An investment in peace

By Maheen a. Rashdi

Much as I tried making light of it, the year did not begin too happily. Every which way I looked, there was a grim tale being told. Just hours before greeting the New Year at my extreme end of the North Pole, I received news of my uncle’s death, for whom, ‘larger than life,’ is the only epitaph I can think of. It seemed to me a gloomy foreshadowing of the year to come.
The disquiet worsened when the international scene surged with bloody flash points – some showing the blood, others vowing to shed some. The Gaza casualty list; the Pak-India war hysteria and the unending conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the media newsreel more than the world’s welcome of the new year. It is apparent that as we get older as a race, we become more blood thirsty, wanting to avenge every injury with a greater vengeance. Every New Year now seems boded to begin more viciously than the last.
But in the midst of all this carnage, I smell a whiff of hope. Though it is faint, very faint. Yet, it does have the potential to spread and grow like the drop that turned into an ocean. But it demands the most difficult undertaking – to listen to the other side.
I am still not sure whether I should have many expectations of what appears to be a prototype of a desired world.
Face to face/faith to faith is what this peace initiative goes by.
It brings together Christian, Jewish and Muslim teenagers from regions of conflict to develop a new generation of leaders in the hope that they will, ‘negotiate a multi-faith global society.’ It is a summer intensive course that is conducted in the US and is part of a year-long programme in which these students try and continue spreading the word of peace in their communities back home. It is actually one of a dozen or so such projects that have been going on since the nineties headed by optimistic peacemakers who believe that one day, just by hearing each other out, they will find peace.
The programme has so far survived the intense hostilities between Israel and Palestine and the second intifada, and has grown to two sessions a summer, each with up to 50 Israeli and 50 Palestinian participants. While learning how their own religions and those of others can be used to build a more peaceful world, the teenagers recruited from the warring zones are asked to do what their elders have not done – listen to their enemy.
But when hatred, terror and revenge is the only legacy that their upbringing encompasses, is it at all possible to even agree to listen? Surprisingly, despite living disunited lives, Palestinian and Jewish kids from Jerusalem do end up sitting side by side in a harmonious setting to talk of their respective experiences of war.
And as their stories of suicide bombings and tank attacks come pouring out, they realize that their fears are the same as is their desire of wanting an end to this relentless struggle. Initially, for these youngsters too it is a tough call. When an Ayoub is told to share a bunk with an Aharoun, it is akin to sleeping with the enemy. But by the time the two weeks of their time together are up, they become what they should be all along – just children having fun together.
But these are teens, at a camp setting, in a neutral ground, under the aegis of a theological institute, creating a community that would be impossible to conceive where they come from – especially by the adults. How far can this harmony stretch? How long before they might be recruited to hold guns at each other? A director of one of these programs in Israel says, “If in five years, in a political or business negotiation, two participants meet with better skills and knowledge, it’s enough to change the world.”
But such a world seems far, far away. All we see now is Kashmir; Palestine; Sri Lanka; Tibet; Afghanistan – the list is endless.
Going full circle each time, we are only left with the ruins of peace investments. Every conflict thrives on the egos and lust of politicians who hijack people’s rationale and use them to breed hatred for their dastardly plots. A CBC documentary on the Israel/Palestine conflict recently chilled me to the bone when it showed clips of a day in school in Israel and Palestine where children were being taught the curriculum of hate against each other.
Is this what fighting for justice is about? Breeding hatred and teaching the art of war? Taliban seems to have become the generic name for terrorism and a Taliban-like tendency seems to be more prevalent than we are willing to acknowledge.
In many of the conflicts around the world there will never be reconciliation till both sides continue a mutual indictment. To make the blood stop, anyone who has the tiniest love of peace has to muster that superhuman courage to forget and start anew.
Be it our local ethnic strife, a gang war or friction between two neighbouring countries – how much blood will it rain before we reach out for the mantle peace? ‘Love thy neighbour’ might be an obsolete ethical code in this age of mistrust and insecurity. But tolerating the neighbour, would still be in the best interest of growth and prosperity than starting a war!
Owning and disowning the culprits of terrorism who too are just pawns appeasing someone else’s pugnacious desires, is an infantile exercise. A joint standoff against mutual enemies would make a stronger front than bickering about where the bullet was made.