US colleges could learn from Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, says head of eco institute
Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, from East Jerusalem, says Arava program’s students have compulsory, confidential, ‘brave’ conversations where both sides find it hard to talk, hard to listen
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
Southern Israel’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies was five weeks into a semester-long program when Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. The institute, which hosts both Israeli and Palestinian students, was planning to send participants home due to the war when a group of students approached its leadership.
“The students came to us and they said, ‘Guys, we decided to stay with each other. We refuse to leave,” said Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, the institute’s director.
In the institute, a research and academic center in southern Israel’s Kibbutz Ketura, college students from Israeli and Palestinian communities study green technologies. Since its founding in 1996, the institute has developed methods for fostering dialogue between the students, despite their backgrounds on opposing sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those methods could apply to US campuses riven by the fallout from the war, Abu Hamed said during a visit to New York last week.
Abu Hamed, from East Jerusalem, joined the Arava Institute in 2008. He left in 2013 to work in the Ministry of Science and Technology, where he served as the vice and deputy chief scientist, becoming the highest-ranking Palestinian in the Israeli government. He returned to the institute in 2018. He was in New York to build awareness about the institute’s mission as it works to build shelters for displaced Palestinians in Gaza.
The institute hosts 65 students per semester. Around one-third are Jewish Israelis, one-third are from Arabic-speaking backgrounds such as the West Bank and Jordan, and the remaining third are from other areas including the US and Europe.
The lesson plan includes compulsory dialogue sessions for three to six hours per week. The students share personal stories, with Israelis describing their IDF service and Palestinians relating their childhoods in refugee camps, for example. Sometimes participants weep or shout at each other, but the talks continue.
The most important element is keeping the talks confidential, Abu Hamed said. There is no social media allowed, the only staff present are facilitators for the talks, and students know that whatever they say will not affect their academics.
“Students know that whatever they say, whatever they share, stays in that room,” Abu Hamed said. “Once you create that ‘brave space,’ that encourages people to share their story, and to say things that for the other side to hear them becomes very, very difficult. Also, they hear things that they don’t like, but this is what the other side believes in.”
The program also organizes “multi-narrative trips” for the students, visiting locations such as Palestinian communities and Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, Yad Vashem. For many of the students, it is their first time visiting the other side.
To encourage the students, the program also brings in speakers from each side, such as journalists or politicians. Hearing from established professionals encourages the students from the same background to speak up.
The goal is to find a “middle way,” not to win arguments, Abu Hamed said.
“I’m not bringing you here to convince you about how the other side is right or wrong. No, we present it in a way that ‘this is a great opportunity for you to tell your story,'” he said. “I wouldn’t say normalize, but to accept the other, and the same thing also for the other side. To share your story, to hear the other story from them, not from the media.”
The conflict has torn apart college campuses in New York and around the US, and there appear to be few joint discussions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students. One attempt hosted by a leading rabbi and an imam at New York’s Queens College early in the war devolved into shouting and insults hurled by Muslim students against the imam. Jewish leaders at other colleges have described the relationship between Jewish and Muslim student groups as a “cold war.”
The Arava Institute has relationships with US universities, some of whom reached out after October 7 for advice on facilitating dialogue. The institute is discussing how to adapt its methods for the US and is in talks with a couple of US universities on providing faculty with tools for facilitating discussions, Abu Hamed said.
“Students are on campus with each other for at least four years. There should be a methodology,” Abu Hamed said of US campuses. “It’s doable here, too.”
While the Arava Institute focuses on cooperation around shared natural resources, such as groundwater, dialogue in the US could work toward collaborating on joint political or social initiatives, he said.
The institute’s ability to work on both sides of the conflict has played out in Gaza, where it has helped set up off-grid communal shelters that are serving around 10,000 people.
The institute’s nearly 2,000 alumni have also kept in touch since the outbreak of the war. After October 7, 2023, Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli alumni held weekly meetings on Zoom, and alumni from around the region attended an annual conference in Cyprus in December.
For the students who were at the institute when the war erupted, they finished the semester and kept up their dialogue — Palestinians alongside Israelis who were called up for military reserve service.
“They totally disagree. They totally refuse what the Israeli soldiers are doing in Gaza, but they were exposed to that human, and that’s what managed to keep this communication channel open,” Abu Hamed said.
