A Place of Empathy in a Fragile, Contentious Landscape: Environmental Peacebuilding in the Eastern Mediterranean (chapter in "The Geographies of Peace: New Approaches to Boundaries, Diplomacy and Conflict")
Publisher: I.B. Taurus
Author(s): Stuart Schoenfeld, Asaf Zohar, Ilan Alleson, Osama Suleiman, and Galya Sipos-Randor
Date: 2014
Topics: Cooperation, Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Governance
Countries: Israel, Jordan, Palestine
This chapter pushes the development of a geography of peace by focusing on the Arava Institute as a meeting place in a highly contested landscape. Megoran’s exploration of the concept of positive peace as an alternative to ‘peace as the absence of war’ iii is apt as the Arava Institute persists despite continuing, sometimes violent conflict. War is not absent, but peacebuilding takes place nonetheless. As well, Megoran writes based on his inquiry into the meaning of ‘peace,’ that ‘peace is inseparable from questions of social justice’, iv and this too is apt for understanding the institute, its challenges and strategies. In their piece, Williams and McConnell are especially attentive to ‘peace as process’ and propose ‘a more expansive and critical focus around “peace-ful” concepts such as tolerance, friendship, hope, reconciliation, justice, cosmopolitanism, resistance, solidarity, hospitality and empathy.’v The institute has, through design and trial-and-error, developed a group culture that cultivates empathy. As students participate in this culture, they go through processes that are aimed at cultivating peaceful interpersonal relationships. These processes are the focus of this chapter.