This continues my series of posts on the recent trip I led to Israel.  As part of the Israel trip, we met with different groups working on coexistance.  One group–Encounter–focuses on bringing American and Israeli Jews into the West Bank to meet with Palestinians.  They describe their work thus:

Encounter provides the only oppor­tu­nity for main­stream American Jewish leaders to visit Palestinian terri­to­ries in the West Bank. On our Middle East program, a plural­istic group of Jewish leaders meet Palestinian civil­ians and leaders in Bethlehem, Hebron, or East Jerusalem and engage in thoughtful conver­sa­tion about the complex­i­ties of Israel and the conflict.

A diverse array of Jewish leaders–rabbis, Federation Executives, lay leaders, and Jewish educa­tors from every denomination–sleep in Palestinian homes, play with Palestinian school­children and gain unique, multi­fac­eted insight into Palestinian life. These programs include rich Jewish conver­sa­tion amongst Jewish partic­i­pants who have disparate polit­ical and reli­gious affil­i­a­tions and perspec­tives. Many partic­i­pants iden­tify this internal dialogue as an equally powerful part of the trip.

We heard from the leaders how important facilitiation skills (based on the Public Conversations Project) are used to help groups listen more carefully and respectfully to those perspectives that are often difficult to hear and one of our Muslim students noted that she thought this would be a terrific program for American Muslims–to come to Israel and hear a perspective that they normally do not get.