For many years, peacebuilding within the Israeli-Palestinian context was often conducted along parallel lines. Civil society actors were heading in the same direction, working toward similar goals and objectives, but many never actually coming into contact with one another. Too many organizations operated in silos. They competed with one another for funding. And even the best efforts toward collaborative programming sometimes met administrative, interpersonal, and structural challenges.
However, the peacebuilding field has seen some promising shifts over the last few decades. Many of these same organizations have been emerging from their silos, entering an era that embraces diversity and collaboration – the coalition era. There are incentives — financial, impact-oriented, access, and more — that have encouraged this shift. But, this new era embraces a core belief, as we often say at the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), that “the peacebuilding field can be more than just the sum of its parts, and diversity is one of its greatest strengths.”
What do I mean by this? ALLMEP is a network of Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilding organizations, made up of over 160 member organizations, with hundreds of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian staff, alumni, and beneficiaries. Each member is implementing its own programming, with its own theory of change and approach to the work.
For this group to be more than the sum of its parts and to embrace its internal diversity, this means creating unique opportunities for these organizations to gather, share knowledge and lessons learned, and build on one another’s successes. This means prioritizing collaboration, innovation, and a field-wide strategic vision for achieving full equality, peace, and rights for all Palestinians and Israelis.
Our members work across a wide spectrum of activities. In 2023, through a survey of ALLMEP membership, we identified twelve categories or foci of work across our community, ranging from sports to advocacy, religion/interfaith to technology, arts and culture, entrepreneurship, public health, environment, science, womens’ empowerment, youth, and all imaginable combinations between them.
Among those 160+ member organizations, we also found that 44% were implementing cross-border (over the Green line) programs and 38% were implementing programs focused on shared society work between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. 14% were focused on both, and 2.6% worked on Palestinian uninational programs. Many also used a hybrid model, first engaging with uninational populations and then working toward joint programming.
This diversity – diversity of programs, theories of change, beneficiary populations, and geographic scope – is one of the main reasons ALLMEP remains committed to a coalition model. ALLMEP’s Affinity Group programming, for example, uses some of these same subcategories to bring together representatives from organizations working on similar or related issues. There is no assumption that these organizations will replicate or share one another’s exact theories of change, but often they have information or practices to share, can learn from one another, can build new models together that address the dynamic realities on the ground, and can work together to shape public policy that affects their work.
Since the start of this brutal war on October 7th, ALLMEP has convened these Affinity Groups twelve different times, and held multiple uninational and fieldwide dialogues for our community. Despite understandable trauma and moments of tension, they revealed a deep commitment by peace activists to continue their work and to do so as a united field.
In addition to these conversations, ALLMEP conducted a field-wide survey in January to assess how the ongoing war and the realities on the ground were affecting our members’ work, their staff, and the communities they serve. Despite horrific violence on the ground, only 5% are experiencing a suspension in programming and only 3.7% stated that they’re not in a place to strategize peacebuilding efforts with their counterparts on the other side.
One survey respondent described, “In the first month, the events of Oct 7th and the resulting war influenced us strongly – we stopped all of our activities for 3 weeks, and it was very hard for the staff to function because of the closure of the checkpoints, police violence in East Jerusalem, rockets, and the closing of schools and kindergartens for our children. We kept in touch with our community – sending them a message of solidarity.”
To overcome these, and many other challenges, many of our members are demonstrating their adaptiveness and the resilience of their communities. As another respondent explained, “On October 9, 65 of our Israeli and Palestinian alumni joined a Zoom dialogue session. Over the next three months, 600 more would join one of 35 similar virtual or in-person programs … Our commitment to engaging with conflict and addressing difficult realities requires deep resilience. What keeps us going is a profound belief that violence will not pave the way to a sustainable solution.”
Around the world, many are looking toward and planning for the day after, strategizing for how the field will respond to the announcement of a ceasefire. Others can’t afford to wait that long, with members of their community having been killed, injured, taken hostage, displaced, facing famine and disease, and some of the worst violence this conflict has ever seen. At the same time, skeptics dismiss people-to-people encounters, peace activism, and the idea of Israelis and Palestinians working together toward justice, equality, and peace as a far-off fantasy. But in the ALLMEP community this is the reality.
Even before October 7th, many of these civil society organizations were already working to address the root causes of violence in the region. Much of their programming remains centered around key issues for both populations: restorative justice, education, reconciliation, safety and security, economic access and opportunity, self-determination, civil and human rights, land, settlement expansion, generational trauma, ending occupation, and peace, for both Palestinians and Israelis. And, importantly, they’re doing it in conversation and collaboration with one another.
This type of collaboration and connectivity could not be more important right now. As many people in both communities are retreating into dangerous echo chambers, being filled with calls for violence, hateful rhetoric, dehumanizing language, and bad policy solutions, the peacebuilding field stands as a third narrative. Every day, these bold, visionary peace activists are fighting for a better, shared future for Palestinians and Israelis.
I’ll say it again, because I believe it is worth repeating, “The peacebuilding field can be more than just the sum of its parts, and diversity is one of its greatest strengths.”
