Another day at the peace office

By Ron Pundak

TEL AVIV (Press Release)–Last Wednesday I returned home and thought to myself, we’ve had an interesting day today at the Peres Center. Yes, it wasn’t necessarily the most representative of days, but it wasn’t really that different from other days.

And yes, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the situation in which we live, but it certainly shows another alternative.

So I will briefly share this day with you:

In the morning we held a gathering in our meeting room for twenty teachers:  Israelis – both Jews and Arabs, and Palestinians – from Hebron, Deheishe refugee camp and more. These teachers lead our Peace Computer Centers project, which connects hundreds of Palestinian and Israeli youth using computer centers and virtual dialogue through Facebook, Skype, and other virtual tools (a bit like in Cairo). At the end of the year – after they get to know each other – we’ll hold a face to face meeting between hundreds of young participants.

At noon we began the main event: the Startup Weekend. One hundred and twenty young participants, of which about fifteen were Palestinian – women and men – gathered for three intensive days, working until the middle of the night and utilizing a variety of spaces at the Peres Center for Peace. Truly an amazing event. They started with more than ninety ideas for startups and these were reduced to thirty after the first day, with each group focusing on a single proposal. At the end three proposals were awarded the winners.
The event was visited by a number of CEOs of various technology companies who came to see what was going on and to hold meetings with Peres Center staff, with the aim of integrating Palestinian software engineers into their companies. We have already done this successfully with one company, which is now going to open a software house in Ramallah, to be run by the young Palestinian we had previously placed with them as an intern.

In parallel that morning we began a major event in Jenin for over a hundred Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians, which was held over two days. Parties dealt with  environmental and agricultural issues as part of a project we launched last year in cooperation with our Palestinian partners.

In the afternoon we held a working meeting with a team from Europe from one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, in order to develop an Israeli-Palestinian R&D project that deals with the removal of medical waste from water through nanotechnology. A bit far into the future, but important nonetheless.
We also conducted visits to Tel Hashomer Hospital to our Saving Children project (which as you may recall allows for more than  a thousand Palestinian children from Gaza and the West Bank to be treated in Israeli hospitals every year when the treatment is otherwise unavailable), and to our training doctors program (where more than sixty Palestinian doctors are currently undertaking long-term fellowships in Israeli hospitals).
We closed the day with an exciting meeting of about thirty Israeli and Palestinian football players who are now entering the an intensive training phase that will together turn them into Australian Football (AFL) players (Australian football is similar to rugby, but much more violent …). In the summer this group will play in an international tournament as one unified team, under the flags of both Israel and Palestine and the logo of the peace team, to represent both sides.

All of this activity is in addition to the ongoing projects the Peres Center runs on a daily basis in youth, culture, sports, economy, young politicians, Jaffa, and more.

Did this day bring peace? Probably not. The question is whether our government is really interested in advancing a comprehensive agreement, and the answer for now is no.
But our job is to preserve and expand the circle of Israelis and Palestinians who believe that peace can be reached, to build more trust between the parties, to prepare for the future, and to show that on both sides there are many people, including young people, who are interested in cooperation and in reaching an agreement, and that together we can make a difference.

Because governments change but the people remain.

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Pundak is the director-general of the Peres Center for Peace