Speakers Say Peace Starts at Grassroots Level

Calling their movement “2010,” a group of students who say they want peace in the Middle East by the end of the decade held their first event last night, bringing together Jewish and Arab academics to discuss what a peace between Israel and Palestine would look like.

“2010 is not a dream,” said Avraham Heilman ’03, who co-founded the 2010 project, which is sponsored by Harvard Students for Israel and the Harvard Hillel. “It is a practical commitment to a different future.”

The speakers, who addressed an audience of roughly 75 people, included a former official in the Israeli government, a leader of a non-profit organization devoted to education in the Middle East, a professor of Islamic Studies, and a native of Northern Ireland who is an expert in conflict studies.

The panelists followed one rule: they could not discuss the past or the current politics of the region, but only the peaceful future after 2010.

“I believe personally, though I’m not usually an optimistic person, that we’ll have reached some agreement before 2010,” said Bari Bar-Zion, former senior advisor to the Director-General of the Israel Ministery of Finance. “It’s almost a reality.”

He went on to predict a free trade agreement in the peaceful region.

Bar-Zion’s fellow panelists shared his optimism for peace.

Ron Rubin, vice president of the Center for Higher Education in the Middle East, described his personal experiences bringing Israeli and Palestinian students together.

“This is how it must start, as a joint effort at the grassroots,” Rubin said. “I’ve seen it happen, I’ve seen the future.”

Khaleel Mohammed, a professor of Islamic studies at Brandeis, also emphasized the potential for understanding between the two religions.

He quoted the Quran and highlighted a verse he said is less-popularly taught: “God has not changed the condition of the people unless they change it themselves.”

Mari Fitzduff, director of International Conflicts Research Center and a professor of conflict studies at the University of Ulster, said she had a different perspective because of her experience living in “the killing fields of North Ireland.”

She imagined a Middle East where “the smiles will be easier, the shoulders will have been dropped...and Jerusalem will begin to bloom again.”

She compared the post-violence Middle East to the bride and groom at a wedding.

“You share their joy,” she said, “but you weep because you know what they’re facing.”

Conflicts never die, she said, they just change to politics.

“It won’t be over in 2010, but it will have begun to be over,” Fitzduff said. “‘2010’ will be a huge part of the hope that will take us forward.”

Zeev Ben-Shachar, a graduate student who co-directs the 2010 project with Heilman, came up with the idea last semester.

But for now, the plans of the 2010 group are not concrete.

Heilman, a former Israeli soldier, said he wants to return to the Middle East this summer to aid the peace process in the political realm.

He said he wanted the group of roughly 20 people to expand, and particularly to include Arabs.

—Staff writer Susanne C. Chock can be reached at chock@fas.harvard.edu.