More Reflections from "Gail," The Israeli Peacebuilder Who Also Serves in the IDF Active Reserves -- And What that Says for U.S. Peacebuilding -- within the U.S.
Newsletter 297 - November 12, 2024
In Newsletter 289, we shared comments from "Gail," a former student of ours, about our comparison of October 7 with September 11. Since then, we have been having a lengthy email conversation with her. Gail agreed to allow us to share much of our conversation, but asked to remain anonymous, so we are calling her "Gail"—not her real name. For background, after Gail graduated from college in the U.S., she emigrated to Israel, joined the IDF and served for almost 3 years. She then went on to earn an MA in Conflict Research, Management and Resolution from Hebrew University in Israel and went on to a career in peacebuilding there, now working with an Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding organization called Amal-Tikva. She returned to the IDF as an active reservist after October 7, 2023. Gail has particularly insightful perspective on the situation in and around Israel, being simultaneously an academically-trained peacebuilder, and a member of the IDF active reserves. Balancing those two roles has been a challenge, but it also gives her insights into the situation that most people do not have. To be clear, Gail is speaking (writing, actually) here on her own behalf, not on behalf of Amal-Tikva.
What It is Like to Be A Peacebuilder in the IDF
For me personally, it's been a particularly challenging time to 'balance' my strong belief in nonviolent conflict resolution and peacebuilding efforts together with my belief that the IDF is necessary and we have a right to defend ourselves, even through military action. It's a thin line to walk and I have been heavily criticized from others on both ends of the spectrum. In fact, there was a dialogue program run by a British Trust which I had been facilitating for a while that ended up firing me after I got called up to reserve duty. They think I should have refused to serve and decided that my serving in the IDF as a reservist goes against their values of nonviolence and they made a new policy that staff members cannot serve in reserve duty. Many of the other staff criticized me saying "it's not possible to serve in an army and also believe in peacebuilding at the same time.. They told me that I am a fake, and a hypocrite, and two-faced and many other things.
Most of the others I serve with in the reserves however, have been rather positive towards my work in peacebuilding. Some of them think I am "naive" to believe in peacebuilding, and they believe we are far past any of these efforts making a difference, but they are not against the attempt per se. But also, in the unit I serve in, most of the people come from rather liberal/moderate left backgrounds. There are other units with people from much more right-winged and conservative backgrounds, who I am sure would hold much stronger opinions.
Both internally, in balancing my values and understanding where I stand regarding everything, and externally in physically going back and forth between reserve duty and work over the last year has been incredibly challenging. Working on a mixed Israeli-Palestinian team in peacebuilding organizations creates an interesting dynamic when the Palestinian staff knows you went and served in reserve duty. I have felt the need to shy away from talking about being in reserves when at work and almost hiding the fact. Not because I feel they are mad at me, but rather because I don't want to make my Palestinian colleagues uncomfortable. There are those who are more understanding and those who are less understanding. But it's unnerving when you don't know where someone stands, and therefore it has felt necessary almost to just keep quiet about it, so that we can continue a functioning work environment in which we promote peace processes through our programs for our participants and partner organizations.
Differentiating Between Track 1 and Track 2 or 3 Peacebuilding and Peacemaking
When I expressed surprise that peacebuilding efforts were still happening in Israel, Gail responded: "You are not the only one I have heard be surprised by this. I think it is surprising for many who are abroad to hear that actually despite the [war] situation, [peacebuilding] organizations have been capable of continuing efforts and programs."
This is the topic of the Amal-Tikva report, so we will withhold a description of that until we report on our conversation with Ariel Markose, the Chief Strategic Officer of Amal-Tikva and one of the authors of the report. But Gail also gave an example of another organization she has been working with for the last two years in Jerusalem called Yozmot Atid.
Yozmot Atid, which brings together Jewish Israeli and Palestinian women from East and West Jerusalem in a micro-business development training program. This program supports the women in establishing their own businesses and has formed a cross-community business network, creating business collaborations. They have been largely successful in continuing to carry out their programming in a mixed, binational setting, despite the ongoing conflict and war. Just during the last year alone, from last October until the end of September 2024, we had 119 participants (approx. 50% Jewish and 50% Palestinian) graduate from the program.
The key factor, Gail thought, that made this and other peacebuilding efforts possible, is that there are still a lot of people on both sides of the conflict who do want peace.
They want to live without violence, side by side, with safety, security, acknowledgment, respect, and equal rights. Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs, if you will. And they understand that this continued cycle of violence is not the way to get there. While there is still hate, the vast majority of "hate" stems from fear.
Other factors, too, have made peacebuilding still possible, though the form it takes has sometimes changed. Many organizations have switched from bi-national programming (meaning working with Palestinians and Israeli Jews together, to uni-national programming (meaning working just with Palestinians, or just with Israeli Jews. (We'll talk about these changes much more when we report on our discussion with Ariel Markose.) But, Gail explained:
There are changes on the ground in the peacebuilding field, but it's not preventing peacebuilding, it's just forcing creativity and adaptation — to figure out how we can keep working towards the goal of peace in the current atmosphere and conditions. The peacebuilding organizations who have successfully kept meeting binationally, such as Yozmot Atid, are able to do so given the type of peacebuilding they do. They are not meeting to talk directly about the conflict; they are not running facilitated dialogues. They, instead, are undertaking activities and programs that focus on other joint needs — such as economic needs of livelihood, as with Yozmot Atid, or climate change, as with EcoPeace. Other joint issues continue to persist even in the midst of a war, and therefore people are more willing to continue working towards these other shared goals and joint needs, even when they may not be as interested as continuing direct dialogue on the conflict itself. But, these activities, though they may not be direct dialogue, continue to promote relationship building and trust building between the participants.
Changing gears (and in another email), I asked Gail how it was possible to build peace, when both Hamas and Hezbollah assert that it is their "religious duty" to destroy Israel and the Jewish people, Gail observed that this is a misconception based on a contested interpretation of certain passages in the Koran.
As for what you said [in an email I sent to her] about the belief that it is [Muslim] duty to destroy Israel and the Jews, I think this is largely a misconception and is based on interpretation of Koran passages. Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah have outright declared these things as their goal and use certain interpretations of Koran passages to back it up. However, in my experience both working in peacebuilding with Palestinians as well as just having Palestinian acquaintances and friends who are not at all involved in peacebuilding efforts, this is not their belief. The vast majority of civilians on the ground have no interest in destroying the Jewish people and also say that this Islamic declaration by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is largely out of particular interpretations of religious text.
When I later asked Gail about this, she noted that
every holy text in existence can be read and interpreted to support violence towards others. There are texts in the Christian Bible and even in the Torah (Jewish bible) that could and have been interpreted and used to support violence towards others -— such as the crusades.
Peacebuilders, she pointed out, work at the grassroots level. They don't work with organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Peacebuilders work with the people on the ground and bridging those efforts with mid-level leadership (religious leaders, community leaders, etc.) and growing new leadership within the community. At the end of the day, peacebuilding efforts are between Israelis and Palestinians — not Israelis and Hezbollah, not Israel and Iran or Lebanon. I feel that those efforts are contained to a more political, military, and diplomatic level. Maybe, in some way, this does need to change and somehow peacebuilding efforts should engage with these actors as well...but I don't know how we would do that.
This, of course, is the traditional distinction between "Track 1" (peacemaking/diplomacy) which is done by officials of governments and leaders of nonstate actors in the case of organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah and "Track 2" or as some call them "Track 3" efforts, which are typically carried out by NGOs, trying to help the general population to make peace with each other, independently of what the leadership is or is not doing. As peacebuilder Diana Chigas explained in her BI article on Track 2 diplomacy
In "track three diplomacy," unofficial third parties work with people from all walks of life and sectors of their society to find ways to promote peace in settings of violent conflict. This work is aimed at building or rebuilding broken relationships across the lines of division among ordinary citizens in communities, in a range of sectors. The premise of Track Three Diplomacy is that peace can and must be built from the bottom up as well as from the top down. For any negotiation or settlement to be achieved, a "peace constituency" must exist. Likewise, for any settlement that is eventually reached, there must be support and capacity for its implementation.
I observed that what Gail described Israeli/Palestinian peacebuilders as doing was very similar that what I had recently heard Caleb Christen and Vinay Orekondy describe about their work in the United States in Better Together America which brings U.S. citizens together to do local bridge-building, and more importantly, deliberative democracy, to get around the ineffectual decision making structures at the national level. Many people in the U.S., I observed to Caleb and Vinay, have gotten very depressed about American politics, thinking that improving things, or making peace between Democrats and Republicans, is impossible. Vinay answered me by saying,
when people say "you know, it's all pointless," I'll say, "Well, let's look at what's dysfunctional and sidestep that." Because actually, the whole model is built on sidestepping that which is dysfunctional. It doesn't mean this is going to be easy. Rebuilding community, as a concept, is hard! The process of destruction started in the Industrial Revolution. So it's not going to be easy; it's going to be a challenge. But it's a vital one. And I think that there's a critical mass now. There's this urgency, this feeling that "something has to give." And I believe that this is, actually, despite being a big challenge, it is actually the easiest way forward. Because people want it.
Gail wrote back:
I read the newsletter you wrote about Better Together America. I can definitely see the parallels between what they are aiming to do and what many Israeli/Palestinian peacebuilding organizations are aiming to do here on the ground in terms of local work and breaking efforts down into manageable parts.
Something that super stuck out to me was when you discussed the pitfall of classic dialogues. This is also an issue in Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding, and what many people have come to critique, and why many are doubtful about the ability of peacebuilding to work — up until recently, most programs in the peacebuilding field in Israel/Palestine has been largely centered around "co-existence" and "getting to know the other" through either contact programs which bring participants together and help them get to know each other and build relationships through a non-conflict related dynamic i.e., PeacePlayers Middle East (basketball), Budo for Peace (martial arts), Freddie Kirvine Tennis Initiative; or, through dialogue programs intended to help the "other" to learn the other side's narrative and get to know each other and change perspectives.
In more recent years, there has been a bit of a paradigm shift. While these programs still do exist, many in the field are realizing that it isn't good enough, exactly for the reasons you mentioned - "participants tend to go home to their "same old toxic culture," and their transformed attitudes don't tend to last very long." Dialogue programs and contact programs don't make any "practical" difference on the ground. It may change perspectives temporarily, but when people go back into the same social systems, faced with inequality, racism, violence, and whatever else — these changed views don't last.
So the idea is that in addition to these efforts to change perspectives, an emphasis has to also be put on changing the social structures on the ground which are forming the reality that exists. It moves into activism and policy work and education for social change.
The paradigm shift has gone from a desire to "coexist", in which each community theoretically lives separately at peace, to understanding that our communities, whether we like it or not, are interconnected and dependent on each other. Therefore, what is actually needed is to work towards a more "shared society" which involves real change and not only perspective change.
While I was in my master's degree at the Hebrew University, we had a guest lecturer from Haifa University named Ran Kuttner who spoke a lot about this and has carried out a lot of research on this as well. He worked in program development for Givat Haviva and on advisory boards for various initiatives. [Gail included in her email an article by Kuttner, which can be found here.
This notion, too, relates to the situation in the United States. I will admit — we at BI have been calling for the Left and the Right to recognize that we are "all in this together," and we "have to coexist in peace." What we haven't been stressing, but probably should have, is that " like it or not, we are interconnected and dependent on each other." So what is needed here, as well as in Israel is, as Gail said "to work towards a more 'shared society' which involves real change and not only perspective change." That suggests, it would seem, the need for structural change as well as attitudinal change. But that's a long discussion that we will get into later.
Israeli Attitudes Toward the War and their Government
Reflecting on Israeli attitudes, Gail wrote:
The vast majority of Israelis want the war to end. They see both Hamas and Netanyahu as equally responsible for the failure to come to an agreement which would end the war and release the hostages. The majority feeling is that Netanyahu has no real interest in getting the hostages released, but rather continues to use war as a political pawn to keep him in power. Whether this is truly the case or not, I cannot say... but this is one of the major perspectives held in Israeli society right now.
As I am sure you know, the political environment in Israel has been in a state of upheaval, long before Oct. 7th. In 2020 and 2021, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in protest of Netanyahu, wanting to oust him from government. These protests went on for over a year. In 2023, civilians again took to the streets in mass protest, including national strikes against the proposed judicial reform. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took part in these protests. The 2022 election was the 5th election in over 4 years, due to the government collapsing time after time. Following, Oct. 7th, civilians have again been taking to the streets every single week in protest of the government and Netanyahu, blaming them for the failure to release the hostages, and demanding that the government comes to an agreement which will release them.
With that said, following Oct 7th, almost every reservist was called up, and those who are not active reservists fought to gain some assignment as reservists — to aid the cause in some way. Everyone wanted to draft and felt the need to be an active part of defending the country.
This comes in stark contrast to the threats made and positions taken during the protests against the judicial reform, in which many many bodies of reservists refused to show up for their reserve duty as a form of protest against the reform. The dominant perspective then was "why should we risk our lives for a country who doesn't care about us?"
And yet, as could be expected of Israeli society, the second that the call to reserve duty was not just for yearly exercises or regular temporary stations on borders etc, and actually became a serious need to defend the country, everyone, including those who refused to serve as protest against judicial reform, immediately showed up to reserve duty, and many people who don't actively serve in the reserves found ways to get drafted. There are those who are far beyond the required age for reserve duty who chose to volunteer and continue serving, and there are those who, for other reasons, have exemptions from reserve duty and fought to cancel their exemptions so that they could volunteer in various roles. In my eyes, and in many others, this is because the need to defend the country was no longer seen as a duty to the country as in "government" and was now a necessity to protect civilians on the ground — because everyone knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who was either murdered or taken hostage.
So most Israelis want the war to end, but with a hostage deal. The idea of the war ending without getting the hostages back is not accepted. Most believe that the war could have been over much, much sooner and not have been dragged out as much if both Hamas and Netanyahu would have taken negotiations seriously and would have actually been interested in putting the war to an end.
So there is push back to end the war, but the dominant perspective is not against the war outright. Most agree that it was necessary for Israeli forces to enter Gaza to destroy Hamas infrastructure and root out Hamas itself.
In terms of what is going on in Lebanon and now the entrance of Israeli forces into Lebanon, I have not heard much push back against it. There is the fringe left who is against it, but these are people who even before October 7th have been active in anti-occupation and anti-apartheid rhetoric and who are "refuseniks".
The decision to enter Lebanon is largely dependent on the need for Israeli civilians from the north to return home. Most civilians from the north have made it very vocal that they will not return home unless Israel does something very serious about the threat that looms over the north from Hezbollah and Iran. They fear another October 7th, but carried out on them by Hezbollah in the north.
The goal, therefore, of Israeli forces entering Lebanon is to push Hezbollah back to the armistice line so that there is a true security barrier between the two countries. In doing so, Israel has unearthed a lot of Hezbollah infrastructure such as tunnels crossing from Lebanon into Israel — which has only boosted northern Israeli communities' belief that there is a looming threat and that Israel needs to seriously take action in order for them to return to their homes and feel safe.
There are other topics related to the war that are more divided in Israeli society— such as Israel providing humanitarian aid to Gazans. There are those who conflate all Gazans with Hamas, and the fact that many of those who took part in the atrocities on October 7th were not affiliated with Hamas or any other terror group only strengthens this perspective. So some Israelis believe that we should not provide them with aid and they do not deserve our aid. They believe that providing them with aid only emboldens them to continue their actions, and that we should cut them off from all aid in order to force their hand. On the flip side, there are those who understand that not all Gazans are Hamas or terrorists, and many are just innocent civilians who are negatively impacted by the war, and that we have some sort of responsibility to help them.
Clearly, there is a lot of work to be done building trust and understanding both between the sides, but also within the sides. We will be talking a lot more about that when we post our conversation with Ariel Markose, with Amal-Tikva, in the next week or two.
Lead Graphic Photo Credit: Sourse: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Israel-Palestine_pea... Wickey-nl, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, url: via Wikimedia Commons
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