Hebrew, Arabic, and English words filled the air weaving its own
colorful tapestry as the bus made its way into Aqaba, Jordan having
just crossed the border from Eilat, Israel. The bus contained
alumni of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies who were
traveling together for the founding conference of their newly
established alumni organization - the Arava Peace and Environmental
Network (APEN). Since 1996, the Institute (www.arava.org)
has successfully brought together Christian, Muslim, and Jewish
college students from Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority
(PA), Egypt, Tunisia, the United States, Canada and the rest
of the world to live together and to study the environment on the
undergraduate and graduate levels.
The Arava Institute is the premier environmental teaching and
research program in the Middle East, preparing future Arab and
Jewish leaders to cooperatively solve the region's environmental
challenges. This can only happen if we are able to create the right
conditions while our students are with us, resulting in a dynamic
that reaches beyond the time they spend on our campus on Kibbutz
Ketura. The establishment of APEN is proof of the success of
this approach. We have alumni involved in a number of cross-border
research projects between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and
Jordan, ranging from river restoration, air quality, bio-diversity,
bio-gas, and the Dead Sea to name a few. In addition, our alumni
have founded a number of environmental organizations, and are
taking up positions of environmental leadership where they live.
Seventy-five percent of our alumni work in the environment. The
Arava Institute's long-term goal is that the future ministers of
the Environment from Israel, Palestine, and Jordan will all be
graduates of the program.
The success of the long-term effects of this people-to-people
program is due to a number of factors. The first is the environment
itself. All of our participants bring their strong individual
national, cultural and religious identities with them to the
program. While never negating their identity, our interdisciplinary
program creates a framework that allows the environment to act as
the metaphor, the level playing field, and, most importantly, the
glue that allows us to deal with the more difficult political
issues that can't be avoided with such a constellation of young
leaders.
The Environment Invites Us Not to be Afraid
Reduced to one of its core components, this conflict is about
land-more precisely the borders that nations draw on the land. When
thinking about what divides nations in this conflict, the land is
often viewed as one of the major stumbling blocks to any
reconciliation efforts between the various nations and peoples in
the region. When the land is looked upon solely as a geo-political
instrument, this is true. However, when viewed from the perspective
of the environment, a new framework opens up. The environment,
which does not recognize political borders, invites us to not be
afraid of the other.
In addition, this program is not a weekend, or a week, or a few
weeks. Participants are together for between four months and two
years. This allows for the time that is required to forge the trust
and friendships so that the students can confront directly,
honestly, and painfully the harsh realties of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. We work with Dr. Sami Adwan, of Bethlehem University, and
Dr. Dan Baron, of Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, and the
notion of the double narrative that teaches that there is more than
one narrative of how events are recounted and understood. This
takes place within the Peace-Building and Leadership Seminar (PELS)
of the program where we confront directly the issues of the
conflict, as well as cultural and religious differences.
Having the program on Kibbutz Ketura also plays an important role.
Students live in special dormitories built on the kibbutz for the
Arava Institute, but eat their meals in the communal dining room of
the kibbutz and are "adopted" by kibbutz families. The kibbutz, a
community by intent, on the micro level provides an important
model of sharing and cooperation with clear implications for
the peace and the environment on the macro level. Students live in
the isolation of the desert while in the program. There are no big
city distractions and so they are forced to create a community
among themselves.
Our program is located in the Middle East, not in Europe or the
United States, literally on the border of Israel and Jordan, and a
few kilometers from the Egyptian border. This makes the experience
that much more real and tangible. On weekends, students can go and
visit each other in their homes in Israel, the PA, and
Jordan. For example, this past year a group of students went
to Amman, Jordan for the wedding of the sister of one of our
students.
We, on the staff, try to be sensitive both to the needs of
students, as well as to use the differences as an opportunity to
teach each other. At our orientation this year, which fell during
the last week of Ramadan, we made sure that the meal (called iftar
during Ramadan) was served soon after sunset. During the meal, one
of the Muslim students explained the meaning of Ramadan, and then a
Jordanian Christian explained what it was like to be a Christian in
Jordan during the month of Ramadan. When there is a Jewish wedding
on the kibbutz, the first Jewish wedding most of the Arab students
have ever attended, we make sure that explanations are
provided.
"Home, Earth and Identity"
At our orientation, that always takes place in the vast beautiful
landscape of the Arava Valley, we set the stage for the semester by
offering a bio-centric approach to dealing with the religious,
political, and cultural differences that are all too real here, in
an activity that we call "Home, Earth, and Identity." As we walked
past the 500 to 100 million year old multicolored sandstone giant
Pillars of Amram carved by the great primordial rivers that once
covered the earth, we paused and noted how all of us, then
represented by our ancestral amphibians, had crawled out of the
primordial muck of that layer some 350 million years ago. Later on
we read from the Book of Genesis (2:7 & 3:19) and talked about
how we are all but walking dust.
These are our common identities, those similarities that overlap
our differences, which can be the tools for the needed
reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. At the Arava Institute we
have learned that the environment can serve as one of the vehicles
for that important task.