Op-ed: Visions of Peace

Over spring break, 26 Tufts students traveled to Israel and Palestine on the first annual Tufts Hillel Visions of Peace (VOP) Coexistence Fellowship Trip. Over six days, we traveled to seven cities and met with numerous organizations that work to understand, evolve or bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs and Jews. While each of us came from a unique background, we shared the same goals: to cut through the biased narratives that exist on both sides of the conflict, to study efforts that are succeeding in mitigating the conflict and to understand what we, as students of Tufts University, can do to help bring an end to the violence.

It is important to remember that every venture to Palestine/Israel comes with a bias. The VOP Trip was sponsored by Tufts Hillel, who fundraised for the trip. The trip was planned by Sara Legasey, a program associate at Hillel who has led six trips to Israel and Palestine, alongside Tufts junior Abe Bayer and senior Nimarta Narang. What made the VOP Trip so extraordinary was that everyone involved acknowledged their biases, lending the trip a level of transparency. As an organizer of Birthright trips through Hillel, Sara was fully aware that this trip would be perceived by some as a pro-Israeli mission. Alongside Abe and Nimarta, she crafted the trip with this recognition in mind. Yossi Samet, the Israeli tour guide who shepherded the Fellows across the country, continually acknowledged his political leanings as a Zionist – a complicated term that traditionally means someone who supports the existence of a Jewish state – albeit a liberal one. Every stop on the agenda, every question answered, came with the acknowledgement of a personal stance and the recommendation to seek a second opinion. These acknowledgements lent a sense of honesty that helped us understand the complexity of narratives that can conflict while coexisting in a single space.

If the first VOP Trip had a bias, it was in demonstrating that Arabs and Jews can live together peacefully. We met with community centers in the mixed cities of Haifa and Jerusalem as well as with the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, organizations that are bringing the geographically, culturally and religiously divided communities together using art, dance, interfaith celebrations and sports. This theme was echoed in the work of the Peres Peace Center and Roots, two organizations that are attempting to cut through the warped narratives on both sides of the conflict, presenting a vision of people who are not so different from each other. In the context of a conflict that is seen by many domestically and internationally as hopeless, this is a powerful message. Despite the fact that there are only a few 'mixed' cities in the country, these grassroots organizations proved that peace is not only possible but present in certain pockets of society.

However, it is important to note that these presentations of peace carry an inherently pro-Israeli bias. First, coexistence – a word that has been heavily critiqued – fundamentally necessitates the right of the Jewish people to have a home in that region. Coexistence operates under the assumption that the Jewish people will remain in Palestine and that we must find ways for the Arabs and Jews to live and interact peacefully with each other. While this may be a realist view of the situation, it is not one that is accepted by everyone. Second, supporters of coexistence efforts are labeled by many as 'normalizers.' Members of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus, who were no older than 18, admitted to us that they were seen as traitors in their own community just for singing songs alongside Israelis, a sentiment present on the Israeli side as well. By making peace with their occupiers, supporters of coexistence are seen as perpetuating the oppression of the Palestinian people.

Recognizing this stance, the VOP Trip took Fellows into the West Bank to witness how the occupation affects the everyday lives of Palestinians. In East Barta’a, we witnessed Palestinian workers streaming across the border to find work in Israel. With their economy depressed, they have no choice but to endure humiliation at the security checkpoints, piling into crowded cabs that will take them to the scrap heaps where they salvage metal from rusted cars to be shipped off to China and Germany. A Palestinian business owner, whose store was based in Israel, showed us the five documents that he was required to carry at all times. In Hebron, a city in the West Bank divided by Palestinians and Jewish settlers who both believe they have a historical claim to the city, we witnessed the store owners who had been forced out of their shops. The once-thriving Hebron market had been forced into the streets, where grates covered peroples' heads to protect them from the trash and stones hurled down from the settlements looming above. Israeli guards kept watch over the whole scene, there only to protect the settlers. This is the alternate view of the conflict, one in which messages of coexistence are at best a distant dream, at worst propaganda.

Through the atrocities we witnessed on both sides of the conflict, some lessons emerged. Most of the debate around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict centers on political debate: one state or two states. Of course, decisions will have to be made at the national and political levels that define new borders and hopefully grant equal rights to the Arab people. But whether there is one state or two, this conflict will not be solved politically. There is no adjudication of territory that will end the violence, not when the two populations are packed together along indivisible boundaries in a country roughly the size of New Jersey. Peace will only come from the grassroots level, from the children of the Jerusalem Youth Chorus or the Parents Circle-Family Forum, an organization that tells the stories of those whose loved ones were killed in the violence. As with any conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian divide will only be bridged by bringing the disparate communities together once again, both physically and mentally.

This is where we, as students of Tufts University, have a role to play. This is a lesson we have yet to learn on the Tufts campus, where student groups are entrenched in their respective sides. This is a reality that was painfully clear on Sunday night, when the Tufts Community Union Senate debated and passed a measure calling for Tufts to divest from four companies that do business in Israel. Such polarization impedes productive dialogue and, more importantly, productive action. If a father whose daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber and a wife whose husband was killed without cause by an Israel Defense Forces soldier can come together to promote peace, then we too can work together to write a new narrative.

Over the next few weeks, months and years, the VOP Fellows will be planning a number of initiatives to promote this goal. In addition to this op-ed, we will be creating a book that shares some of our takeaways and leading dialogues that can help create a less divisive conversation around this issue. We welcome the support of all who want to aid in this effort. As the few who were privileged enough to embark on the first VOP Trip, we hope that we can share with the entire Tufts community the lessons we learned.

Sincerely,

2017 Visions of Peace Coexistence Fellows: Jamie Neikrie, Ria Mazumdar, Alison Bogy, Nimarta Narang