Israeli, Palestinian activists unite for peace

BEIT UMMAR, West Bank -- Like thousands in the Middle East, Khaled Abu Awad knows the bitter price of the last three years of violence: two of his brothers -- one of them 14 -- were killed by Israeli soldiers.

In Tel Aviv, Israel, Robi Damelin nurses the most dreaded pain of any parent. Her 28-year-old son David, while manning a West Bank checkpoint, was shot and killed by a Palestinian sniper.

In the brutal Mideast environment, their losses are more than enough to make Awad and Damelin sworn enemies. Instead they have become friends -- and have dedicated themselves to encouraging others to do the same.

"If we continue down this road, it will never finish," said Awad, who lives in the southern West Bank village of Beit Ummar.

Awad and Damelin are among nearly 600 members of Parents Circle, which brings together Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost relatives to the fighting.

It is one of many organizations in Israel and the Palestinian territories operating on a common principle: If Jews and Arabs spend time together, the fears and hatreds that feed violence will slowly disappear.

"It takes down the barriers when you can see we're both human beings," Damelin said. "We cannot wait for the politicians to do it for us."

The effort takes many forms: a joint Jewish-Muslim youth magazine; an orchestra with one Jewish conductor and one Arab conductor; lectures by bereaved Palestinians and Israelis at schools and workshops.

Long, hard years

But these have not been easy years for the proponents of peace. Since September 2000, more than 800 Israelis and 2,400 Palestinians have been killed in a cycle of suicide bombings and army invasions.

A temporary cease-fire declared June 29 by the main Palestinian militant groups has quelled most of the violence for now, but mistrust overflows to such an extent that few on either side have faith the hiatus will lead to a lasting peace. Still, polls show most people yearn for it.

Yitzhak Frankenthal, an Israeli who founded Parents Circle after his son was killed by Hamas militants in 1994, said some members grew disillusioned and fell away as the carnage mounted.

Mossi Raz, the Israeli director of the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Coalition, which includes Parents Circle among its 15 or so members, estimated there are only a few thousand activists dedicated to the cause.

Complications

Efforts are complicated by restrictions on Palestinians coming into Israel; Israelis are discouraged from entering Palestinian areas, where some have been killed. The belief that talk of peace is foolhardy also plays a role.

"During a war, people don't want to meet the enemy," Raz said.

Still, the groups are moving forward. Parents Circle, for example, arranges an average of 100 high school lectures a month on reconciliation, and arranges conversations between bereaved families on both sides.

Attention is also focusing on relations between Arabs and Jews inside Israel. The San Jose-based Cisco Systems, for instance, runs an academy in Israel that has piloted a program mixing Israeli Arab students and Israeli Jewish students from the Nazareth area in computer science classes.

Zika Abzuk, a Cisco business development manager, said the 18-month program faced trouble at the outset when Israel invaded the West Bank towns in April 2002 .

But students and parents gathered in Nazareth and decided to go ahead -- and all the starting students, 24 Jews and 24 Arabs, graduated in July. Cisco plans two more classes in the fall.

Abzuk said some of the students were resistant to the idea of becoming friends at first, but at around the halfway mark they warmed to each other and began visiting each other's homes.

"They treated the class as if it were a bubble from the ugliness of what's going on in reality," she said.

Co-existence

Dan Pattir, executive vice president of the Abraham Fund in Israel, an American-Israeli organization, said a study recently showed that 110 organizations in Israel were working on Arab-Jewish relations.

"If we don't coexist, then we can't exist," he said.

Among all the would-be peacemakers in Israel and the Palestinian territories, people like Damelin and Awad -- those whose losses would seem to lead to even more hatred -- are among the most remarkable.

Damelin said that she never wished for vengeance, bolstered by deeply held political views in favor of Palestinian statehood and against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Her son, David, shared her views but agreed to serve in the West Bank as an army reservist out of a sense of obligation to students at the university where he taught who were required to serve there.

"I don't think my son died for Israel -- I think he died to protect occupiers," she said, referring to the Jewish settlers whose homes were near the checkpoint where David was shot.

Awad, a lumber contractor, was active in the first intefadeh in the late 1980s, but says he turned away from violence as the peace process gathered steam in the 1990s.

The death of his brother, Yousef, 31, in November 2000, shook his belief that Israelis and Palestinians could be friends.

"A lot of my Jewish friends tried to talk to me, to tell me they were sorry, but it was difficult," he said. "You think that anyone on the other side is a murderer."

But after the death six months later of his 14-year-old brother Said, he decided the killing had to stop. Now he hosts Jewish families, addresses school groups and is organizing an Israeli-Palestinian summer camp for children.

Damelin and Awad say their loss has granted them authority as speakers for peace.

"What can the other Palestinians say? I have the blood of my brothers," he said. "We want to solve the problem -- not to be at the front-line with guns."