By Yehuda Stolov
Believe it or not, building peace in the Holy Land (i.e. the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims) is not only possible but also easy. But for this there are three ifs: if you take into consideration the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; if you do not try to avoid walking the path that needs to be walked; and, if you take the right approach.
And what is the right approach? Let me bring for you a hint from the Bible here. Isaiah (54:13) says:
All your children will be taught by the LORD, and great will be their peace.
Now, this might sound like a contradiction, because when you learn more, you develop your own opinions, and then obviously you start disagreeing with other people, who develop their own opinions. But the verse tells us that if you are truly connected with the Divine, you can grow together despite disagreements. The idea is that if the two scholars, with their different opinions, are truly connected with God – they see how the other is also connected with God and then their ego is not able to be against the other.
The question we need to consider is why is it that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes on and on and on, with no peace in sight? Why is the conflict still unresolved after so many decades? Why do attempts to solve the conflict collapse?
The best metaphor I can think of to illustrate this situation is of a married couple who have many problems in their marriage. There are two additional factors that further complicate things. First, the couple are Catholic, which means that divorce is not a real option for them. And second, for some reason, they are destined to live in the same house.
Now, given this situation, if other people encourage them to compromise for the sake of peace, what do they do? They divide the apartment that they live in between themselves—one room for the man, and one room for the woman. They arrange for separate timings for the use of the bathroom. They divide the living room with some sort of marker that serves as a border. For a while, they try their best to implement this deal. But does anyone really believe that this arrangement will last for a long time? No!
The same is true for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we take the metaphor of the couple above to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we may realise that the separation model is not the right solution. What the couple really need is not a good divorce agreement. Rather, they need to go in for marriage counseling so that they can learn to get along with each well other. This is the only way that their problem can be solved. In the same way, trying to address the Israel-Palestine conflict through separation will not work. This is because it is simply not feasible, since Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, live in very close proximity to each other in the Holy Land. The root cause of their conflict is ignorance of each other, which leads to prejudices, fears and mistrust and results in broken relations. In this situation, anything the other does is interpreted in line with their negative stereotypes and only further reinforces them. Now, the question to ask is: Are these stereotypes based on reality? Do Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, really know each other to warrant such negative stereotypes that cause them to mistrust, fear or even hate each other?
Let us go back to our hypothetical estranged couple. Even if the couple knew each other well and yet had negative feelings for each other, they should try to work on healing their relationship, because they have no other choice. The same is true for Israelis and Palestinians.
The fact is that even though living in close proximity to each other, Israelis and Palestinians are very segregated from each other. This being the case, how can they really base what they think about each other on real knowledge? When one does not have real knowledge of the other, people tend to think in terms of stereotypes and prejudices. In this situation, what is needed is for Israelis and Palestinians to get to know each other, at a personal, human level—for which they need to interact, at a personal, human level. That is the only way to overcome stereotypes and prejudices and for the two peoples to live together in harmony.
The challenge is that negative images of the other are deeply rooted in people’s minds. They have been there for so long, having been implanted at such an early age, that even if we hear all the lectures in the world, from the best ‘experts’ and from the ‘highest’ authorities, that we should respect the other, it might not make much of a difference. All this talk might even convince us intellectually that we ought to respect the other—we may nod our heads in agreement—but we may still continue to hold our prejudices. What we need to change our minds and hearts is something stronger—which is, direct experience of, or encounter with, the other, at a personal, human level. And that is what the Interfaith Encounter Association does, bringing together Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians and others, to interact with each other at a personal, human level and to get to know each other as human persons.
Now, how can we create this direct experience? I learnt about this from my own personal experience. About 30 years ago, I somehow got into a group of young adults in Jerusalem that was active in interfaith dialogue. They would have meetings every month, in which they would discuss issues of faith. The non-Jews in the group were mainly Christian theology students. And I myself had just a few months before that taken a class at the Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, about Christianity. So, for me it was very fascinating to have all these conversations, to ask difficult questions and see how people wrestled with them.
For a few years, it was enough. It was a kind of intellectual fun. I never missed a meeting. It was nice having these conversations. But then, I began reflecting on the process I was going through. I had grown up with prejudices about Christians, which were based mainly on the Crusades and the Inquisition, and here I was meeting Christians in person who were really trying their best to worship God. I noticed that my own attitude towards Christians, and then towards Christianity, was changing. It was becoming more complex, more accepting. I realised that real, open, heart-to-heart interfaith dialogue, based on personal encounters with people from other faith backgrounds, has a great transformative power to change our minds, our views, our perceptions. And so, I developed what we now call the interfaith encounter approach, which, some 20 years ago, was the foundation of the formation of the Interfaith Encounter Association. The interfaith encounter approach has three advantages that make it very effective. The first is that when we come from a perspective of religion (and in our part of the world, almost everyone has some sort of association, even if just culturally, with one or the other religion) and we meet each other at this level, the encounter becomes much more intimate—much more than it would be if it were just an exchange of opinions or a discussion about politics.
The second advantage of this approach is that through it, people from different religious backgrounds discover many similarities in the different faith traditions. For people who are new to dialogue, this is a really new discovery that definitely makes them feel closer to one another.
The third advantage of this approach is no less important. It is the ability to discuss differences in a way that not only does not threaten the conversation and the relations that have been built up but also helps construct them. In this way, people from different faith backgrounds develop the ability to become friends with people with whom they might disagree on some issues.
Then, there are two side-benefits, if I may call them so, that are a result of this interfaith encounter approach. One is that the vast majority of the thousands of people, Israelis and Palestinians, who are active in the Interfaith Encounter Association met the other for the first time through our activities. The second is that since this approach is very much apolitical, we can get many, many people to join, from all parts of the political spectrum.
I can recount several stories of how Israelis and Palestinians—including Jews, Muslims and Christians—met each other for the first time through the activities of the Interfaith Encounter Association and what an enormous positive difference it made in the way they perceived and related with each other. Over the years, we have had many Israeli-Palestinian retreats, bringing together individuals who had never met each other before. What they knew of each other’s communities prior to the retreat was based largely on their own prejudices and the media—all very negative. When they arrived for the retreats, they would sit in distinct groups, in different parts of the same room. At the first dinner, they would sit at separate tables. But then, soon enough, you could see how they began to mix more and more, how they began taking with each other. Soon, they would be together at coffee breaks and sitting with each other at mealtimes. They would have long conversations deep into the night. We would have a social evening each time, and there would be singing and dancing and telling of jokes—and this was just 24 hours after the participants had met for the first time ever! When the time came to bid farewell, there would be hugs and tears and wishing they would meet again soon. And the process would continue to unfold as the interfaith journey continued.
All this tells us how effective interfaith dialogue based on interpersonal encounter at a human level is in helping to bring people who think of each other as the ‘other’—in this case, Israelis and Palestinians—closer together and to build harmony. It also tells us that achieving peace in the Holy Land is actually very easy if one takes the right approach. But for this, one needs to understand that one has to take the initiative oneself in doing what one can to reach out, in goodwill, to the other. If one sits back in one’s couch and simply expects governments to create peace, or even if one goes out and demonstrates for governments to do so, one will probably have to wait for a very long time. But if, inspired by a passion for peace and harmony, one reaches out in a spirit of goodwill and well-wishing to a person whom one has been taught to view as the other, one can see, with one’s own eyes, how peace is built up, step by step, person by person!
Based in Jerusalem, Yehuda Stolov is the executive director of the Interfaith Encounter Association (www.interfaith-encounter.org), an organisation that since 2001 has been working to build peaceful inter-communal relations in the Holy Land by fostering mutual respect and trust between people and communities through active interfaith dialogue.
Dr. Stolov has lectured on the role of religious dialogue in peace-building in different countries, including Jordan, India, Indonesia, Turkey, South Korea, North America and Europe. He also published many papers on related issues.In 2006, he was awarded the Immortal Chaplains Foundation Prize for Humanity, which honors those who "risked all to protect others of a different faith or ethnic origin".In 2015, he was awarded the IIE Victor J. Goldberg Prize for Peace in the Middle East. Among other activities, Dr. Stolov has been a member of the International Council of the International Association for Religious Freedom and a member of the steering committee for the United Nations Decade of Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation for Peace. He holds a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Physics and a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is married and is a father of three children.
The Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA) works to promote genuine coexistence and sustainable peace, through joint community building on the grassroots level, using interactive interfaith dialogue as its vehicle. The apolitical and all-inclusive approach of the organization and its activities enable the successful participation of a very wide range of participants and thus to continuously build a true grassroots movement which constitutes the human infrastructure for peace in the Holy Land. In its nineteen years of existence, the IEA has held more than 3,800 programmes, with many thousands of participants. A most significant fact is that the participants in IEA programs include people of all political and religious views, as well as all ages, genders, walks of life etc., the vast majority of whom have met 'the other' for the first time through IEA. As of this date, the IEA has founded 111 ongoing community-groups of interfaith encounter, including 37 groups that bring together on a regular basis Israelis and West Bank Palestinians.