Making small talk with your foe is no easy task, especially when the only thing to break the ice is two plates of humus and a few slices of pita.
In a smoke-filled back room at the Ambassador Hotel in eastern Jerusalem, Palestinian and Israeli students shuffled uneasily in seats across small round tables from each other until someone spoke up and sparked a conversation.
These young leaders have embarked on a unique and ambitious peace initiative called OneVoice.
Although there is no shortage of peace initiatives floating around the Middle East, each purporting to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the OneVoice approach is, indeed, unique. Rather than having an agreement forced upon the population by either elected or self-appointed sponsors, OneVoice — an offshoot of the PeaceWorks Foundation — seeks to enable the population to take part in the decisions that will determine their fate.
The OneVoice proposal is a public negotiations referendum and will be officially launched this week. Any Palestinian or Israeli over the age of 15 is eligible to participate. Each participant will be asked to fill out a form in which they can quantify their opposition to the core issues of the conflict.
The forms will be distributed to the population and collected in several methods designed to ensure that no one falls between the cracks. A sophisticated multilingual Internet website will enable people to vote online. Forms appearing in newspapers will be filled out and sent via fax or direct mail. This initiative will stop at nothing, including door-to-door visitations, to allow even the “little person’s” voice to be heard.
The initiative has also been sprinkled with stardust in its effort to become known. Jason Alexander, who portrayed the balding, neurotic, tightfisted loser George Costanza in the hit series Seinfeld, arrived in Israel on Tuesday to take part in the launching ceremony. Other Hollywood names associated with the project — including Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston and Danny DeVito – have been joined by prominent religious leaders, businessmen and mainstream politicians from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
Yet, according to Muhammad Darawshe, an Israeli Arab and the regional director in Israel of OneVoice, the most famous individuals to take part in the project are none other than the average Israeli and Palestinian citizen. “They are the center of the organization. I think giving them a voice is what OneVoice is,” he said.
Darawshe’s Jewish counterpart is an old friend, American businessman Daniel Lubetzky. The two thought of the idea of OneVoice as a way to channel their frustration into something constructive, rather than rail helplessly about the current deadlock.
The gathering at the Ambassador Hotel was the first of its kind in this project — a workshop aimed at training young Israelis and Palestinians to be field operators and youth leaders in the movement.
Fifteen youngsters were scheduled to arrive at the hotel from each of the Palestinian territories and Israel, but due to bureaucratic restrictions which prevented the Palestinians from obtaining the papers required to enter Israel in time for the meeting, the Israelis clearly outnumbered their partners.
Nevertheless, the participants’ spirits were not broken. Once allowed time to become acquainted with each other and following a few moments of fidgety silence, the questions came pouring out. “What do Palestinians in the street think about us?” the Israelis asked Fida, a Palestinian student from Hebron. “Are they all extreme? Are there moderates, too? Do they really hate us?”
The students were quick to seize the rare and unusual opportunity to learn about the other side first-hand, rather than feeding off news reports.
One notable aspect of the gathering was the cultural diversity of the participants. The Israeli students spanned a wide range of backgrounds, opinions and cultures – including secular students of the avant-garde Bezalel art school; religiously observant men wearing traditional skullcaps; students of the religious Bar Ilan University; political moderates, doves, right-wingers, veteran political activists, novices. It also included one young man from Bet El, a Jewish community in post-1967 territory that is claimed by the Palestinians, who came out of curiosity.
The Palestinian side, although less diverse due to the low turnout, presented its own odd mix. Imad, a Ramallah student who preferred not to be identified by his real name, was until recently a member of the leading Palestinian faction Fatah. “I refused to speak to Israelis before,” he said. The only Israelis he had ever encountered were soldiers at checkpoints. Like many others, the mounting violence of the past three years gave him a change of heart. “I now think we must talk to Israelis about the peace process. If somebody is going to lose it won’t be Sharon and Arafat. It will be you and me,” he said. “That’s the main reason I’m here.”
Sagiv Asoulin, the head of the Israeli Student Union, also took part in the heated discussions. Although the Student Union is an apolitical body, Asoulin has never concealed his right-leaning political views. His attendance conforms with his belief that it is important not to leave the peace-making business solely to one political bloc. “I think that people from the right are the only ones who can continue with the [peace] process,” he said.
The students will be familiarized with the project and then mobilized to explain its merits to others and help gather the referendum forms.
Once the data is accumulated, the final and crucial stage of the initiative will take place: the results will be presented to the decision-makers. The project’s initiators hope the results will be translated into action. In their best-case scenario, political leaders will understand what their people want and act accordingly. If the results are not received by political leaders and acted upon, “this will be a mandate of legitimacy for alternative leaderships to move forward,” according to Darawshe.
OneVoice may gain the backing it requires to achieve its goals, or it may be shelved like so many other ambitious peace initiatives that preceded it. Regardless, it can already claim one significant achievement: in this room some major barriers were broken.