Training the Facilitators of Mediations for the Israeli Jewish-Palestinian Conflict in the Middle East

The Middle East, despite its beauty and rich religious significance for many world religions, is also a place well known for its complicated, violent, and long-standing history of conflict.

Despite some progress in certain areas, much of the region remains volatile, as disputes over land and other interests precipitate violent flare-ups, often in the form of terrorist attacks, reactionary and harsh government responses, suicide bombings, and other monstrosities routinely reported in international media.

While conflicting interests are the obvious "causes" of such violence, interest-based negotiations alone are not enough to solve the seemingly intractable conflict in the region. The sides must engage in dialogue that addresses the disputed histories that each side maintains as the "one truth" and come to a shared understanding of their shared, painful history before true conciliation is possible.

Details...

The first workshop for Jewish and Arab residents of Hadar took place in April 2006.

Current Projects and Initiatives

Our initial success, in partnership with the Israel Center for Negotiation, in mediating between the residents of the Jewish village of Yaad and Arab descendants of the destroyed village of Miaar shows that we are doing something different and powerful in Israel. We expanded our mediators' work in 2006 are going further now in 2007. Our aim is to expand the mediation of land disputes with a strong historical element to other sites.

These projects include continuing Yaad-Miaar style dialogues by our trainees at an urban site in Haifa, called Hadar, where ethnic tensions run high. The ICfC was invited by the local municipality to help lead a process of community change there, working together with faculty of the University of Haifa. The municipality has been involved in an ambitious project to revive and reinvigorate the neighborhood, and has invited us to work on inter-communal tensions between Jewish and Arab residents. Our first workshop concluded in April 2006 and was followed by more workshops, each one building on the successes of the previous. The residents we are working with are initiating further co-existence projects due to the good rapport that was established in the meetings, with ideas such as joint sports activities, multi-ethnic choirs, and multi-ethnic cooking classes.

Yaad-Miaar Dialogue Round II

The first round of the mediated long-term dialogue between residents of Yaad and descendants of Miaar that used to stand in its place bore many invaluable fruits. Group participants have gone through a life-changing journey in which they have found richer historical perspectives, empathy for the 'other', and also many friends from the opposite group. Such situation was unimaginable to the participants in 2004, when this journey started. Others have heard about the work and accomplishments of this dialogue group and more and more people from Yaad and Miaar are signing up to join the process.

In 2007, the original mediators Chassia (from Yaad) and Jabir (from Miaar) started the second round of the dialogue. Participants share their hopes, needs, fears and dreams with the other group and together they focus on resolving issues that the communities are facing. ICfC is working on a film documentary that will tell the remarkable story of reconciliation between these two villages.