Israelis and Palestinians: 12 voices on the future

The Mideast conflict is not doomed to stalemate. Right and left, religious and secular, hawkish and peacenik, a wide spectrum of Israelis and Palestinians are implementing their vision for the future without waiting for their leaders – or a peace deal.

1. 'What's going to happen over there?'

Courtesy of Evan Bryant
Jerusalem bureau chief Christa Case Bryant traveled the diverse landscape of the Middle East, from the sands of Jordan (pictured here) to Israel's fertile Galilee region, during her three years in the posting.

Upon returning from my three years as Jerusalem bureau chief, the No. 1 question everyone asked was: “What’s going to happen over there? Is there any hope?”

Looking at the headlines, one might think not. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks unraveled last year. Both sides espouse a deep sense of victimhood. Hard-liners are gaining influence, and clashing theological doctrines increasingly complicate the conflict.

And yet that picture of stalemate, described in black and white in newspapers, is all too often missing an important dimension: humanity.

Though Israelis and Palestinians are stuck in a political chess game, they are not helpless pawns. They are incredibly determined, resourceful, resilient people. While some seem paralyzed by fear, cynicism, or hatred, others are finding creative ways forward. In the face of prodigious challenges, many have an abiding faith in a higher power to bring order and justice to the Middle East.

Their character and insights – imparted over a Ramadan meal or a Shabbat dinner, an office desk or a muddy village road – inspired me to start a blog for the Monitor, “The Olive Press: Finding humanity amid the pressures of the Middle East,” which featured more than 100 people and initiatives over the past two years.

It also inspired this final piece, for which I profiled 12 individuals. Right and left, religious and secular, hawkish and peacenik, they illustrate the various models at work as Israelis and Palestinians strive to carve out a future for themselves in this beautiful land, implementing their vision without waiting for their leaders – or a peace deal.

This is not a comprehensive cataloging of political views, though it does include the growing blocs on both sides that are opposed to a two-state solution. Rather, this is an attempt to reveal the humanity I witnessed across a broad spectrum of factions – which, I believe, indeed gives reason to hope.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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