The Drabbling Interview- Elan Divon

Every so often I talk to someone through work that has something to say or is doing something that makes me thank-ful there are people like them in the world. Every so often I’ll bring you these interviews.....D

==
Elan Divon is the Executive Director of Peace Camp Nova Scotia, a 2 week workshop bringing together 20 young people from Palestine and Israel, to beginning breaking the barriers that have led to the constant conflict in their region.

DT: So Elan, what is the overall goal of the Peace Camp process?

ED: The overall goal of this camp is essentially to cultivate real and authentic trust and understanding between these young Israeli’s and Palestinians. That means getting them to understand their daily lives, the relative cultures and religions of each side and becoming to appreciate that there are different perspectives, that each culture is different and beautiful in their own way, and just getting them to build authentic friendships and authentic trust, because I believe there are a lot of very difficult decisions that have to made with respect to this conflict. So our goal is not to get into a dialogue as to what a two-state solution would look like, but to give them the ability to have the basic trust, so that when they sit down as the young leader that they are, and begin working through these problems, they will have the inherent trust to work through the problems. So, it’s about trust I think.

DT: And not only trust, but a mutual respect between the two....

ED: Absolutely, Mutual respect is a great word.

DT: What will you be doing with the participants?

ED: Well, our program has three components; the first is dialogue. In a sense this is the bread and butter of the program. We want to set the ground rules of how we go about engaging in dialogue and what it mean to dialogue. We want, in this case as well, to develop the listening skills, because we believe that listening is the beginning of peace, because listening doesn’t just mean not to talk, but it also means that when you’re listening you’re not thinking about how you want to react and not judging, but you’re completely open to receiving the information that’s being delivered to you.

Then we move into Stereotypes. We try to get them to be very honest in bringing out all of the stereotypes and perceptions and crazy ideas that they may individually, or collectively have about the other groups. From there we get into defusing those stereotypes and showing the participants that these are completely wrong and ignorant. So the idea, through the camp and their own interaction brings them to sharing personal stories, in small groups with facilitators. They’ll talk about real moments in their lives in which they were feeling the most hopeless, afraid, hopeless. They’ll share stories about being directly affected by the conflict. We have a great many people who have been affected int his horrible way. Through this sharing process, the participants hopefully start to see themselves in the other person. They begin to see that their pain is the same pain as their “so called’ enemy. They realize that we are all human beings and they have both inherited this difficult problem with this conflict, and they have a lot of the same fears and frustrations, but they also share the same hopes and dreams for the future.

Then we’ll start to go through the peace process and what that means to them, both individually and collectively. Then we’re going to start thinking about what they can do individually and collectively when they go back to the region, and building on the work that has begun here in Antigonish.

DT: You mentioned “peace”...this is a decades old conflict and the “peace process” is often just lip-service. So , you trying to go deeper than that, instead of just scratching the surface....

ED: Yes, much deeper. I think, for us, when we get to the whole dialogue program we realize that, even though peace is a wonderful word, it has vastly different means to different people. When you talk to an Palestinian about peace, they’re talking about freedom and independence. When you talk to an Israeli about peace, they talk about security, or the absence of any sort of terrorist threat. So, then they come to realize that what they mean by peace are two different things but they start to realize that what they want individually for peace is very much the same. It’s always interesting to see that realization happen.