the delegations. Their protests to the Israelis about on-going discrimination in budget allotments by Israeli governments were painful and familiar. So were their questions about how Israel can call itself democratic when it treats its Arabs as second class citizens. However, their feelings of being slighted and ignored by the Palestinians who had neither taken up their issues in the peace negotiations nor made use of their leadership for support or advice, were more surprising. Their feelings of being neglected and ignored gained support by a comment from the Tunisian that in his country it was not even known that there were Arabs who lived within Israel.
Each side seemed to need to share its suffering. For the Palestinians, it was extremely important to emphasize the inordinate amount of day-to-day oppression they are subject to because of the occupation. A Palestinian a woman in her forties, who felt able to speake only on the third day, shared in a bitter voice, that she had almost not attended the conference as she was desperately worried about her son. He had celebrated his sixteenth birthday in West Jerusalem the previous week and coming out of a cafe, his ethnicity was discovered and he had been beaten up. He was currently awaiting the results of a CAT scan. Some Palestinians arrived late and two didn't arrive at all, having failed to get the required permission from the authorities in the Territories (despite the fact that they are neither under arrest nor in gaol). We Israelis felt the need to explain that our fears and security concerns which the Palestinians find so hard to understand are not based on paranoia but are based on repeated traumatic experiences over the years in wars and terrorist attacks. It was also important for us to explain to the Palestinians that the Jewish desire to form a state in Israel did not originate in anti-Arab sentiment at the start of the century as they seemed to believe, but was the culmination of Jewish wanderings and persecutions and a two thousand years old dream to return to our homeland.
We all agreed that religion is a major factor in the Middle East. The group I represented was of particular interest to the Arab delegates. Firstly, religiosity is associated with settlers and their preconceptions were challenged by seeing that my colleague and I- who ate kosher food and kept Shabbat- were nevertheless active proponents of peace. They also appreciated our reports of our movement's attempts to explain to the predominantly right-wing religious population in Israel our belief that religious Jews have a duty to do all they can to promote peace and prevent bloodshed. Their response to an Israeli veteran peace activist who commented that religion has been responsible for much of the bloodshed on both sides and should therefore be neutralized, was vehement and unanimous: religion is an integral part of the Middle East and the challenge is how to combat the religious fanaticism on both sides and teach the placatory, humane values that we discovered are shared by Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
An interesting and unexpected aspect of the two-week encounter was the strengthening of our own Jewish identity. For example, asked to give a five minute talk on Judaism required some stock-taking as to the major elements of my religion that I live and breathe but have never had to explain to an outsider. Similarly, a request at clarification at our insistence that Jews belong to a nation and not just a religion forced us to confront our history. A secular Israeli in the group found herself talking about the emigration of her parents from Nazi Germany for the first time in her life.
A month later, re-union in the Middle East. From Gaza, Haifa, Ramallah, Netanya and even Jordan, we barbecued in Jerusalem. There were hugs, laughter, excitement, talk of joint projects and variously worded assertions by the eaters that "Denmark" had changed their lives. An Israeli songwriter has written "You and I can change the world". That may not be so simple. But in Elsinor I learnt that getting to know the "other", can raise the quality of and enrich ones own life.
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