Middle East Peacemakers

...Interre-ligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East...

...Now that they've talked with the Jews who agree with them, they're ready to expand their networks...

...Sha'at, considered a right-hand aide to PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat, explained how learning what Jews had suffered in the Holocaust helped him change his view of Jews and persuaded him to seek peaceful solutions that could work for both peoples...

...There is tremendous enthusiasm to do this from women who simply want to talk to the other side and understand the importance of dialogue," says Rena Bernards, former executive director of New Jewish Agenda and now the organizer of the Jewish Women Leaders Consultation on Israel...

...And in August 1979—the month my article appeared—Andrew Young was fired as U.S...

...Even today, these people are held in suspicion by the newly liberal establishment, much as "premature antifascists" were a few decades ago...

...Since then, a small corps of dedicated peace activists has continued the work of creating face-to-face contact among all parties willing to talk about peace in the Middle East...

...Ambassador to the United Nations because of pressure mounted by those who objected to his having met with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization...

...Such testimonials to the results achieved by years of secret meetings were repeated by many of the Israeli and Palestinian participants in the Road to Peace conference held in New York City last December, the first public event in North America co-sponsored by Israeli and Palestinian institutions— New Outlook magazine, Al-Fajr newspapers, as well as Friends of Peace Now and the American Council for Palestine Affairs...

...Despite the grim daily headlines emanating from the Occupied Territories, the Israeli-Palestinian problem still has a chance of being solved justly...

...Now that some mainstream Jewish leaders find it "safe" and trendy to engage in dialogue with Palestinians, we should remember that a handful of courageous Jewish and Christian activists were doing this when they risked damage to their careers and reputations...

...American Jewish women who are leaders of national establishment organizations plan to meet early in June with women who are national leaders of Palestinian-American groups...

...Amirav now represents the Council for Peace and Security, an organization of former Israeli military officers calling for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...At that time, Breira, a short-lived Jewish group that sought to foster support here for Israeli doves, had just been destroyed by witch-hunt tactics and a McCarthyite smear campaign mounted against it by the Jewish establishment, which was determined to conceal the reality of a split in the American Jewish community...

...The Committee, launched through the efforts of Ron Young, a fifteen-year veteran of Middle East peace work, is now organizing local chapters and encouraging broader public dialogue...

...One of the PLO's most eloquent leaders, Nabil Sha'at, who chairs the political committee of the Palestine National Council, moved an audience of more than 400 at a recent conference when he talked about the growing friendships he has deCarolyn Toll Oppenheim is a Jewish peace activist and free-lance writer who teaches journalism in the Boston area...

...I believe these ten years of patient Middle East peace work stand a chance of paying off if more people can be persuaded that peace is possible, and that what we do here can make a difference there...

...And I told him of growing up dreaming of the hills of Judea...

...Working with any of the many progressive groups dedicated to this cause can keep up the momentum...

...Many of the PLO members who now appear frequently in public dialogue with prominent Israeli peace voices—including dovish members of the Knesset and retired generals—give this patient, behind-the-scenes peacemaking effort credit for the recent political breakthroughs from the PLO...

...A ground-swell of American public opinion might push the Bush Administration to take a more aggressive stance on getting the Israelis and the PLO to the negotiating table, where the parties themselves can hammer out the solutions...

...In it, I told how a few Middle East peace activists were quietly bringing together Jews and Arabs in tiny offices, hoping to avoid the wrath of establishment Jewish organizations...

...veloped with Jews and Israelis over the years...

...If we can demonstrate that peaceful dialogue is possible over here, if Americans can learn to help that process, we can have an enormous impact on our Government's policy, which can surely affect peace over there...

...In March, I sat in the Washington Cathedral and heard Rabbi Arthur Herz-berg, a former president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and Walid Khalidi, a renowned Palestinian intellectual and Harvard professor, who shared the podium at a conference on Middle East peace sponsored by the newly formed U.S...

...We have the relationships with them...

...Israelis say they can believe the Palestinians' change of policy—their willingness to relinquish the claim to all of Israel in favor of a two-state solution—because of the long years of discussion and the resulting joint process of changed thinking...

...Amirav said his political turn-around resulted from private dialogue with Arabs that convinced him they could also change their thinking...

...The Palestinian women have been prepared for this kind of dialogue by their years of talking with progressive Jews," Bernards adds...

...I sat with Faisel Husseini—the son of an important Palestinian commander in the 1948 war against us—who told me he grew up dreaming of returning to the white rooftops of Jaffa," Amirav said, noting that Husseini was arrested the day after their talk and held for more than a year...

...At the same conference, Moshe Ami-rav, formerly a high-ranking member of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's right-wing Likud Party central committee, urged Americans to ask their Government to play peace-broker and push Israel into direct negotiations with the PLO...

...We concluded that unless he gives up the rooftops and I give up the hills, our sons and grandsons will be doomed to fight each other for these dreams...