Tracing Abraham's path to Mideast peace
Two researchers are following the footsteps of the religious patriarch in the hope that people will rediscover their common roots.
from the February 13, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Host families and a tourism boost
Among the goals of the path is that it will lead visitors through rural areas where they can interact with average people. One facet of the route will be a network of families willing to host visitors in their homes. And with an eye towards housing larger groups of visitors, there are several projects under consideration to build travelers hostels and other lodgings ready to receive guests during the journey.
Indeed, for the path to truly take route, the local initiative needs to be as strong as the international. As such, the drive to open the Abraham Path in Jordan has been winning over many important advocates. One of them is Ammar Khammash, one of Jordan's foremost architects and and ecologists. Khammash says that too much of Jordanian life is focused on crowded urban spaces, and the path will help people reconnect with their roots.
"The Abraham Initiative might be a way to put the landscape back together and to expose people to being landscape literate," he says. "We can be one of the first initiatives to tap into the spirituality of the landscape."
One of the most appealing by-products of the path is that it would encourage tourism to an area of the world with at least 4,000 years of history to offer – experts indicate that Abraham would have lived somewhere in the time of the Middle Bronze Age – but which also suffer from lagging economic growth.
"One thing we like about building this trail is that we're talking about more interaction with the local people," says Ahmad el-Bashiti, the executive director of the Jordan Inbound Tour Operators Association. "This will help us offer more so that visitors will stay for longer periods of time. And for this project to be successful, our members will have to help build some kind of way stations and lodging options along the trail."
Hands-on interfaith initiative
To be sure, the concept of the path does not win everyone over immediately. When the group finished their 12-day study tour in Jerusalem with a presentation for a variety of Israel and Palestinian religious and social leaders, many expressed concern that the path would seek to sweep the area's very real, unsolved problems under the proverbial carpet.
But Dr. Hamid Murad, an Islamic leader in Jordan, he sees it more as a way to approach Middle East reconciliation in a very different light – one that all three faiths find illuminating.
"We go to conferences all the time with Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and then we agree on all kinds of things, but we never feel the results on the ground," says Murad, who's been involved in numerous interfaith efforts.
"It's as if I'm running my car engine, but I never take it out of the garage," he says. "So maybe it's better if I walk with my own feet."
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