I have managed thousands of hours of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. There is one factor that has so far made peace impossible.
After 470 days of war that began with the horrific Hamas attack on October 7 and resulted in the decimation of Gaza by Israel, an agreement has finally been signed for a ceasefire and return of the Israeli hostages. As a former Melbourne high school teacher who has been living in Jerusalem for the past seven years, the ceasefire announcement filled me with a mixture of relief and trepidation.
The question of how to ensure Israelis and Palestinians never endure such horror again consumes me daily. While I have no political power, or the ear of anyone who does, what I can offer to this situation is my insight from experiencing and facilitating thousands of hours of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. These encounters have taught me that of all the factors that make peace impossible, perhaps the greatest is dehumanisation.
Consuming immense amounts of polarising information on social media causes many to suffer from a fundamental attribution error: we assume that our radicals are exceptional, while the other side’s radicals are definitive. On the flip side, in the cases where Palestinian and Israeli civilians or leaders express calls for peace or empathy, they are branded as liars or traitors who are not speaking the truth about their future dreams.
It will mean having more women in leadership positions who can bring a wider array of perspectives and creative solutions for conflict to the negotiating table, leading to structural changes that provide security for all.To stop the violence, we need to believe that there are partners for peace on the other side, by embracing shared learning opportunities and building more social, religious and political institutions based on the principles of justice and equality.
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