Teachers work for Middle East peace

St. Paul, Minn. — As daily headlines attest, hostility reaches long and deep among the governments in the Middle East. Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis struggle daily, and sometimes violently, over their historic conflicts. All of that makes it dangerous, if not impossible, for citizens of these countries -- living just minutes or hours away from one another -- to develop relationships.

"We have to cross thousands of miles in order to meet each other here in the United States," says Chady Rahme a high school teacher from Beirut participating in Hamline's Civic Education Project.

Rahme says when he told his students he had a friend from Israel -- another teacher in the project -- it initially created some commotion in the classroom.

"You'll see [how the] discussion is going on and everyone is giving an opinion," he says. "Then [the students] would realize [they are] not talking in here anymore about Israeli and Lebanese and Palestinian and Jordanian. It's a human being facing a human being. It's when you share this human experience with your students that you can reach them the most."

The Civic Education Project is taught in 14 schools across Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and the West Bank and Gaza. About 6,000 students have learned the curriculum in the six years since the program started. The curriculum is based on four themes: equality, tolerance, justice, and active citizenship.

Israeli-born Arie Zmora, a Hamline professor who founded the program, says participating teachers get a better understanding of American pluralism and multiculturalism during their time in the Twin Cities.

"In the past three days we went to a mosque, a synagogue and a church," says Zmora. "And they were very impressed by very fact that people of different religious persuasions are talking about interfaith dialogue, and about community organization, not within the constraints of their religion, but across cultural and religious boundaries."

The delegation is also here to learn about American approaches to mediation, housing issues, and political advocacy. But Zmora says perhaps the most educational aspect of the conference is the time teachers spend interacting.

"It's not always easy," he says. "We have conflicts. It's not like we're going into the sunset and smiling all over. There are tensions, because that's the situation. But we are committed, and we are working together and overcoming the difficulties."

Several teachers say their own ideas have shifted because of their participation in the project. Muslim teacher Muna Araki, who lives in Jerusalem, describes her transformation as significant. Araki says she now has a budding friendship with an Israeli, Jewish teacher named Ziva Maor.

"Our families and our tradition and culture taught us that this land belongs to us," says Araki. "I guess it's the same land and the same home but we didn't realize it. And I came to believe that -- it's difficult and still a process I'm going through -- that if I can accept Ziva's presence on that land, then I can allow myself to have presence there as well, and we can live together."

Since 2002, the federal government has awarded $1 million to the Civic Education Project. Thomas Johnston of the U.S. State Department says his agency likes the way the teacher training program curricula promote reconciliation in the Middle East through education.

Johnston says the curricula are "likely to lead to an attitude of tolerance, greater understanding toward the other, and greater likelihood that people by knowing each other, having studied the same things and gained the same sorts of insight into communities and nations will be able in the future deal with each other in other ways than violence."

Leaders of the Civic Education Project say one day they plan to build a university with four campuses, each in communities straddling Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. They say they are convinced the training program has the power to nurture peace among the future citizens and leaders of a troubled region.