September-October 2011, Pages 64-65

Waging Peace

New Story Leadership: A Conversation About the Conflict

(L-r) Manar Saria, Samer Anatabwi, Bahaa Milhem, Jad Keir, Maria Ginzburg and Rotem Gabay don’t want to trapped by history and “live in the older generations’ drama.” (Staff Photo K. Cloos)

New Story Leadership for the Middle East (NSL), a program designed to bridge cultural differences and disagreements by bringing together a select group of young adults, held a Congressional Forum at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill July 14. This summer NSL brought four Israelis, four Palestinians and two Arab Israelis to Washington, DC to fuel discussion about the future of the two nations. In several public forums the 10 students shared their stories about living with American host families and interning at American organizations and congressional offices. Six of the students spoke on the Hill and shared their frustration with the current situation of Palestine and Israel. The stories all started differently, but ended with the same hopes for peace.

The first speaker, Manar Saria, an intern at the World Bank who attends Ben-Gurion University in Israel, is an Arab Israeli whose generation, she explained, is able to speak both Arabic and Hebrew fluently and cross borders freely. "I know something about coexistence," she said.

Saria said she has heard about the conflict from earlier generations and she knows what this new story should look like. "The opportunity is there," she said. "We don't have to be trapped in the history and past of the first generation." Israelis and Palestinians don't have to "live in the older generations' drama. They can decide to live in the here and now."

Maria Ginzburg, who studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was an intern at the American Task Force on Palestine, described herself as an "Israeli by choice." She grew up in Russia, where she said she could never escape prejudice and discrimination as a child. During a layover in Moscow after a short trip to Israel when she was 22, Ginzburg overheard someone commenting that she was Jewish and that she should move to Israel.

"I decided I will," she said. For Ginzburg, moving to Israel meant finding a safe haven where she could escape lifelong discrimination and live in safety.

"I can't speak for others, but I never intended to take someone else's home or land," she said. "Especially because I know what it's like to be judged…I don't want to be the reason for others to be displaced."

All the speakers recounted childhood fears and memories of prejudice or violence. For Rotem Gabay, an Israeli also studying at Hebrew University, who interned in the office of Rep. Jarad Polis (D-CO), the memory of a kidnapped cousin is what made her realize that she could not take her security for granted. At the age of 26, Gabay had never met a Palestinian before joining NSL. "An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard yet," she said.

The story of two peaceful nations living side by side is one that Bahaa Milhem said he hopes to one day be able to tell. He grew up in Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem and is studying journalism at London City University, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his father, an influential journalist.

"In a few years' time, I don't want to go back to Palestine to go cover conflict again," Milhem said. "I have a dream today to cover peace between Palestinians and Israelis."

Samer Anatabwi, who is attending Illinois College as a Hope Fund scholar (see August 2007 Washington Report, p. 36, for an article about the Hope Fund), told a similar story. As a 9-year-old child in Jenin during the second intifada, Anabtawi recounted the fear he felt as the Israeli army opened fire on his school bus. Years later, he said, he witnessed "orchestras of explosions" in his neighborhood. He learned bullets could also come from helicopters and saw a neighbor's child screaming in a pool of blood. Anatabwi said he doesn't want future children to witness the same horrors.

"I cannot be a part of the problem any more," he said. "I cannot remain silent and let my children and Israeli children go through the pain I did as a child…Speak up for Israel. Speak up for Palestine. Speak up for a solution. Help us walk the path to nonviolence, help us end the occupation, help us be together, not one against the other…I will always refuse to hate."

Despite their varied backgrounds, the students all shared the common dream of one day living in a society of peace between Arabs and Israelis. "There's one shared story I think we're all hearing today," said the last speaker, Jad Kheir, an Arab Israeli Druz from Haifa who is a medical student at Technion and interned at the office of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI). "We are on a common quest for home. It doesn't really matter—whatever you are. We are all on the same quest…we're just looking for a place to belong. Is that too much to ask?"

—Kassondra Cloos