Peace on Hold: The School for Peace
Noor Abu Ras is the coordinator of the university courses in the School for Peace. Right now, she says, the courses are on hold, as are all university studies. They are currently planned to start up again in December.
“There is one course planned for this semester, for psychology students in Tel Aviv,” she says. “The course registration was full before the war started. We’ll have to figure out how to get a semester’s worth of information into a little over a month.”
The spring semester will see more university courses: in the Ruppin Academic College, Ben-Gurion University, Hadassah and Tel Aviv for elder-care nurses.
In contrast with the courses offered in the School for Peace to professionals, the university courses are academic, meaning the students are expected to produce final projects that may involve research or a talk, as well as turning in a final report that includes introspection, as a way of understanding the process they have undergone throughout the course.
“We will stick to our usual format, with two facilitators and uni- and binational dialogue groups,” says Abu Ras, “but we might have to play some things by ear. I expect it will be more difficult. The Palestinian Israelis will be more wary, afraid they do not have a safe space to talk, while some of the Jews may be coming back from reserve duty, and even from fighting within Gaza.”
While waiting for the universities to reopen, Noor, who is a SFP facilitator, has been working on projects and facilitating short courses. She has also been involved in another aspect of the SFP: consultation.
“We have had all kinds of organizations turn to us for advice,” she says, “for example, the mental health services of Beersheva turned to us, and we led several sessions with them. With our help, they were able to analyze the situation they were in and hopefully to make changes.” Other clients have included the Davidson Institute of Science Education in Rehovot and the Carmel Hospital in Haifa.
“People are really under stress. But we have a role that is slightly different; we give them an alternative. What we are doing now is really a dialogue in the dark.”
Noor is especially hopeful for the results of the dialogue course for Israel Palestinians and Jews living in Europe. The facilitators for the course – Sliman and Yonatan – are SFP alumni living abroad, and their meetings, which started on Oct. 8, the first day of the war (as had previously been slated) seem especially timely now. They have already met several times since, and the group is highly committed to the course.
Courses coming back
Courses are returning from Zoom to meeting in person. The Climate Change Agents course is already taking on a field trip hosted by some of the course participants in Nazareth. The new Mixed Cities Change Agents course opened on Friday, Nov 10. “We have an amazing group for this course,” says Dr. Roi Silberberg, director of the School for Peace.
Silberberg spoke to friends and supporters in an online session organized by the Communications and Development office. He said that he has never felt the need for the SFP more than now. He reported that in the ongoing facilitators’ course – currently held on Zoom – new, thorny issues have been arising in the discussions.
Several active alumni groups are also meeting online. The predominant issues that arise in these dialogue sessions, says Silberberg, are the fact that both Palestinians and Jews who do not toe the current line are having a hard time speaking up. They are also feeling a worrying increase in violence within the Green Line, in mixed cities and in Jewish cities, in Jerusalem and in the West Bank. The SFP is planning steps to support the activism of its alumni in various ways. Recently the staff sent emails to its alumni asking them for ideas, suggesting meetings and asking what they lack to carry out projects in the face of this war.
“We supply a safe space where they can talk,” says Silberberg. “When people can’t talk, they have a hard time thinking. The only way we can move past these events is by talking.”