Groping towards a common ground

In August 2003, Barenboim received a wonderful reception after performing to a packed house in the West Bank town of Ramallah. The renowned pianist and conductor played a program of Beethoven and Brahms, including a duet with Palestinian pianist Salim Abboud. His patent message of reconciliation was applauded during three standing ovations from the audience of 350 Palestinians and a group of international diplomats.

A champion of Arab Israeli conciliation, Barenboim’s mission was to reach the Palestinian people in a creative and soulful way.

In his collection of essays, Death as a way of Life, Israeli author and essayist David Grossman focuses on Middle East conflict and the environment of menace and death that decades of violence and bloodshed have fostered. Indeed, one of the essays ends with a frightening reminder of the savage immediacy and human fragility Israelis face.

Grossman reveals, “as I type this, the radio is announcing a warning that terrorists with an explosive belt are now roaming the streets of Jerusalem”. To his credit, despite the despair that engulfs his daily living, despite the suicidal bombings that have struck hotels, nightclubs and coffee shops, despite his frustration and pessimism, Grossman never once loses the capacity to see through the darkness into the humanity of Israel’s enemies.

For Grossman, the Palestinians have legitimate claims - they too are also victims who have suffered both mentally and physically from the Israeli occupation. Incredibly, Grossman refuses to submit to the death grip enmeshing many Israelis who have been the subject of continuous hatred and murderous attacks. Instead, he insists on knowing them as human beings, for he understands that turning away or suspending one’s soul or anaesthetising ourselves to the shocking hostilities would mean being transformed into “a suit of armour that no longer has a knight inside”.

Particularly significant is the "Pathways to Reconciliation" project, an inspiring program that sends about 80 Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinian educators to Turkey to participate in a conference entitled "Continuing Dialogue in Times of Crisis". Upon their return, the teachers are ready to strengthen the peace education program that has been running for seven years in 60 Palestinian and Jewish High schools. Much of the program's power comes from the tremendous change it foments in the mindset of the participants.

In June 2003 a group of about 250 Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Palestinians, and Jews and Muslims from France took part in a four-day journey to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Krakow. Amid the ghastly images, the group walked along the railway tracks where the diabolical selection of Jews had taken place and entered the gas chambers, the crematoria and prisoners' huts.

After hearing the testimonies of survivors, the group erected a small memorial near the Death Wall, where Jews were lined up and shot. Then, the Arab participants read out the names of the mission's Jewish members' relatives who perished there. At that moment of shared charity and compassion, the delegation began singing traditional songs of the Holocaust.

One cannot avoid mentioning the bereaved parents, who have lost loved ones to in the violence. Israeli Roni Hirshenson lost his eldest son Amir in a bus bombing only to lose his second son Elad when he committed suicide after his best friend was killed in a suicide bombing.

Rather than choose vengeance, the shattered father remarkably chose reconciliation, believing that only by erecting common interests between Israelis and Palestinians can the senseless slayings stop. He heads up the Parents' Circle Relations committee, an interfaith organisation composed of 200 bereaved Jewish families and 200 Palestinian bereaved parents who lost children in the protracted violence. The group has lectured to more than 50,000 students, in addition to stageing political rallies and donating blood to each other's hospitals.

It is clear to most observers that governments may sign treaties, but only people can make peace. Let's hope that reconciliation continues, an endeavour that in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless".