Israeli and Palestinian Young People Share “The Positive and the Negative” in Photography Exhibit

By Delinda C. Hanley

The Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery of the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center opened a special kind of photography exhibit on Oct. 7, the same evening it was announced that there would soon be a new round of peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. At the opening ceremony, which attracted 250 guests, DCJCC board member Toby Dershowitz thanked the many groups and individuals who worked to make “The Positive and the Negative” photography exhibit possible, and to use its “Beyond Borders” theme as the basis for an exciting series of events, films, concerts and discussions continuing through February 1999.

The exhibit is the result of a project begun by the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, which has conducted a six-month creative writing and photography workshop annually for Israeli and Palestinian teenagers ages 15 to 19 since 1996. A diverse group of kids consisting of secular and religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims has met every Friday in Jerusalem to document their lives by sharing photos, journal writing and talking to each other. The fruits of the last six-month program were displayed in the gallery, along with a quilt and doll collection from Seeking Common Ground, a colorful wooden bridge from Seeds of Peace, and drawings from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and WINDOWS: Channels for Communication.

Hally Pancer, project director of the photography program, described the successful workshops that resulted in the exhibit: “Teenagers from Israel and Palestine miraculously conquered obstacles, as tangible as checkpoints and as personal as a physics class, to learn about the magic of photography and the endless possibilities it presents for self-expression. Anywhere else in the world this would not be so remarkable a task. Aside from the basic difficulties of crossing over the Green Line, we also had to contend with parental and official permission, the complicated calendars of teenagers and the less flexible ones of God, including the hours of Shabbat and the exact dates of Ramadan and Channukah.

“These weekly congregations were part of the photography/coexistence project called “The Positive and the Negative.” It was my hope that these young people would convey what the media constantly fail to: the nuances of their lives, the details of their own personal experiences that connect them to each other and eventually the ideas of rituals, which they consider to be part of their individual and collective lives. The diversity of this group presented issues extending far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for we were dealing with first-time contact not only between Israelis and Palestinians but also between secular Jews from Tel Aviv and religious Jews from the settlements…The sad truth is that none of these young people had any opportunity to meet until now.”

When each student finally got to a meeting he stood with his work “so vulnerable and naked before one’s self, one’s peers and even, one’s enemies,” Pancer said. “This is an act of bravery so bold that few artists and politicians have dared to do so.”

Pancer discussed what the project could and could not accomplish: “The path we took was not one of conversion, but of mutual recognition, and it was littered with as many obstacles as the Middle East peace process itself. We suffered our own casualties along the way. Halfway through our sessions we found the passion of our classroom discussion pushed the limits of some of the students a bit too far. There were a handful who never returned. [Of the 33 Palestinians and Israeli students who started the last course, 12 Palestinians and 14 Israelis stayed until the end.] The problems of their peoples are always understood as political ones, but in fact, they have shown us, through the wonder of photography, that they are human ones.”

At the exhibit Deputy Chief of Mission of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC Lenny Ben-David discussed the work that Israel is doing to promote peace and the Israeli requirements for peace. He told a story about a Palestinian worker who was doing some home repairs on Ben-David’s house in Israel and who brought his son along with him. Worried about a potential violation of child labor laws, Ben-David asked the father why he’d brought his child. The Palestinian answered that he wanted his son to meet a good Israeli. Ben-David, who was deputy director Leonard Davis of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC before he emigrated to Israel and changed his name, talked about how important it was for Israelis and Palestinians to get to know each other and how hard they must work toward peace.

Hasan Abdel Rahman, chief representative of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and PNA (Palestinian National Authority) to the United States, said “peace is made between people, through people-to-people activities like this workshop.” Palestinians, he said, were “ready to turn a new page in the relationship. Instead of fighting each other we need to find opportunities to live in a just peace. Palestine will be home to two peoples in two separate states, coexisting in peace. Any attempt to offer less won’t work. When Israelis deny self-determination for Palestinians, the right to coexist in our own state, they deny peace.”

He concluded by saying, “Expanding Jewish settlements is not a formula for peace. Demolishing houses is not going to encourage peace. Confiscating the residence cards of Palestinians who have lived in a city for generations is not a prescription for people to live in peace. It’s easy to say ‘no.’ It’s harder to say ‘yes’ and commit yourself to peace. No price is too dear to pay for peace. I was born in the Tragedy of 1948. I’ve lived for 29 years without being able to return to the village where I was born. We owe it to this new generation of children to make peace.”

Ofer Bronchtein, director of the non-profit, non-partisan International Center for Peace in the Middle East, discussed the “Beyond Borders” project. He thanked the Anna Frank Foundation in Zurich, Daniel Sreebny of the United States Information Agency, the British and French embassies in Tel Aviv, the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Lang Foundation in Zurich for their work and support. He especially thanked gallery director Alison Clarick Gottsegen and Michael Frankel, gallery assistant of the DC Jewish Community Center, for putting together this program.

“The activities conducted by the International Center for Peace try to develop social, cultural and economic contacts between people,” Bronchtein said. “On Nov. 4th, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, the messenger of peace, was brutally assassinated, but his message was not. We, Israelis and Palestinians, are committed despite the difficulties to keeping the flame of hope alive in this ocean of fear, humiliation and injustice.”

Noting that scarce resources in the Middle East should be spent on education and food, Bronchtein said “$100 billion was wasted in the last 10 years by purchasing military equipment in the region. For the price of one fighter jet, 100,000 students could study at a university free of charge. The real enemies in the Middle East are poverty and ignorance…The challenge before us is to create a new and promising reality in the Middle East, one which encourages an open and free exchange of information, goods, technology and people.”

The young participants in the “Beyond Borders” program then took over the stage to describe their lives, their daily struggles to find their identity, and why peace must be made now for their generation.

Tamara El Assad, a 15-year-old Muslim Palestinian girl from Ramallah, said that if the goal of the course had been to learn to live together after just seven months of talking, it hadn’t worked. It was too hard to put all of the hatred aside and accept each other as friends. Palestine is being carved up with no control over itself and so much bickering over percentages.

Americans have to understand, Tamara said, “I have no nationality. I have nothing to identify me. I am humiliated each time I cross a checkpoint when I have to prove who I am. I have an identity card that says my nationality is Jordanian but I’ve lived in Ramallah all my life. When we demonstrate against these wrongs we are looked at as terrorists. If we throw a rock, we receive a bullet.”

One of her journal entries reads:

Every morning I begin life’s trip from the beginning, the circumstances around me encourage me to challenge life and to open a new page away from pain and away from hatred. Today, tomorrow and each morning, I’ll announce that I challenge life, that I don’t care, that nothing matters to me any more except total respect from both sides. In the middle of the night I wake up with a scary feeling inside me, I wake up from my dreams, and recognize that today is still today and that I have to work hard so as to reach my goal. But my question stays without a name, without a clue—Who am I?

Idan Goldberger, a 15-year-old Jewish Israeli from Tel Aviv, said that he isn’t old enough to have much influence in making policies. “In fact, I have no influence! But in a year and a half I have to go into the Israeli army. I want peace. I don’t want to come back in a box with a flag on it. They’d say, ‘We’re really sorry about that. But it’s a sacred war.’ No. If we don’t compromise, we won’t have peace. I want to live in peace. And I don’t want to have soldiers standing between me and my friends on each side of a line. There should be no difference between us if we have a blue or green passport.” His journal entry reads:

Faith, that which unifies all human beings,

Faith in God, a super power, prophet or statue,

whose every word is holy.

We fight and sacrifice

in the name of that faith.

But the victims are not “two yearlings without blemish”

But soldiers/children aged 18, without blemish

What is more important, faith in God or War in the name of God?

And finally Suliman Boulos, a 16-year-old Christian Palestinian boy from Neve Shalom (a village in Israel in which Palestinians and Israelis live together under international sponsorship) spoke. He said that the Arabs who stayed in Israel in 1948 and took Israeli citizenship were very brave. “We don’t have equal rights. We’re not equal in anything.” He sounded just like a teenager from anywhere in the world when faced by unfairness as he explained, “I have a lot of Jewish friends and on Friday nights what do teenagers do? We go to the disco. But I can’t get in because I’m Arab, not Israeli. It hurts me in the heart. I am loyal, I’m so good, Arab Israelis are the best minority, but still I have no rights.

“My math teacher is a genius. He should be an engineer but he looked for work for four years. Why couldn’t he get a job? Because they asked him in which unit of the army he served. No army? He’s an Arab! So no one calls him back. So he’s a math teacher. Are we really Israeli citizens?

“The soldiers took the village Umm al-Fahm for a practice range. After five years there will be a settlement there. Politicians sign documents. I don’t read the documents. I have to see peace with my eyes…I see how I’m treated as an Arab. When I go into a shop and they suddenly don’t have my size because I’m Arab, that’s not peace.

“So is violence right? The people who bomb themselves, well no one is born a terrorist. If you take a baby and have him grow up in the U.S., he probably won’t be a terrorist. If you take the same baby and give him no education, if his father isn’t able to cross the border to go to work so there is no food, if his brother is killed and Hamas says, ‘Come to us. We’ll feed you and take care of you. Just do this one thing.’ We shouldn’t be so surprised. Teenagers have had it. The poor have nothing to lose.” He writes in a journal entry on display with his picture:

I am ‘me’ and not someone else,

I’ll challenge and scream,

scream my soul for freedom

because I understand that my fight to get more,

pushes me to continue until I reach my aim,

and that is to answer the question ‘Who Am I?’

For more information about “The Positive and Negative” contact the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, 13 Kalisher St, POB 29335, Tel Aviv, Israel 61292 Tel: 03 5160337. Visit “Beyond Borders” exhibitions and programs at the DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St, NW, Washington, DC or phone (202) 518 9400 #208.

Delinda C. Hanley is the news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

SIDEBAR

The Positive and the Negative Participants’ Statement:

Somewhere at the end of the world there is a country,

A small country where nothing goes right,

Some pull it to one side and some to the other.

In the end our small country will be torn apart,

Nothing of it will be left, for me, or you.

But it is possible to change the end of this story.

Each one of us joined this group having different expectations in mind. Some came to learn photography and some to meet new people, some to create new friendships and some to discuss politics, yet all of us came hoping to make a difference.

This can be done by understanding, breaking down stereotypes, being open-minded and willing to accept the other side—keeping in mind the uniqueness of each and every one of us yet emphasizing things we share and have in common.

It’s amazing what people can accomplish being together, by expressing their thoughts out loud.

It’s hard for two different peoples to suddenly come together, but with relatively little effort they can reach tremendous achievements.

Being together should be our way of solving the problem. It should lead us to a unique unity.

We tried to do something for that. For the better.

Adi, Alon, Anna, Asaf, Avital, Ayala, Bassel, Dana, Haitham, Idan, Lizzy, Mahmoud, Nael, Nahida, Nancy, Nasrin, Rami, Ruba, Rula, Sabreen, Shimrit, Shivi, Suleiman, Suliman, Tamara and Tarek