From two identity groups to three
The youth magazine, which later served as a tool in other programs and finally became a blog, was made during the very beginning of Windows. In the early days, it was important to us to equally reflect both sides - Israeli Jews and Arab-Palestinians. Once we opened an editorial board in Gaza in mid-1995 and held bi-national summer workshops in which we had Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line, we realized that the two-sided issue is actually three-sided. We could see that the Palestinians who live in Israel have a lot in common with both other groups. In addition to the logistical challenge of bringing the two Palestinian groups to meet on a weekly basis in order to form the “Palestinian group”, it was clear that there were differences in their realities and in the events that shaped those realities since 1948. This created two different groups that each needed their own space in the program and their own dual-process without the Israeli Jews in the room.

We don’t see Windows’ work as “normalization”, but do people look long enough to see that?
Another difference between the Palestinian groups is the difficulty in getting them to meet with Israeli youth, a growing challenge in the past decade with the spread of the Anti-normalization concept. Although we don’t see Windows’ work as normalizing, on the contrary, we see it as part of the struggle to end the occupation, discrimination, and other violations of Human Rights, it is hard to break the negative image in the eyes of Palestinians of meetings with Israelis. The negative image of meetings with Palestinians is also growing in Israeli society, but it is far less intense.

Being empowered before meeting “the other”
As you know, in the past several years we experienced (in addition to the growing political challenges) a severe financial crisis. Our amazing team decided to continue to work with a much smaller budget, determined to keep our youth program going, even if on a smaller scale. The funding we received in 2018 put us back on track. We began with a few months of a separate empowerment program aiming to prepare the participants for the bi-national youth media program. This element was added to our work in 2011 following an evaluation made of the work done in the years before. We realized that the process is much better when the participants' skills of critical thinking and expression, as well as their awareness of their identity and values, are improved before they begin to communicate with each other.

Learning to listen and share through exchange of letters
The bi-national stage of the project began, as usual, with an exchange of letters in order to give the youth - all girls ages 15-17 years old - an opportunity to get to know each other a little bit, face the first pieces of information about their lives in the safety of their own Single Identity Group where they can deal with their own feelings about what they read in the letters, think about it as well as about how they wish to answer. In this stage, they learn to communicate in a constructive way - sharing that can lead to the change of perceptions rather than the attacking and blaming that can lead one to rush to defence mechanisms that prevent change.

Emotional support helps to deal with new and confusing information
After a series of national and bi-national meetings, the groups met in Germany for an intensive 2-weeks program. This neutral location, away from the politically and socially charged environment we live in, surrounded by beautiful nature and supported by our hosts, enabled the participants to relax and open up for the challenging process. Sharing personal life experiences as well as family stories, they could learn a lot about their history in a wider context through which they began to gain a wider perspective. Through discussions, emotional conversations, and group activities, they learned how to handle the new information. The role of the facilitators is not to teach, not to offer answers to the many questions the participants carried with them. Instead, the program gave methods that allowed them to think by themselves, to realize the complexity of the situation, to research, and encourage them to get active by themselves in the future. Yet, if the participants share information that is not true or accurate enough, the facilitators will offer questions leading the participants to look for more information and from a variety of sources.

“...The central aspect is doubt, asking more questions and becoming more open to different opinions. It was really interesting to see the participants growing and changing, how they slowly began to understand that each side has their own difficulties. They started to ask more questions, they really wanted to know about each other. They cared.” - Or, An Israeli facilitator talking about her group

Acknowledging the imbalance of power
It is also important to us that the participants will realize - and for Israeli Jews, it is sometimes in contradiction to how they felt before - the imbalance of power between the sides, as Israel, with its strong army, is the one controlling the Palestinians. This imbalance of power is reflected in the program in different ways. The participants may not know much about each other societies and culture, but the Palestinians from the West Bank obviously have a firsthand experience of life under occupation and the Palestinians from Israel are more familiar with the many ways of racism and discrimination of their community. All of them may not know much about the context of the establishment of Israel, and about why and how things developed the way they did, but the discovery of the harsh reality of occupation and discrimination is usually much harder for the Israeli Jews who grew up almost ignorant of both. On the other hand, the Palestinian may feel stronger within the group being sure that justice is on their side.

The time in Germany was a very challenging experience for the youth, but as some of them said: the program made them grow up quicker and they will never see the world around them in the same way as they did before.

When the difficulties are too difficult
After the encounter in Germany, it was not easy to continue the program despite the sense of achievement and the motivation to meet that most of the participants felt. Due to the political situation and a subsequent increase in parental fear, fear of peer group condemnation, and the difficulty for Palestinians to cross checkpoints, a few of the girls chose not to continue and it was not possible to arrange a meeting in the West Bank. The main events that followed were a weekend workshop that took place in Yafat a-nasra, the hometown of the group of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The families of the local group hosted the visiting participants in their homes, a new experience for all the Israeli Jewish girls. The program, planned by the local group, included an excursion to Nazareth pointing out the problems of an Arab town in Israel and a visit to the location of an uprooted Palestinian village - learning about the refugees from 1948, hearing stories the Israeli Jewish girls were never told before.

This theme continued also in the other weekend workshop that took place in a kibbutz Givat-Brener, where one of the Israeli Jewish girls lives. There the youth could learn about life in what used to be a cooperative village, but also about the Palestinian villages that existed in the area until 1948. November 2019 was a very tense time. The anger in the OPT over Israeli army attacks prevented the West Bank group from Participation. The fear of rockets from Gaza accompanied the visit to this southern kibbutz, and some of the Israeli girls were not allowed to join us. Knowing that it may take months before the group can meet again, we decided to meet under the circumstances even if not all the girls could join us.

It is always important to us to meet when the tension grows, to share, to learn more about the situation and what led to it, to think together about what can be done to make a difference and to show solidarity and care. Once again, our methods and tools proved to be effective. Dividing time between the bi-national and single identity group meetings was an effective method that gave the participants a time-out from the challenging bi-national discussion in which they could share feelings in the safety of their own identity group, discuss new information, and prepare to continue the bi-national discussion with more clarity and confidence. In this way, sharing feelings and information, asking each other tough questions, and getting tough answers, the participants bravely dealt with many aspects of what is called the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Following the evaluation of the Youth Media and Action Program that is taking place now, we plan to resume the youth meetings with an updated program and newly trained team in the fall of 2022.