On a stage far from their homes, two Israelis and a Palestinian sat together, speaking not just about the conflict they inherited, but also about the choices they’ve made since. They exuded a yearning for co-existence.
The event was hosted in August at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills, where the three shared personal stories of transformation shaped by their time at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, located in the desert region of southern Israel. The event was organized by Cantor David Barash.
Two of the Arava alumni, Yahel Tirosh and Adina Halevi, were both born in the United States but grew up in Israel. The other alum, whom we’ll call Omar, lives in the West Bank and also participated in this event last year. The 80 local people in attendance were asked to avoid posting to social media, and the Chronicle is avoiding some identifying information, for security.
At the Arava Institute, students from Israel, Palestinian territories, Jordan and elsewhere come together to explore environmental science in the context of regional cooperation and peace. On stage, the three Arava alumni seemed like old friends, relaxed and smiling with one another.
“I mainly thought I was going to the Arava Institute to do an internship, and it turns out that I was going to completely reset everything I knew about my life until that point,” Halevi shared.
Each said that in adolescence they were shaped by narratives. “As a Palestinian, which is part of my identity, we used to hear bad things about the other side,” Omar said. “I’ve been taught many times that Jews have tails and horns.”
Halevi, who grew up in a small town outside of Jerusalem, said that “the narrative there was pretty black and white, pretty much the opposite of what Omar shared. Arabs are bad, a source of fear and terrorism. Jews are good.” Halevi lost a childhood friend to a terror attack at age 12.
Tirosh grew up in Tel Aviv, where his family encouraged him not to accept oversimplifications of social groups, leading him to “seek opportunities for meeting people from the other side.”
Halevi and Omar were initially hesitant about attending Arava. Halevi first heard about the program through classmates while studying environmental science but hesitated due to the political implications. “I was scared. It seemed intimidating to be in a place with Palestinians,” she admitted. Yet during a master’s program abroad as the only Israeli, she faced many challenging questions from her classmates and professors about her identity. When she returned to Israel, she felt ready to engage. “I found an internship at the Arava doing water management stuff. I had no idea what it was going to be like at all, but I went for it,” she said.
Omar applied to Arava primarily to gain a legal permit and intended to leave after five months, as he was struggling to find work in Bethlehem and being denied permits to work in Israel. “I had zero interest in environment or peace when I applied,” he said. However, during orientation they paired Israelis and Palestinians together, and Omar became good friends with an Israeli. “We swam, ate, and studied together. It broke the tails and horns and bad enemy story, and it turned it into pieces,” Omar said.
Omar noted that his Israeli friend helped inspire him to work for a better future and not leave the institute as planned. “Since then, I’ve been involved in many other peacebuilding organizations because I want to know the Israeli narrative more and better. I want to break what I’ve been told and perceive the truth myself,” he said.
Tirosh noted that the institute featured dialogue sessions every week to talk about what was happening on the outside. Before his semester at Arava, Tirosh had planned to be a philosopher. But after participating in the program, he realized that theory wasn’t enough. “It felt too impractical,” he said. What captivated him was the dialogue sessions, especially the way they helped people unpack the psychology behind conflict. “That made me decide to pursue an academic career in social psychology research, specifically on the psychological mechanisms that arise in conflictual contact.”
Halevi called her experience “life changing.” “It was both amazing and beautiful and fun and crazy and also horribly painful,” she said. When Palestinians shared their stories, she was at first unwilling to believe them, she said. “It took a long time to accept their perspective as their truth. I had to completely rethink and readjust to this new perspective that I had on everything I had known about the country,” she said.
Halevi added that the journey changed the direction of her life and led her to the work she does today, which focuses on conflict resolution.
“The process was so beautiful, and I made friends for life. But I think it’s important to remember that it’s not an easy thing to go through, you really have to have a lot of courage…You could go through the institute numb and just leave as the same person. But I really chose to open myself up, put my ego away and put away everything I’d known and just listen. I took in everything and processed it, and I came out of there with a completely different worldview and a different goal for what I wanted to do with the future,” she said.
Halevi now works in environmental sustainability and is developing a new model of dialogue aimed at building compassion and deep listening between communities in conflict. “I’ve been testing it out on individuals,” she said, “and I hope to use it to help build more understanding between Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians and whoever wants to come and solve conflict.”
Omar reflected on discussion at the institute where everyone would gather in a circle and share and hear each other’s stories. “It was really meaningful to get to know the Israeli perspectives better and to be able to accept and apply the concept of acceptance for each other,” he said.
For Omar, who is now pursuing a master’s in water engineering, the institute was a turning point. “I was influenced by the vision of using water as a key to peace,” he said. “We share the same climate, weather, environment and the same water resources… So let’s just sit at the same table and talk about water. Not peace. Just water. Because we need it.” Through this lens, the environment became not just a shared concern, but a common language. “Nature knows no borders,” he said. “Let’s use that to bring people together.”
But bringing people together in the context of a deeply personal, deeply politicized conflict can come at a cost. Halevi faced pushback from her community. “When I started saying things that were a little bit different, there was a lot of conflict,” she said. “Some friendships ended. I grew, and I couldn’t stay in that world where the thinking was so small anymore.”
Yahel said his family supported him, but his peers, friends and colleagues often didn’t. “That’s a problem I haven’t solved yet.”
Omar said: “My family doesn’t know anything about what I’m doing. It might be life-threatening for them to know I’m dealing with Israelis. But that just pushes me to keep participating in more programs, and to be able to meet more Israelis and expose more Palestinians to this experience.”
When asked about the continuing conflict and humanitarian needs by the event’s moderator, Karen Schapiro, all three panelists spoke about hope, though they conceded things are currently grim.
What gave Omar hope was simply being there together with others who made the same hard choice to show up and listen, he said. “Our countries are literally burning, but we still decided to come here and be with you and to share the experience out of our pain and trauma.”
Tirosh told a personal story. After moving to the U.S., trying to escape the conflict back home, he nervously avoided telling people he was Israeli. But the first person he met in Chicago was a young man from Gaza who had just come to the U.S. “He told me he was 27, and I was the first Israeli he had ever met. That was very sad,” he said. “So if it’s through bilingual schools or more programs like the Arava Institute, people just need to meet each other.”
Cantor Barash and his wife Deborah met Omar during the Arava Institute’s 2022 Israel Ride, a fundraising bike ride for the institute, and were struck by the collaborative spirit that the program nurtures. They are participating in the bike ride again this late fall, when participants will ride from Jerusalem to Eilot and visit the Arava Institute.
As the evening closed, Omar, wiping away tears, offered a final reflection: “Look how beautiful pain is when it connects people together. How beautiful trauma is when it keeps people holding each other’s hands, not separating them. Believe me, we have more in common than what separates us.”
Rob Golub contributed to this story.
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Arava Institute activities
- “Cultivating Hope Study Tour,” Sept. 10-16, will bring visitors through East Jerusalem, Bedouin communities, and environmental projects in Israel.
- “Jumpstarting Hope” is in collaboration with a Palestinian partner. This initiative responds to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza through providing access to clean drinking water and sanitation in displacement camps.
- “The Arava Institute Israel Ride,” Oct. 28-Nov. 3, will be the final ride.
- More info: Arava.org or IsraelRide.org
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