Editor’s note: Our ongoing series with the Alliance for Middle East Peace brings you stories of peacebuilders from the Middle East, directly from the people who work to bring communities together and promote nonviolence.
This story is about the work of the Abraham Initiatives, which works to promote “social inclusion and equal rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens” and work to build an inclusive Israel as part of a two-state solution. This article focuses on their work in the Negev desert, a region of Israel where in many cities Jewish and Arab Israelis live side-by-side. Bedouin communities in the Negev have found themselves in a particular difficult situation in the past months. The community faces ongoing discrimination and marginalization from the government, which does not recognize many Bedouin villages throughout the Negev, which therefore lack the civil protection facilities found in other cities. The Abraham Initiatives works to address both these challenges by working to build a more inclusive society that tackles discrimination and builds a common community regardless of religion or ancestry, and working to keep vulnerable communities safe. This article is focused on the work done in Bedouin communities in the Negev, although the Abraham Initiatives work throughout Israel on a range of peacebuilding initiatives.
I heard the siren on October 7 from Rahat [Arab Bedouin town]. My house in the nearby village has no shelter or safe room, and in a panic, I jumped into a large hole that my uncle had dug in the yard, between the houses, covered with concrete and iron with an iron roof.
Since that morning, the rift around me has been deepening. My friend ‘Aisha al Ziadne was kidnapped in Gaza. My friends from all over the Bedouin diaspora in the Negev are facing a difficult economic situation. Our families continue to scatter the children between the rooms of the house to distribute the risk in the event of a missile falling.
In the early days, my work as coordinator of the Safe Communities in the Negev project at the Abraham Initiatives also came to a halt. The Abraham Initiatives is a Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli organization that advances social inclusion and equal rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens by influencing public policy, shaping public opinion and demonstrating practical models for a shared society. As part of the Safe Communities project, young men and women undergo training in personal security, learn to cope with emergency situations and get to know the relevant rescue organizations. At a time when everyone’s personal safety was at risk, we couldn’t continue to be together. We had no safe place to shelter, and in the shadow of the sirens, the women and young people couldn’t meet.
My desire to find a bright spot in the great darkness led me to the Jewish-Arab war room, led by Shir Nosetzky, CEO of Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? and Hanan al-Sana from ItachMa’aki) – a lawyer for social justice, who works every Wednesday in Rahat.
Their slogan “partners in fate, partners in the war room” spoke to me. I was excited to see the joint mobilization for the benefit of the unrecognized villages and the residents of the envelope alike, and I started volunteering every week. Slowly, I felt that a community was being created there. We all live in the same country, and all of us in Israel, Jews and Arabs, are in a state of emergency. I invited the women’s group from Rahat, who participates in the Safe Communities Project, to volunteer with me and they responded enthusiastically. Like me, the women in the course felt that volunteering was a source of light in the dark.
In recent weeks, the project I lead has returned to functioning. Together with the local councils in the Negev and the Home Front Command, we converted its short-term goals to focus on “volunteering and contributing to the rescue of others.” In addition to the women of Rahat, young adult groups from Hura and Kseife have joined the volunteer work, and together we realize the values of Arab-Jewish work and partnership.
Despite all the pain around us and the constant concern for those kidnapped, volunteering together and mobilizing women and young people gives me hope that we will soon live together in peace and equality. The shared hours are yet another reminder of what it means that we are all human beings whose lives intertwine, with dreams and the right to live in peace.
The Abraham Initiatives
The Abraham Initiatives has been working for 30 years on modeling and building a Shared Society for Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. Through local initiatives in education, police-community relations, leadership training, cultural competency on higher education campuses, Arabic language and culture courses in Pre-Army Leadership Academies and at media outlets across the country, they implement programs which can be evaluated, adopted and scaled
