Arab, Jewish teenagers meet in youth parliament
The Youth Parliament of the Mixed Towns of Israel aims to build bridges between all sectors of Israeli society.
Mohammed Salem, a pudgy sweet-faced teenager, vividly remembers the day the Jewish kiosk owner refused to serve him.
“I wanted to buy something to eat, and he said, ‘we don't serve Arabs here,’” Salem recounted quietly. “I was so insulted. That's why I joined the Youth Parliament (of the Mixed Towns of Israel). I wanted to make sure this didn't happen to anyone else – Arab or Jew.”
The Youth Parliament Salem is referring to is sponsored by the Citizens Accord Forum between Jews and Arabs in Israel (CAF) that aims to build bridges between all sectors of Israeli society, including the 20 percent of its citizens who are Arab.
“The Citizens Accord Forum is a social change organization that works to build a shared society in Israel and protect the idea of a sustainable democracy and all that that means,” Evan Muney, the group’s COO told The Media Line. “We do programs that work on leadership development and also developing working relations between all sectors of Israeli society.”
The Citizens Accord Forum is funded by a series of NGOs including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Youth Parliament focuses on mixed cities in Israel – places where Jews and Arabs live in the same city, and in some cases, the same neighborhoods, but do not have much interaction. Arabs and Jews attend separate schools and participate in separate after-school activities. The Arab-Jewish Community Center in Jaffa, where the Youth Parliament was convened, is one of the few places where Jews and Arabs do interact and share in activities.
Moran Chen, one of the coordinators of the group, says outsiders don't always understand how limited the interaction between Israeli Jews and Arabs actually is.
“If (members of the two communities) have meetings and encounters, it’s mainly negative meetings and encounters,” Chen told The Media Line. “We would like to get to know the other side and to really learn about their reality in this city.”
As part of the Youth Parliament, the teenagers do community service projects in their neighborhoods. For many of them, it is the first time they have had a meaningful interaction with someone on the other side.
“Akko (Acre) is a city of Jews and Arabs (living) as one and I think it’s important when I see my neighbor who’s Arab to say hello and not hate him and to know how to live in peace together,” Alex Bershavsky, 15, told The Media Line.
The teenagers often argue politics as do all teenagers in Israel. For some of them, though, the conflict hits directly home.
In 2001, an Arab citizen of Israel blew himself up in the Nahariya train station in northern Israel, killing three Israeli soldiers, and injuring dozens of soldiers and civilians. He was the first Arab-Israeli suicide bomber.
His niece, Hanan Korabi, said that until she joined the Youth Parliament, she did not think she had anything in common with Jews. But she discovered that her Jewish peers shared her tastes in music. And more important, she found that what she had been taught about Jews was incorrect.
“I learned that Jews are not bad, and that they can be caring,” she told The Media Line. “I learned that they are human just like me."
Article written by Linda Gradstein
Reprinted with permission from The Media Line
