What could appear farther from today’s bloody and seemingly hopeless reality than crowds of Israelis and Palestinians gathering together to plot a joint path toward peace? Yet hundreds did just that last week in the center of Jerusalem, as peace-building leaders, diplomats, and philanthropists convened to strategize and organize a coordinated march forward.
Delusional? Actually, this crowd has its ears to the ground more than most. They’re well aware that their two peoples are sinking further into crisis. That democracy, long absent for Palestinians, is under threat in Israel, too. That fear, uncertainty, dehumanization and despair run rampant. That senseless funerals are sharply on the rise in 2023.
These peace builders also understand well – since they work with youth every day – that the young people who grew up in the last 20 years of separation, fear and violence have particularly extreme views. That the harsh attitudes of this lost generation are already powering some of today’s most troubling news and casting dark shadows on tomorrow.
Given their particular closeness to all of this grim truth, the peace-building field should be even more depressed than everyone else. By now, they should have given up. Instead, however, they’re doubling down and gaining steam.
A wave of Israeli-Palestinian cooperative initiatives
In fact, the leaders who gathered last week at the Unite the Field conference are tuned into some big trends that often escape the notice of the media and public. First, the biggest wave of Israeli-Palestinian cooperative initiatives in history is now coming into its own.
These programs work across the landscape to engage wide spectra of both societies in shared business, educational, sports, medical and cultural projects, which both improve lives and are the only places where people directly confront the toughest issues of the conflict. Some 60% of today’s initiatives started since the Second Intifada. Today, they carry the hard-earned expertise and resilience of organizations that have hit their stride.
A second overlooked trend: these grassroots change-makers are now working smarter. Over 160 are now networked through the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), which hosted last week’s conference. Rather than go it alone, they’re increasingly coming together – to partner on programs, train leaders, engage alumni, track impact and to connect participants into a larger community.
Third, rather than simply wait out the violence – or worse, wait out a generation – more policymakers and philanthropists than ever seem to understand that the best thing we can do today is plant powerful seeds for tomorrow. We may be stuck with a painful past and a violent present. But the future is still unwritten, and the peacebuilders have found opportunity there.
THE PATH around political dysfunction and violence goes straight to the ultimate source of power – the people. As former US president Bill Clinton recently explained, that is exactly how a durable, 30-year peace was built in Northern Ireland, where the process “was driven by the people.” The “people… were out in front of the politicians because they wanted their children and grandchildren to grow up outside the shadow of violence and hatred. The Good Friday Agreement negotiations were driven and maintained through the rough spots” by this popular “demand for peace.”
Such a strategy has never been tried at scale in the Israeli-Palestinian context, but that may be starting to change. First came two decades of innovation by hundreds of small initiatives. Then came MEPPA, the new $250-million, five-year US program to invest in Israeli-Palestinian social and economic peacebuilding, which is now in just its second year.
In a new report published by Mitvim, we explain how today’s rampant violence and despair certainly challenge this effort but are not the whole story. True, real and imagined barriers keep most Israelis and Palestinians worlds apart. Equality, democracy and civil society itself are under daily attack by those who fear the power of the grassroots to turn enemies into partners for a win-win end to the conflict.
But for any who doubt the appetite or energy for grassroots-level change, take note: the nine projects selected for funding in MEPPA’s first year came from a staggering pile of 166 project proposals. The winning initiatives will work with 3,500 people directly and touch thousands more.
MEPPA’s second year appears poised to reach many smaller initiatives, as well as new audiences. And this enthusiasm and energy in the region is matched by the ongoing, unusual bipartisan support in Washington, where 94 members of Congress from both parties recently urged continued MEPPA investments.
The conversation at last week’s conference went bigger still. Significant players in private philanthropy are exploring how best to plug in their resources to an expanded pipeline of activities. Major state donors, including Canada, the UK and the EU, have stepped up their peace-building investments. Together, they’re discussing how to coordinate strategically and even institutionalize a generational effort, perhaps even through an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, a concept that led to MEPPA’s passage.
Some wish this was naivete. But actually, all of this effort is quite rooted in this moment. The struggles for democracy, equality and security have drawn more attention to the conflict and its costs. They’ve chanted about the undeterred settler rampage in Huwara and the 100+ victims of criminal violence among Israel’s Palestinian citizens.
The success of a thirty-year campaign against the Israeli judiciary is also a reminder of the power of determined and strategic grassroots efforts. In response, a new generation of activists has learned the power of their own voices. And like Israelis and Palestinians, the international community has peered over the abyss and realizes that it cannot, it dare not, simply look away just because there is no short-term horizon and the diplomatic toolbox feels empty.
A new strategy is on the table. It won’t be easy, but as too many families can tell you, the path we’re on is a deadly failure. The peacebuilders are beating a path forward together because no solution is possible without a partner. There is room enough for millions of Israelis and Palestinians of good faith to awaken and join them.
The writer is the founder and president of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), the coalition of 160 NGOs building people-to-people cooperation and partnerships between Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. The views expressed are his own.