Bruce H. Bernstein: A “Listening Tour,” # 4

Our guide for the day was Iddo Felsenthal, a facilitator, educator, and former Seeds of Peace “seed.” Iddo traces his family back to Spain in 1492, and to Jerusalem from the late 1500s. Given his interest in history and his connection to Jerusalem, he brought a knowledge and sensitivity to the day that gave clarity to an otherwise confusing series of events. His great-great-grandfather decided that inner city Jerusalem was an unhealthy place to live, and bought a house in a Palestinian village on the outskirts of the city. His family remained there for several generations, at times protected by their neighbors. We drove to the Mount of Olives, the hill that rises to the east of the Old City. The slopes have been used as a place of burial since the 3rd millennium, BC. This is the best place to be when the Messiah comes. From there we went into the Old City and traced the last steps of Jesus Christ, the 14 Stations of the Cross, along the Via Dolorosa, ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For me, as a Jew, the story has meaning, but perhaps more powerful is being in the midst of people from every continent, from every corner of the globe, crowded together in Jerusalem to attach to the birth of their religion. Dinner tonight was at the home of Mohammed Dajani, just on the Palestinian side of the wall in East Jerusalem. The Dajani family is one of the most prominent Arab families. The Ottoman honored them by making the family the protectors of the Tomb of David. That was ended by Israel in 1948, but Mohammed still has the key to the tomb. He is the founder of the American Studies program at the Arab University in East Jerusalem, one of three in the Arab world. Also at dinner was Zema Barakat, a Ph.D. candidate. She gave a presentation on the role of women in Palestinian society. Her PhD thesis is on formerly militant Palestinians who become more moderate. Mohammed, a former member of Fatah, is one of her dissertation subjects. At one point Mohammed lived under an assumed name, wanted both by Fatah for leaving and by the IDF (Israel Defense Force). I have one of the books he wrote when he was using an assumed name. He eventually received a pardon from King Hussein and was able to return to Jerusalem. Mohammed has formed a new political party, Wasatia. He is trying to engage the mainstream by promoting moderation, centrism. He quotes James Dewar: “Minds are like parachutes, they only work when they are open.” We discussed different issues in Islam from the point of view of moderation, like The Right of Return. This is probably one of the most difficult problems to solve in the peace process. Mohammed’s point is: “The Right is Holy; the Return is negotiable.” This is in contrast to writing I copied from a wall in the refugee camp yesterday: “No peace without justice; No justice without return.” (While some of our group went to church yesterday, others of us met with an Israeli/French immigration lawyer and discussed this subject. For now, I’d just like to say that Palestinians point out that the majority of those seeking return want to return to their Palestinian villages on the West Bank, not necessarily Jewish sections of Israel.) Mohammed talks about the need to take political stands that build trust. He believes we need to build religious peace first, then political peace. At the end of the evening he gave us a copy of his book, Jerusalem from the Lens of Wasatia. He writes: “It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow. In a similar way, it takes both fanaticism and submission to make wasatia.” Bruce H. Bernstein is a 75-year-old psychologist/psychoanalyst in private practice and on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program. He has had a long-time interest in the peaceful resolution of conflict, and in recent years made connections among his Dartmouth Class of 1957, Seeds of Peace, and the Dickey Center for International Understanding. The class now sponsors two interns who spend a summer at the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine, followed by a term in Israel/Palestine.