Although I am far from being an expert on the subject, I did some work in the Middle East and had the opportunity to facilitate mixed groups of Israeli, Palestinians, Lebanese and others in their effort to dialogue and launch co-operation projects.

One of the good things about those project was that participants were ordinary people, mostly members of small NGO’s that had as a primary concern other issues than the ongoing conflict in the region. Talking to each other and starting a cooperation was in large part just instrumental to access public funding from international institutions.

Paradoxically, I think that particular mix of participants maximised the outcome in terms of peace building. The fact that meetings were not targeting peace activists avoided the “preach to the converted” situation, and the fact the issue at stake was not “peace in the middle east” prevented the discussion to reach a standstill (participants had to challenge only some of their beliefs in order to co-operate, and not all of them, all together). Read the rest of this entry »

The following video is a full episode of United States ABC News’ “What would you do?“. The programme captures people’s reactions to challenging situations that might occur in everyday life. This particular episode is about discrimination against a Muslim, veiled, young woman.

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