Newsletter #2, October 2001-4 Contents
• Introduction
• Projects
• Participation in International Conferences
• Administration
• Publications
• Fundraising
Introduction 
We decided to renew our contacts with our close social environment.
Even if we have still tremendous difficulties to meet, in the frame
of the EXCOM or the General Assembly, we miss the feedback and support
of other members of PRIME, who accompanied us in earlier stages, and
we would like to renew this contact, even informally. We will not hide
from you that we are proud of having continued to work together throughout
the last four years, something that many other similar organizations
did not accomplish. We are also
proud of our projects and publications, in terms of their scientific
as well as social and political relevance, along the guidelines of
PRIME, which we initiated six years ago, during the conference in
Osmanhausen. But we are aware that we are working in a very hostile
climate in both societies and have, therefore, to be quite careful
most of the time. We also know that most of our work is aimed at a
different
future, perhaps trying to bring it a bit closer, just by not giving
in to the current negative climate.
Our current report will be brief,
trying to cover the four years since our first newsletter came out.
We hope that this newsletter will bring
a positive response from previous and new members of PRIME and that
we will soon be able to meet at our offices in Talitha Kumi, formally
and informally.
Prof. Dan Bar On & Prof. Sami Adwan, PRIME’s
Co-Directors
Projects
- Our project on Environment “Israeli and Palestinian Environmental
Organizations in the Middle East Peace Process”, financed by
the German Government, that was initiated in 1999 was carried out
by Feeda Obeidi, Julia Chaitin together with us. The project was
finalized
in 2001 and was published lately as a PRIME publication (see below).
- Shared
History Project: Since January 2001 we held thirteen (13) meetings
of a group of 6-7 Palestinians teachers, and a similar group
of Israeli (Jewish) teachers led by Prof. Adnan Massalam and Prof.
Eyal Naveh (as history experts). We met first at the New Imperial
Hotel in East Jerusalem, but lately, as the Palestinian teachers
do not get
permits anymore to stay overnight, we started to hold our meetings
at PRIME. We held two summer meetings abroad: in 2003 in Turkey and
in 2004 at the Eckert Institute in Braunschweig, Germany. We developed
till now one booklet of three historical events that the teachers
chose (1917/Balfour declaration, 1948 war, 1987-93/first Palestinian
Intifada)
in which there are two parallel narratives (an Israeli and a Palestinian)
accounting for the same event. The second booklet will soon go to
print (three additional events: the 1920th, the 1930th and 1967 war)
and
the teachers work now on the third booklet (the 1950th, the1970-1980,
and 1993-2000). The teachers tried the first booklet with some of
their students. We will also develop a teacher guide and try to conduct
an
evaluation of this method, in comparison to a single narrative approach.
The first booklet has been translated into Hebrew and Arabic, English,
Italian and French, and will soon be translated also into German,
Spanish (Catalan, etc.) and Portuguese. Of course all the texts are
yet experimental
and will need additional revisions before published in the final
book. Shoshana Steinberg and Summer Jaber-Massarwa are observing
and documenting
the process. This project was funded by the Wye River and the Ford
Foundation (see below).
- The "localized" refugees-immigrants
project: We chose a region in the South of Israel (Beit Jubreen area).
Sami's team
(headed by Shibli) interviews Palestinian refugees who originally
come from
that area and live in refugee camps near Bethlehem. Dan's team (headed
by Julia and Nitai) interviewed the Jewish immigrants who settled
in this region prior or after 1948. The interviews are videotaped
and
we would like to create a database and perhaps a museum based on
these two sets of interviews. In December 2003 we held a workshop
in which
two families of each side, three generations in each family, shared
their stories for two days, in Talitha Kumi. A Palestinian team filmed
this meeting and we hope to have soon a film of that encounter. Also
this project is funded by the Wye River (see below). As part of this
project Dan conducted interviews in Haifa with Jews and Arabs who
remember Haifa from before 1948 and Sami conducted interviews with
Palestinians
who live in the West Bank and come originally from Haifa. There are
two short films, which describe some of these interviews.
Participation in International Conferences
Over the last four years Sami and Dan, sometimes together with some
of the teachers, participated in several conferences in Italy, Norway,
USA, Germany, Croatia, Morocco (Eyal Naveh) and France, in which they
presented their joint projects and work at PRIME. In October 2001,
Dan and Sami received the Alexander Langer Prize in Bolzano, Italy,
for their joint work.
Administration
Since October 2000 we gave up the secretary role at PRIME
and Sami is doing most of that work. We got some help from Linda
Livni, until
she left last year. We continued to rent the two rooms as offices
from Talitha Kumi and were supported all along our way by Dr. Gollar,
the
previous principal of the school at Talitha Kumi, who recently was
replaced by Dr. Duhr from Germany.
The accountant Mr. Hussam Wahhab
and the bank account are still the same as they were prior to 2000.
Our financial reports were audited
by Saba Co according to the required international standards.
Publications Edited Books
Bar-On, D. & Adwan, S. (1999). The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations
in Peace Building between Palestinians and Israelis. Jerusalem: PRIME.
Bar-On, D. (2000). Bridging the Gap. Hamburg: Koerber.
Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (2001). Victimhood and Beyond: The Bethelehem
Encounter, October 1999. Jerusalem: PRIME.
Adwan, S., Bar-On, D., Obeidi, F. & Chaitin, J. (Eds.). (2004).
A Study of Environmental NGOs 2000-2001. Beit Jala: PRIME.
Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (Eds.). (2004). Peace Building Under Fire:
Palestinian/Israeli Wye River Projects. Beit Jala: PRIME.
Chapters in Books
Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (in press). PRIME’s Sharing the history
project: Palestinian and Israeli teachers and pupils learning each
other’s narrative. In S. Mcoy-Levy (Ed.). Youth In Post-Conflict.
Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Uni Press.
Bar-On, D. & Adwan, S. (in press). PRIME Sharing History Project:
Two separate but interdependent narratives. In R.I.Rotberg (Ed.) History's
double Helix: The Interwined Narratives of Israel/Palestine. Indiana
Uni. Press.
Articles in Referred Journals
Albeck, J.H., Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (2002). Dialogue groups:
TRT's guidelines for working through intractable conflicts by personal
storytelling in encounter groups. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace
Psychology, 8, 4, 301-322.
Chaitin, J., Obeidi, F., Adwan, S. & Bar-On,
D. (2002). Environmental work and peace work: The Palestinian – Israeli
case. Peace and Conflict Studies, 9, 2, 64-94.
Chaitin, J., Obeidi, F., Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (2004). Palestinian
and Israeli cooperation in environmental work during the "peace
era." International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society,
17, 3, 523-542.
Adwan, S. & Bar-On, D. (2004). Shared History Project: A PRIME
example of peace building under fire. International Journal of Politics,
Culture and Society, 17, 3, 513-522.
Fundraising
In 2001 we received about $450,000 for three years (which just ended
in September 30, 04) from the Wye River US State Department People
to People Exchange Program for the two projects described earlier.
They demanded cost sharing, which we succeeded to get through time
volunteering, the Ford Foundation ($100,000) and through private
donations. We recently received an additional sum of $135,000 from
the US State
Department Multi-Lateral Program, to continue the teachers' project
for an additional year. Robert Loeb from New Jersey and Summer Jaber-Massarwa
help us in writing proposals and they currently try to submit to
the Spencer Foundation, the EU and the USAID. We received a very
important
compliment from the US Embassy for our auditing procedure, conducted
for us by SABA.
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