This is an example of a daily activity I did in an inter-faith summer program called Hands of Peace (HOP). HOP is an organization dedicated to creating long-term peaceful coexistence among Jewish-Israelis, Arab Citizens of Israel, and Palestinians by bringing together teenagers from the Middle East and those from USA. I was a participant in 2010 and in 2011 I was an “extraordinary leader” or XL that helped supervise the thirty participants.
A typical HOP day began with an ice-breaker and then moved into a three-hour dialogue session about the conflict, coordinated by two professional facilitators. It’s at this part of the program that the teens really begin to bear their souls. It was during the dialogue sessions that I took away an important value – the value of effective communication. During the dialogues, tension and arguments were inevitable, as kids, who were raised hating the ‘other’ side, had to work to understand not only each other, but also what ‘peace’ meant to a region separated by decades of hate and violence. Day after day we confronted problems without the political rhetoric.
After dialogue we did activities as one group; one day we went downtown, another we were at a team building course, and the next we were visiting kids at an inner-city school or listening to a lecture about the importance of dialogue. It’s safe to say that by the end of the HOP program I created 30 new best friends. Through dialogue, activities, ice breakers, and just hanging out, we had all come to understand and appreciate one another – the exact mission of Hands of Peace.
I guess I’ll never really know if those 3 weeks in HOP will contribute to the end of the conflict in the Middle East, but I do know that it helped to create bridges, not tear them down. So, readers, what do you think? Can we use Hands of Peace as a model or blueprint for solving other problems? Does dialogue and communication work to end conflict? Can friendship and trust overcome years of hate and discrimination?
