What will Ahmad do? Peaceful soap opera gripped Palestinians

"The general message is to promote active nonviolence as an alternative resistance and as a philosophy," says MEND project coordinator Fadi Rabieh. "It's about respect, individual responsibility, self-confidence, and educating people that nonviolence is the way to build a civil, democratic society. If people keep resisting in a violent way, that will be the same tool they use to solve conflict within their state."

In more than three years of conflict with Israel, it has been hard for Palestinians to publicly oppose the violent strategies of groups like Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has ties to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. As the violence continued, any inclination to dissent declined.

This worried Fuad Najab, the head of Sky Advertising Co. in Ramallah, who promoted the series.

"We had many concerns about talking about nonviolence in a situation where everybody wakes up in the morning to news of houses being destroyed and people killed by Israeli incursions," he says. "Radio stations expressed concern that they would be criticized for airing ... a USAID-funded soap opera. They connect the US with its presence in Iraq and the positions it is taking, not exactly against the Palestinian people but with [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon."

Najab says it's time to show young Palestinians that "you can join hands with your family, your neighborhood, your buddies, and express yourself nonviolently."

Even so, he says, "we expected resistance."

The key to disarming this opposition, says Holt, lies in the writing. "You don't tackle issues head-on," he says. "You do it in a parallel way so that listeners identify with ideas, not a side, and recognize themselves in a middle ground."

Holt says sympathetic, realistically drawn characters who undergo an evolution pull listeners along with them.

In "Home Is our Home," Ahmad hits rock bottom when he fails at school, and his future and relationship are in shambles.

A male friend is headed for jail; a female friend, shamed by divorce, has attempted suicide. The soap follows their trajectories.

"Home Is Our Home" began airing in June on nine stations across the West Bank and Gaza in 15-minute installments. Najab estimates the show reached 60 percent of its target audience.

The response was immediate: Listeners wanted more episodes, more often, for more time.

"We got a huge amount of calls asking when it would air," says Kifah Awad from Ramallah's Amwaj Radio. "It appealed because the material and the accents reminded us of our own lives."

MEND Project Coordinator Rabieh has high hopes for the second soap.

"It will make a difference," he says. "Maybe not right away, but people became really attached to the [first] series. It raised important questions about how we resist occupation, how we treat women in our society, how we treat each other."

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