Reflections on Israeli-Palestinian dialogue

Why are we meeting? What are we discussing? What is our goal? And if we manage to achieve it, would it have any impact on the reality outside? These are a few of the questions Israeli and Palestinian members of dialogue groups ask before, during and after joint meetings.

As a facilitator and mediator who has worked with such groups for 15 years, I ask myself the same questions: Has dialogue been effective? What has changed? Looking back at the first groups I helped to facilitate back in 1995, the participants were full of hope and excitement about the opportunity to get together. Their excitement mirrored the optimism of those who were involved in the peace negotiations back then.

Those were perceived as the good years - when we were sure peace was just around the corner and, as a facilitator, I saw my role as simply to prepare people on both sides to forge the relationships necessary for sustaining a shared life in this land. At the time, the participants were incredibly enthusiastic and their desire to genuinely know one another imbued these meetings with a fresh and positive energy.

Unfortunately, it is not the same today. Following the second intifada and the building of the separation fence, many people lost their trust in this process, having been cut off from the friends and contacts they'd made on the other side. I felt the same way for some time. The natural human tendency to take sides prevailed for all of us.

But over the last few years, I have again had the honor of facilitating discussions among various groups in both Israel and Palestine: soldiers who were wounded in wars and the ongoing conflict; former prisoners trying to achieve freedom through the use of dialogue instead of weapons; women leading social change within their organizations; professional facilitators and activists working with groups on "track two" diplomacy; and journalists searching for better ways to cover the conflict. These different groups came together for a variety of reasons, but they all seemed to have one common goal: to explore how Palestinians and Israelis can humanize one another and find common ground for real change to take place.

In present-day meetings we face challenges similar to those encountered years ago, but today they are more pronounced. Like in the outside world, in our dialogue groups we encounter a great degree of mutual blame, of perceiving one's own side as the greater victim, as well as name calling and scoring points at the expense of the other side. This dynamic has at times brought us to moments of despair. Only once the participants begin to understand that their default positions lead them back to square one, do we begin to see actual change.

Enabling this sort of dynamic within a group dialogue and making these patterns visible to participants is crucial if progress is to be made. Only then can participants begin to reveal their deeper feelings and allow their existential fears to surface. Such revelations, in turn, help group members understand that they all share similar fears: the fear of being denied one's identity by the other side, the fear of suffering physical harm, and the fear that what the other side really wants is to throw them into the sea.

It takes a good mediator, time, patience and perseverance to reach a point where participants begin to shift their language, acknowledge the fact that they are all looking for empathy, and become part of each others' conversations and beings. The process deepens further once participants acknowledge that each side bears responsibility for what happened in the past and what might happen in the future, and recognize that they can make a difference even if only by taking the tiniest baby steps.

For many who take part in these joint gatherings, over time they become like a drug that sustains their dream. The dialogue itself becomes both the tool and the goal; the participants develop a deep need to be reminded of their shared visions and struggles. As a member of one group noted: "Our perseverance offers hope and inspiration to others, and keeps the dream alive. The support and engagement of citizens is crucial for achieving any future political agreement." Another participant put it another way: "Giving up is not an option."

It is crucial for our leaders to know that many of these voices are out there, living in the Israeli and Palestinian streets. They are looking for more people to join their ranks; they are waiting for the chance to be included in any peace initiative, to be acknowledged and valued for the long journey they have embarked on. These people have the empathy, the trust and the commitment that provide critical sources of hope during times of heightened conflict.

I come from Palestinian roots, but more and more in these dialogues and in other areas of my life, I see myself as someone whose primary role is to enable and sustain the process of dialogue as a whole. As such, I do not represent one side. We are all parts of the whole and if we could see ourselves as a part of those who are outside our ethnic and religious communities, then we would not be afraid to sympathize with their fears and pains. We would know that they are ours, too.

NB. This article was also published in Hebrew.