by Liel Maghen & Jawdat Kasab
It is heart-wrenching to discuss peacebuilding efforts amidst such sorrowful days in our homeland as more and more people join the circle of grief. We as well know in person people who lost their lives, and many others who lost their close ones, their homes or any sense of security towards their daily lives.
Yet, even within the darkness of these days, we want to share some transformative experiences that have brought light to us despite the current painful reality. The connections we have maintained with each other have provided solace and renewed our belief in the possibility of better days. It is from this perspective that we write this article.
Forming a Sanctuary
A few years ago we came together as a group, trying to promote peace through shared community building.
Our community — diverse in its composition, as it includes people from many different ethnic, national, and social backgrounds that are present in this region, from the river to the sea and even including Gaza — is dedicated to nurturing a bilingual, politically conscious culture that promotes inclusion and equality and aims to offer an alternative to the ongoing division and systemic oppression. Over the years our initiative has thrived, bringing together hundreds of people in cultural events and shared spaces. We have worked relentlessly to raise awareness, forge new bonds, and craft an alternative narrative for the present and the future, one that nurtures the individual sovereignty of each person, honors and promotes self agency, and sets a direction for collective liberation.
Hence, under the umbrella of Elham: The Day After, we have continued to advance these goals and expand our impact. Elham: The Day After signifies more than bridging the different communities in the region — it’s a journey reconnecting with indigenous roots and embracing a shared conscious language. We honor relationships across lines of difference, commit to transformative change, and collaborate for a tangible, equitable future. Our efforts are based on the understanding that all people’s fate in this region is interconnected, and that to sustain a secure future for us and the generations to come, honoring our differences is a suitable course of action.
In our journey together we have had the luxury of meeting, processing, and collaborating with individuals from diverse backgrounds, despite outside forces of separation, in a unique, deeply unifying, and personal manner. These relationships were founded on true friendship, open communication, and a level of trust that is fundamental to our reality. We have invested time and effort in building these relationships, prioritizing friendships and social gatherings over more mainstream peacebuilding efforts. We based these relationships on the shared desire to connect beyond our proposed identities and identities, by extending our efforts to the human realm of connection. This allowed for our different realities to exist in relation to one another, while avoiding canceling the legitimacy of the other.
Our focus has been on community building as a key to peace work. We’ve placed trust in in-person conversations, preferring to nurture one-on-one and small-group relationships in place of campaigns. Mainly, we’ve worked to transform conflicts within our ongoing relationships to form a model of an alternative shared culture that would set the tone towards a new paradigm.
In practice, this has meant holding bilingual interactions and cultural events, combining Nonviolent Communication and facilitation work within community gatherings as well as harnessing art for political messages and political imagination towards true reconciliation. This has allowed us to embrace changes in views, honoring traditional practices, and even acknowledging the fear of abandonment by our existing social ties.
We’ve held Dialogue sessions and seminars, which stemmed from a declaration of intention and mutual understanding that considers the following reality: “Each individual, under the circumstances of the way they were raised, with particular external and internal influences impacting their lives, would form the views they currently uphold and mold their feelings accordingly. Hence, each of us under these respective influences would have been the same way as the other, and acted the same way.” This allows the emergence of a chain of feelings, thoughts, and actions that formulate new creative ways of being while honoring the past.
We believe that these practices address the ethos of conflict in the region, via humanizing each other and embarking on altering the current power relations and systemic roots for the conflict. We’ve also welcomed criticizing voices and persisted in developing and enhancing our notions and movement without succumbing to voices of despair. Instead, after multiple attempts we’ve nurtured a space, maybe a sanctuary, that anchored us in a hopeful future.
For us, building a mental and physical sanctuary that is rooted in care, love, and compassion as opposed to fear, hatred, and control, is the exact opposite of normalizing. With this sanctuary we hope to transform relations in a deep way, setting a clear shared direction that is the very opposite of separation, exclusion, and hatred — which are generated by fear-based systems and structures of strict control. In this way, we have intended to reinforce a rather radical form of resilience — building strong bonds between different peoples as well as between them and the land around them.
Finding Strength and Solidarity in Shared Sorrow
Unfortunately, our peacebuilding work was shattered by the unprecedented acceleration of events instigated on October 7, 2023 by the Hamas attack and the Israeli aggressive response and intensification of the oppression. We found ourselves devastated, mourning the loss of friends and family within our community, while trying to maintain connections across lines of communal and national differences. In the face of such violence, we responded through a traumatic response that asked to be secured, heard and seen, beyond any political or historical explanation. This has allowed us to keep the flow, and to let thoughts and emotions be expressed and released, it helped us recognise our fears and uncertainty, and to shape adaptations to the new reality we have been served with. It helped us maintain the life force of the community.
In the initial days, it seemed as though the beloved community we had worked so hard to nurture was fracturing, with individuals automatically taking sides. The personal pain and disappointment were palpable, even among us. In the face of polarization within the groups where individuals in traumatic circumstances reverted to a mechanism of taking one side over the other, it has become our paramount challenge to maintain direct connection among our friends towards building resilience and unity.
In response to this task we pursued key strategies. First, we identified a safe space that everyone could access, where we could spend time together and feel secure. This was crucial for maintaining direct and personal contact. We still firmly believe that by working together and recognizing our interdependence and shared humanity, we can find common ground even in times of escalating violence.
Additionally, we formed a small group of community members experienced in facilitation who addressed the immediate need for unity and understanding. Engaging in open and respectful discussions on controversial topics on a regular basis, we aimed to rebuild trust and foster greater understanding among our community members. In these biweekly online conversations, community cofacilitators guided a space for friends to be seen and heard, sharing their personal stories and expressing their deep emotions in a safe environment.
Additionally, the facilitators actively demonstrated acceptance and promoted an inclusive language of solidarity in all our interactions. This helped us acknowledge feelings of pain and anger and, with time, transform them into direct empathy and conscious action. This also gave us the opportunity to recognize the pain of the “other side” and denounce violence without compromising on our mutual need for security. It helped us resist the urge to react to external triggers and focus on the wider vision that we hold together.
It helped us unify the pain to become all of ours.
This process helped us channel our feelings of defeat and despair at what we are now experiencing despite our efforts to create harmony and tranquility amidst the devastating reality we’d lived with for so long. It reinforced the significance of our efforts and renewed our belief in our ability to rise stronger from adversity. These interactions, forged through hardship, have been instrumental especially for individuals like Liel, who lost friends in our close circle.
This newfound agency has allowed us to take the time to envision and develop new tools that will lead us towards our vision of what can be. As a result, more initiatives have sprouted, ranging from emotional emergency aid workshops to shared gatherings focused on working the land. Our members are fundraising to support communities in need, and we have various community events started or in the planning stages. We held an open grieving ceremony, where members of the community shared their pain, crying and grieving together, and we have a monthly meeting of learning and exploration that revolves around interdisciplinary educational topics (that include shedding light on oppressive systems and how they are rooted in our different societies in different manifestations), as well as collective direct action and communal camping to rejuvenate ourselves and our energies. We’ve identified that planting the seed of healing, compassion, kindness and support is relevant to all places that welcome our endeavors.
As events continue to unfold, we are witnessing how our bonds are growing even stronger through engaging with our pain, understanding our interdependence, and witnessing its promising impact.
This involves shedding guilt and shame, and confronting the fear of judgment, as we emphasize a collective language of transformation that highlights the potential for a brighter future. We are challenging societal norms that prefer us to be separate, and seeking to dissolve or filter outdated paradigms that no longer serve us. By advocating for self-determination and empowering individuals to shape their own futures (by applying these new mechanisms developed within our community to their daily lives), we are fostering a sense of agency and optimism within our community, even amidst the enormous current challenges we face.
“By advocating for self-determination and empowering individuals to shape their own futures, we are fostering a sense of agency and optimism within our community, even amidst the current challenges we face.”
Forging Ahead as a Collective
The recent events have underscored the futility of violence and dehumanization. We ask ourselves day after day how we can form sanctuaries that still impact the reality around them. We try to experiment with how we can recognize our interdependence and express solidarity in times of separation and how we can resist divisions without forming new adversaries. Basically, how we can enrich our interpersonal connection, even in times of war.
We are more determined than ever to build a community that embodies resilience, inclusivity, and a shared vision for peace. Through our collective efforts, we are confident that we can create a better life. We know that ultimately, the bonds we’ve forged in our community are what enable resilience in the face of such devastating events.
Liel still “mourns the reality that we had prior to October 2023. It seems today like a gone epoch where we felt safer to be together and meet. I still spiral into thinking what we could have done better, what I could do differently.” But despite the odds, he says, “the community of Falahi is very connected and engaged, and that emerged from our events. Many initiatives have grown stronger.”
As we move forward, let us hold onto the belief that together, we can build a future where peace and understanding prevail in a reality founded on equality and security. Let our interdependence be the beacon that guides us through the darkest of times, towards a brighter, more inclusive reality that can ensure security for all living in this painful land. Let’s hope this war will be the last one.
Liel Maghen was born in Israel to a Libyan father and an Italian mother, sparking his lifelong interest in identity and regional dynamics. Since graduating from the Arava Institute in 2010, Liel has focused on transforming human interactions in the Middle East through group facilitation, community organizing, and social entrepreneurship. He co-founded the Sinsila Center, earning the IIE Goldberg Peace Prize for his work in promoting peace and collaboration. As a co-founder of Elham – The Day After, Liel is dedicated to fostering hope and equality by uniting creative forces across the Jordan River and the sea. His efforts continue to empower communities and inspire positive change in the region. Liel holds an MA in International Development and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and he is also a regular contributor to the Forum for Regional Thinking.
Jawdat Kasab is an NVC practitioner and participatory hosting with aspirations for community & culture building. He is a lawyer, practicing Intellectual Property and Civil Litigation. He also is the Co-founder of the FALLAHI project that harnessed skills of participatory leadership, dialogue, storytelling, and non-violent communication for the purpose of creating a safe space for collective healing.
