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What will Ahmad do? Peaceful soap opera gripped Palestinians
JERUSALEM
Ahmad is fighting the tidal pull of violence, but the Palestinian high school student is slipping.
He skips classes, breaks up with his girlfriend, and nurses the angry belief that the only way to end Israel's presence in the Palestinian territories is to fight.
At the cafe where Ahmad works part-time, the regulars fret about him, especially after he fails his exams. Will Ahmad resist the conflict's call? Or is there another way?
For 13 weeks last summer, thousands of young Palestinians hung on these questions, scrolling through radio static twice a week to find stations playing "Home Is Our Home," the soap opera about Ahmad and his friends and family.
The first of its kind here, the radio soap is meant to promote nonviolent resolution to conflict. Similar programs in Africa have helped ease ethnic tension and given communities a new vocabulary of coexistence.
With the widely acclaimed success of "Home Is Our Home," the program's creators are launching a second soap in an effort to help Palestinians find creative resolutions to conflict with Israel and among themselves.
"We want to try to engage everyone in this dreadful situation, where people need to find nonviolent means to end it," says Lucy Nusseibeh, director of the Middle East Non-Violence and Democracy (MEND), the group behind the soap opera. "Any way we can do this is worth doing."
Based in Jerusalem, MEND trains political leaders and community activists in peaceful alternatives, and had been searching for a way to deliver that message to a broader audience.
When the idea of a soap opera came up in late 2001, the Washington-based group Search for Common Ground (SFCG) stepped forward.
SFCG runs conflict-resolution programs in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The creator of seven radio dramas in other conflict-torn areas, SFCG knows firsthand the subtle healing power of storytelling.
In Burundi, some 85 percent of the population tunes in to "Our Neighbors, Ourselves," the group's radio soap about Hutu and Tutsi families living side by side.
One independent evaluation credited the show, on air since 1997, with having a fundamental impact on people's attitudes. The soap has "had a positive effect on ethnic relations," the Washington-based Management Systems International wrote in a September 2000 assessment for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which funded the program.
The program also opened up taboo subjects. "The soap has given people a language with which to discuss things like genocide and the role of politicians, conflict, and ethnicity," says Francis Rolt, the director of Common Ground Radio and an adviser to the Palestinian project.
He adds that some Burundian characters have become archetypes.
"In conversation, people will say 'Oh, you're behaving just like Pierre!'" says Mr. Rolt.
Targeting a young audience
The Palestinian creators of "Home Is Our Home" aspire to the same iconic status for their show, written for 15- to 25-year-olds.
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