Peacebuilding is an inherently optimistic endeavor. While it can involve different means, there is a constant focus on an end – something different, something better, something yet to come. If you have no hope whatsoever, say many of the alumni interviewed for this issue of Peacebuilder, it would be impossible to do the kind of work they do. And yet, the track record in the Middle East seems to amount to little more than a growing list of dashed hopes and disappointment, of failure, of eyes blinded for eyes, leaving everyone blind. As this issue goes to press in September 2012, the Syrian civil war is estimated to have killed nearly 25,000 people over the previous 18 months. The possibility that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon, and that Israel or the United States will use violence to prevent it from doing so, continues to loom fearfully large in people’s minds. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has all but been abandoned, leaving intact deep, systemic forms of violence that traumatize both sides.

For some, these realities inspire pessimism and frustration that threaten to snuff out hope.

“You have to be hopeful,” says Fadlallah Hassouna (SPI ’10 & ’11), executive director of the Development for People and Nature Association, which works among youth in southern Lebanon.

But he speaks slowly, shaking his head, then admits he can hardly believe his own words, that he is afraid of what tomorrow might bring. Conflict is never far from the surface in Lebanon, he says. It seems inevitable again, and so he hopes that perhaps his work will at least serve to minimize its impact, to mitigate its effects.

Structural Solutions Absent

In Jordan, Raghda Quandor, MA ’04, lists off the big challenges facing her country: hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees arriving over the past two decades, water insecurity, the status of the Palestinian people (more than 2 million of whom live in Jordan, according to most estimates).

“We have a peace that’s not a peace,” says Quandor, who has worked for several international NGOs, and conceives of peacebuilding at the structural level.

Large-scale change, though, seems impossible to enact. People feel powerless, they are more focused on day-to-day survival. It is a chaotic time, a hard time to think about and work toward a better future. If Jordan’s problems are a dripping faucet, she says, the solution so far has been to simply keep emptying the bucket. Quandor wishes she could fix the faucet.

“You need to create systems that resolve issues,” she says. “[But] I don’t think anybody’s interested. In some ways, I feel sad.”

In Ramallah, Palestine, Ruba Musleh, MA ’08, says the seeming hopelessness of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has led her to focus her attention inward, toward her own people.

“I don’t see anything changing in the near future, and that’s why I focus on working internally instead of with the other side. I think we need to build ourselves up first.”

Twenty years ago, she continues, Palestinian youth were energetic and motivated. They believed they had the power to change and improve their lives. Today’s youth, having grown up during and after the violent Second Intifada, have lost that sense of confidence in themselves, she says. Sometimes, if she thinks too hard about these kinds of things, it becomes tempting to throw up her hands and leave peacebuilding for a better-paying job in the private sector. The thing that has kept her at her work – managing a project to enhance entrepreneurship and employability skills among Palestinian youth – has been a desire to some day look back and realize that she did, in some way, make a difference . . . a motivation fed by her experience at CJP.

Can’t Give Up

Like Musleh, several other alumni place themselves somewhere between total defeat and blind optimism, discouraged by what they see but unwilling to give up.

“Nothing’s happening. We’re full gas on neutral,” says Maysa Baransi (SPI ’09), the co-director of All For Peace, the first joint Israeli-Palestinian radio station, though she still holds onto abstract hope for the future. “As a Palestinian, I can’t give up. Eventually we will get there. I just hope it will be in my years.”

Sonia Nakad (SPI ’09) says a curious paradox exists regarding public perception of “peacebuilding” in Lebanon, where she coordinates the Peacebuilding Academy with the Permanent Peace Movement.

Many people, especially ones from older generations, write off the entire field as misguided idealism, a nice concept, perhaps, but not something with power to effect change.

“Few people believe that this is the way to make things better,” Nakad says.

At the same time, everyone is sick of constantly fighting, and there exists widespread agreement that violent conflict resolution benefits no one. One project of the Peacebuilding Academy, aimed in part at encouraging broader society to invest in alternatives to violence, is the publication of peacebuilding manuals for Middle Eastern audiences, written by Middle Eastern experts. Democracy looks different in different places, she continues. So should peacebuilding.

“You cannot just move in a technique from outside,” Nakad says. “You have to take into consideration beliefs, culture and history.”

What applies in one place does not necessarily apply elsewhere. And what applies in one situation does not necessarily apply in another, says Fadi el-Hajjar, MA ’06. A long-time peacebuilding practitioner in Lebanon now managing a “strengthening civil peace in Lebanon” project for the United Nations Development Programme, el-Hajjar has begun to think more and more on the importance of wisdom.

After more than 15 years in the field, he has discovered that “the more you know, the more you know you need to know.”

In Search of Wisdom

From this position of humility, el-Hajjar looks to the past for guidance for the future. Peacebuilders in the region, he says, should learn from mistakes, adapt, replace absolutes with nuance.

“If we balance things in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ there’s going to be simplified decision making,” el-Hajjar says. “But if you take into consideration the complexities, the long-term and other variables, you need some wisdom. Even if you are ‘right,’ I think sometimes we need wisdom.”

For example: when a war is happening, the people caught in the middle don’t care so much about who is right and who is wrong. They want the shooting to stop. Later, everyone can talk about who bears responsibility for what and why. Wisdom is pragmatism, el-Hajjar says; wisdom avoids absolutes. He hesitates when asked about using violence to stop greater violence. It is a very difficult question.

“When you think in terms of black and white, you think in terms of limitations,” el-Hajjar eventually responds. “When you think of these as the edges of the spectrum, then we have wide room to maneuver.”

Lessons From the Empty Tomb

Make no mistake, says Zougbi Zougbi (SPI ’98 & ’02; STAR ’03), these are incredibly difficult times, in Palestine, where he lives, and in the wider Middle East. All around him, he sees demoralization, degradation, social breakdown, injustices and spiritual poverty. Life in Palestine is life in a pressure cooker as a result of the illegal and unjustified occupation, he says.

“Now, we are at our worst time,” he says. “Though you are tempted to be very angry in this situation, we don’t want to think of alternatives to nonviolence. We as Palestinians would like to deprive the Israeli government of an enemy.”

At the Wi’am Center, a mediation and conflict resolution organization Zougbi founded and directs, he sees the symptoms every day. Husbands fight with their wives. Landlords quarrel with their tenants. Brothers dispute a few square meters of inherited family land, while thousands of dunams are confiscated to build housing for Israeli settlers. You can’t blame everything on the occupation, Zougbi says, but it is pervasive. It is everywhere, and it is inescapable.

With a staff of 10, plus around 100 volunteers and interns from across the world, Wi’am offers programs in mediation, diplomacy and trauma-coping (“healing” can only begin after traumatic experiences end) to numerous different groups throughout Palestine. Its primary goals include confronting injustice, promoting dignity for and dialogue between all people, and spreading values of peace, justice, democracy and human rights. The organization was recognized in 2010 with World Vision’s Peace Prize.

Despite the difficult and worsening conditions facing his work and his people, Zougbi looks to the future with a profound but cautious hope drawn from multiple sources. He finds hope in his faith, in which he sees transformative power. He says the stations of the cross parallel the Palestinian experience – terrible, cruel, oppressive – and yet, leading inevitably, some day, to the empty tomb that represents salvation and victory.

This Too Shall Pass

He also finds hope in his adult children, who turned down opportunities to live and work abroad, and came home to Bethlehem.

And he finds hope in history. The Berlin Wall fell down. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa. Everything crumbles and returns to dust some day; though it defies imagination from the current vantage point, he is sure the occupation of Palestine, too, shall pass.

“I believe that oppression will be defeated. Political, economic, social and spiritual oppression will be defeated. Hope is based on restorative justice that redresses injustices rather than avenging them. Hope is a form of nonviolent struggle. Hope keeps us sane and alive.” Zougbi says. — AKJ

On the day a reporter and photographer for Peacebuilder visited Maysa Baransi (SPI ’09) in her East Jerusalem office, the All for Peace radio website was down, the work of hackers hostile to the station’s mission. Since co-founding All for Peace, the first joint Israeli-Palestinian radio station, Baransi has gotten used to this kind of thing.

To promote peace and mutual understanding, the station exposes listeners to a wide variety of perspectives and opinions – which means it has supporters, and more worrisomely, detractors on both sides of the conflict.

“We have lots of negative feedback but when [that happens], we know that we’re getting to the right target group. We’re here to convert the unconverted, not the converted,” says Baransi, 36, now the station’s executive director.

Having previously worked for the first private Palestinian radio station, Baransi knew that both Israelis and Palestinians are big consumers of media. Inspired by radio’s potential to reach an enormous audience in the region, she and an Israeli partner, Mossi Raz, co-founded All for Peace in 2004.

From its studios in East Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a small staff and numerous volunteers produce around 50 programs on political, cultural and religious topics. The station’s hosts likewise report and comment on issues from divergent points of view. The official purpose of the station is to provide a platform for alternative voices and to promote coexistence, peace, mutual respect, pluralism and social justice. The effort has stretched both the station’s audience and its staff.

“It was very challenging for the other to see the other, not only as Israelis and Palestinians, but for the seculars to see a religious person coming in here and talking about their own beliefs,” says Baransi, who was raised as a Christian in a Greek Orthodox family from Galilee. (A 2007 article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Baransi telling her daughter, “There was the first prophet, Moses, and people didn’t listen to him and then God took the second prophet, Jesus, and he wasn’t listened to either, and then God took the third prophet, Mohammed, and people don’t listen to him. But God is the same God.”)

All for Peace’s mixture of programming intentionally pushes listeners out of their comfort zones. The audience attracted by one particular show inevitably will be exposed to very different points of view expressed on programs aired just before and after. All for Peace produces programming in Arabic, Hebrew, Russian and English, and began broadcasting in two frequencies – one Hebrew and one Arabic – in 2010. For their work, Baransi and Raz received the Outstanding Contribution to Peace award in 2010 from the International Council for Press and Broadcasting. Earlier it received a United Nations Award for Intercultural Innovation.

Angry phone calls and hacker disruption of the radio station’s website, however, amount to sideshows beside official crackdowns. In November 2011, the Israeli Communications Ministry issued a shut-down order. Claiming that All for Peace was broadcasting illegally into Israel (its transmitter is in the West Bank), the ministry initially justified the decision on the basis that the station’s Hebrew advertising caused economic harm to legal Israeli stations. A conservative Israeli politician later said All for Peace was shut down for “incitement.”

Denying the charge of illegal operation, All for Peace appealed the ministry’s decision to the Israeli Supreme Court, which had not ruled on the case as of early September 2012. In the meantime, the station’s Hebrew frequency has been taken off the air, reducing its advertising revenue by 90 percent, according to other news reports (though, with grant and foundation money, the station is not wholly dependent on advertising sales). The station continues to broadcast online, as well as through its Arabic-language frequency in the West Bank.

For the moment, Baransi and All for Peace Radio remain caught in a limbo, awaiting the court ruling on the station’s future. In a way, it serves as an allegory, Baransi says, of the frustrating, up-and-down, one-step-forward, two-steps-back nature of the entire peace process.

“Sometimes you feel very encouraged,” she says. “And sometimes you look back and say, ‘My God, I’m just going backwards.’” — AKJ

Postscript: As Peacebuilder was being readied for publication, we learned that a rubber bullet shot from an Israeli checkpoint shattered Baransi’s rear car window on Aug. 10, 2012, as she drove with her daughter between Ramallah and their home in East Jerusalem. In seeking to understand the reason for the shooting, Baransi was told that a riot had recently occurred in that area and that Israeli officials were still in a response mode to that event.

Assessing the situation of Lebanon nearly a decade ago, 56-year-old Fadlallah Hassouna (SPI ’10 & ’11) drew a number of conclusions. First, his generation had generally made a corrupt mess of Lebanese politics and society. Second, more than half the people living with the effects of this were under the age of 25.

Prompted by this reality, Hassouna founded the Development for People and Nature Association, or DPNA, in 2003 to mentor, empower and encourage Lebanese youth to do things differently.

“If you want to build positive change and achieve positive results, you have to build on new human resources, and that’s why I started with the youth,” says Hassouna.

Based in southern Lebanon, DPNA has worked on a wide variety of projects across the country, ranging from civic engagement, entrepreneurship, and peacebuilding to basketball camps. Regardless of the project’s specifics, Hassouna has kept constant focus on the empowerment and development of young people, who represent both his country’s future as well as its biggest resource.

Now preparing to step aside and hand leadership of DPNA to younger leaders with fresh energy and ideas, Hassouna said his biggest achievement is the confidence he now has in some of those young leaders preparing to take over.

Addressing Helplessness

One of the young people mentored by Hassouna is Rami Shamma (SPI ’08), who has worked with the DPNA since 2006. Originally trained as a computer engineer, Shamma has experienced himself some of the obstacles that fuel a rampant apathy among young people in Lebanon. Among these is the “wasta” system, a form of nepotism or cronyism prevalent in Lebanese politics and economic life that rewards family and sectarian loyalties more than qualifications or ability. Also, the simple fact that Lebanese civil society is stifled by entrenched powers discourages youth interest and involvement.

“Before I enrolled in DPNA, I was the kind of person who didn’t care about anything at all,” says Shamma, adding that this perspective was shared by almost all his peers.

Shamma says he was fortunate to become involved with the DPNA when he began assisting his father, who taught computer classes for the organization. Soon thereafter, in the summer of 2006, a war with Israel displaced huge numbers of people within Lebanon. Hassouna, who had gotten to know Shamma, encouraged him to apply for a position with a DPNA emergency relief project in southern Lebanon.

Shamma took the job, and later became the manager of another DPNA project to encourage youth participation in the political process. Because of that effort, nearly 40 youth ran for local office or worked for electoral campaigns in 2010. Several of them won election to public office. The fact that so many more simply participated, however, is even more exciting to Shamma. He currently manages a project for DPNA that develops youth entrepreneurship and leadership skills.

Through his involvement with DPNA, Shamma says, he found new direction and focus in life, which he intends to spread as widely as he’s able. His biggest hope for the future is to see young people talk more, think more, act more; it is both an enormous challenge, he says, and a worthwhile one.

Hopeful Work

Working with young leaders is also atop the agenda for Fadi Rabieh, MA ’08, who oversees the Israeli-Palestinian Leadership Network, a Jerusalem-based program of Search for Common Ground, an NGO that works worldwide on conflict resolution and peacebuilding.

In that role, Rabieh is working on creating a network of Palestinian and Israeli leaders across the various sectors and divides. (One of the participants in this program is Maysa Baransi, SPI ’09; see her story.)

“We are in a leadership crisis in this part of the world,” says Rabieh, whose hope is to create a strong network of creative, engaged young leaders who will help untangle the problems facing Israelis and Palestinians.

One strategy he has been using is pairing young Israeli and Palestinian leaders within each side’s political, religious, business and civic sectors. Often, Rabieh says, these leaders have more in common with counterparts across the border than they do with other people within their own societies.

“They have a group culture – profession – that binds them together. That kind of identity, in my opinion, is sometimes stronger than ethnic identity.”

To facilitate trust and friendship between these leaders, Rabieh brings them together for a variety of experiences, including wilderness expeditions facilitated by the Outward Bound Center for Peacebuilding. As they develop relationships with one another, Rabieh continues, they begin to empathize with one another, and conceive of “the other side” in more human terms. Awareness of and appreciation for the surprising similarities that exist among people on either side of traditional dividing lines begins to play a role in the decisions they make as leaders within their respective communities. Gentle nudges from leaders within their various communities, he says, can have tremendous impact on the wider peace process.

“That’s the beauty of working with leadership,” says Rabieh, who has found the work profoundly encouraging and hope-inspiring. “I believe everything is possible. Peace is possible, love is possible, brotherhood is possible. As a result of my work with these people, I have lots of faith in the goodness of the human being.”

Breaking the Cycle

In Ramallah, a Palestinian city north of Jerusalem, Ruba Musleh, MA ’08, is working on a different project to develop entrepreneurship and career skills among Palestinian youth, some of whom may go on to become the kinds of leaders Rabieh works with. As a youth entrepreneurship specialist with the International Youth Foundation, Musleh works to strengthen the capacities of numerous partner institutions that work with young people in the West Bank. Her work includes grant implementation, coaching and training to help these partners provide quality services to youth.

“These are the leaders of tomorrow. These are the people who are going to build and develop Palestine and ensure a sustainable peace [here],” she says.

There has been no shortage of well-intentioned efforts to achieve similar goals over the years in Palestine, Musleh notes. Lack of coordination between the various NGOs working on these projects, however, has been a significant challenge and has led to what she describes as a constant “reinvention of the wheel.” Different groups come in to provide the same trainings and teach the same skills to the same youth over and over, and nothing really changes.

While the project she is working on is new, Musleh says one of its unique characteristics, designed to avoid the pitfalls of previous efforts, has been the development of partnerships with Palestinian entities, including the private sector and universities. By collaborating with private Palestinian businesses, Musleh’s project supports internship programs that develop employability and entrepreneurship skills, while providing practical work experience. Another benefit of bringing in the universities and private sector is to develop local ownership of and accountability for the work that International Youth Foundation is doing. This, she says, is an important way to ensure the work now underway comes to fruition, even if external funding decreases or ends at some future point (See story on p.8 for more on this challenge to peace and development work in the region).

“A lot of work [still] needs to be done in this area, but we’re going in the right direction,” Musleh says.

School vs. Fanaticism

Still other alumni are working with youth at an even earlier age, including Michael Chacour (SPI ’08), executive manager at the Mar Elias Educational Institute in Ibillin, Israel.

The school, which has more than 4,500 students from kindergarten through university, was founded by Chacour’s well-known uncle, Bishop Elias Chacour, and is affiliated with the Melkite Church, a Middle Eastern branch of Catholicism. More than 70 percent of the student body comes from Muslim families. The school, Chacour says, places strong emphasis on cultivating respect for and acceptance of differences among its diverse group of students. In this way, he continues, the school stands as a counterbalance to the forces of fanaticism that continue to divide the Middle East.

“Accept the others as you accept yourself. This is what Jesus teaches us and this is what we teach our students,” he says. — AKJ

(For more information on the history of the Mar Elias Educational Institute, see Elias Chacour’s 2001 memoir We Belong to the Land –The Story of a Palestinian Israeli Who Lives for Peace & Reconciliation, published by the University of Notre Dame.)

“These are the leaders of tomorrow. These are the people who are going to build and develop Palestine and ensure a sustainable peace [here].”

“I believe everything is possible. Peace is possible, love is possible, brotherhood is possible. As a result of my work with these people, I have lots of faith in the goodness of the human being.”