The heartbreaking and seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to embody W. B. Yeats feeling that Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of a heart . And indeed, the situation in Gaza may have reinforced the perception that hatred, irreconcilable differences and hopelessness make up the prevailing mood between Israelis and Palestinians.
Yet another tale is slowly emerging. Although the news reports tend to zero in on the religious division, tension and violence, the truth is that reconciliation efforts between Israelis and Arabs are quietly gathering momentum. Small and faithful acts of hope form part of a continuum of peace-making 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 to win, Israelis and Palestinians 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.
Consider the Open House initiative, a center situated in the Arab town of Ramle that is devoted to building trust and friendships between Muslim and Jewish children. Among its programs are a summer camp for 100 Jewish and Arab teenagers and an Arab and Jewish parents network, as well as a day-care centre for Arab children.
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 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 line, talking for a total of about 300,000 minutes.
Particularly significant is the Pathways to Reconciliation project, an inspiring program that sends about 80 Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinian educators to Turkey each year to take part in a conference entitled Continuing Dialogue in Times of Crisis. When they return, the teachers work to strengthen the peace education program that has been running for 12 years in 60 Palestinian and Jewish high schools. Much of the program s power comes from the tremendous change it brings about 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 Nazi death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Krakow. Amid the ghastly images, the group walked along the railway tracks where the diabolical selections of Jews had taken place; they then entered the gas chambers, the crematoriums 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, Arab participants read out the names of the mission s Jewish members relatives who perished there. At this 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 spasms of 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 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 the Parents Circle Relations committee, an interfaith organization composed of 200 bereaved Jewish parents and 200 Palestinian bereaved parents who have lost children to the protracted violence.
The group has lectured to more than 50,000 students, in addition to staging political rallies and donating blood to each other s hospitals.
Let us hope that reconciliation continues, an endeavor that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
Dr. Dvir Abramovichis director of Jewish Studies at the University of Melbourne.This article, first published in The Age, is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
