People to People

Courses in the Arabic language focus on agriculture, regional development, community development, medicine and public health, management and education and developing entrepreneurship. MASHAV cooperates with the Palestinian Authority, Arab governments and non-governmental organizations in order to conduct these courses.

"Peace in the Middle East will be secured only when it takes root in the everyday lives of people in the region," explains Haim Divon, Head of MASHAV. "It is our hope that MASHAV will serve as a bridge between the people in the region, nurturing people-to-people contacts."

MASHAV also organizes on-the-spot courses in Arab countries as well as short-term consultancies. In 1996 eight agricultural on-the-spot courses were held in Egypt for 296 participants given by experts from CINADCO (the Centre for International Agricultural Development Cooperation of the Ministry of Agriculture). Israel has also cooperated in the establishment of two research and development (R&D) farm units in the Nubaria region of Egypt to demonstrate and identify opportunities in high value desert agricultural production (see Shalom 1993-2). These two were initiated together with the Government of the Netherlands and later developed under a trilateral program with USAID. At present there is an inspiring, ongoing, trilateral program for the training of graduates, extension officers and specialists between the Governments of Denmark, Egypt and Israel. This program started in 1994 and was renewed in 1996. Training activities are undertaken both in Israel and at the Maryut International Training Centre near Alexandria. A new regional initiative is now on the drawingboard to include the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan and Israel to develop projects, training programs and research in four major agricultural subjects affecting the region. Israel is, in addition, partner to a quadrilateral agricultural project for greenhouse production in the Gaza Strip in cooperation with the Government of Luxembourg, the Palestinian Authority and the Kingdom of Morocco.

In September, 1997, 29 Jordanian women visited Israel and participated in a course entitled Leadership for Women in Community Volunteer Organizations held at the International Institute of the Histadrut (Israel's General Federation of Labour) in Kfar Saba, north of Tel Aviv. The Jordanian participants included professionals from all walks of life and all parts of the country.

"The program offered the Jordanian women an opportunity to see a different side of Israel," explains Husnia Jebara, Director of the Middle East Department at the International Institute and course coordinator. "They met with representatives of Israeli womens' organizations and visited educational and social facilities around the country."

"The high-level participants," recounts Ms. Jebara "included doctors, lawyers, company directors, accountants and teachers. They met their counterparts, both Jewish and Arab, in Haifa, Nazareth and Jerusalem and were curious about all aspects of Israeli society. One request was that future courses should include Hebrew language lessons."

Ms. Jebara is herself an Israeli Arab from Taibe, a town northeast of Tel Aviv. Married with three children, she admits that women's leadership is a particularly sensitive topic in traditional societies, but that women in both Israel and Jordan have made great strides in the past generation.

Ms. Jebara, like many women the world over, is trying to reconcile the conflicts of building both a career and a family. She herself works long hours, but with the support of her husband, Fatheh, and her parents, she is able to juggle both family and professional duties.

The Jordanian women were particularly taken by Israel's national network of community centres (matnasim) and the extra-curricular and educational enrichment activities that are offered to both children and adults. Ms. Jebara notes that violence in the family is a issue shared by both societies, and the Jordanian women were impressed by the shelters available to battered wives in Israel and the increasing tendency to talk about the topic and not sweep it under the carpet as taboo.

Abed Hamza, an Israeli Arab, coordinated a recent MASHAV course on Youth Leadership for Palestinians which was held at the International Institute with the participation of 30 professionals from the West Bank and Gaza.

"We Israeli Arabs can be an important bridge of understanding," he says, "between Israelis and Palestinians and all of the Arab world."

Ms. Jebara also recently organized a three week course for 24 Jordanian professionals on Management of Volunteer Organizations.

"We investigated the way charitable organizations can contribute to society in such areas as education, welfare and health," she says. "We all have a lot to learn from one another."

MASHAV builds the courses together with the authorities which participate so that curricula are tailor-made to meet the priorities of both the Palestinian and Jordanian peoples.

The Galilee College in Kiryat Tivon near Haifa specializes in infrastructure management courses.

"As long ago as 1987 we conducted the first course for Palestinians," recounts Dr. Joseph Shevel, Chairman of the Board of the College. "That was a course on health management. Today the college gives courses in the Management of Medical Services, Environmental Management, Tourist Management, Port Management, the Management of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the Development of Small Industries. Effective management of infrastructures is a prerequisite for national development."

In 1997 some 1,000 Palestinians attended courses at the Galilee College. More than 300 of them came within the framework of MASHAV's activities while the remainder took courses funded by the European Union, USAID, UNESCO, the Dutch government and other agencies.

"I don't think so much in terms of bringing Palestinians here to take courses," explains Dr. Shevel. "It is more a case of bringing Israeli and Arab professionals together to exchange views. And most importantly of all we bring Israelis and Palestinians together in a forum that shatters previously held prejudices and stereotypical images. Part of the course includes home hospitality as Israelis invite Palestinians into their homes."

Shulamit Ferdman, Director of Courses in Micro-Enterprises at the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Centre in Haifa, echoes these sentiments. She recently presented a four-week course on Organization and Management of Micro-Enterprises to 18 Palestinian participants, in collaboration with the Centre for Jewish-Arab Economic Development (JAED) and the Palestinian Association for Vocational Training (PAVT).

The participants went through a hands-on experience of running small enterprises throughout the course and met with entrepreneurs in the Jewish and Arab sectors.

"Mayor of Haifa Amram Mitzna came to meet them," she recalls. "He had previously served in the West Bank as the Israel Defense Forces' Head of Central Command. We are in a new era of peace, he told them, and must put behind us what has happened and learn to work together."

The participants in the course included representatives of the Palestinian Association for Vocational Training (PAVT) and the Palestinian's Ministry of Industry and Trade. Ms. Ferdman observes that there is less capital in the Palestinian Authority for establishing major business corporations and therefore small enterprises offer the best way forward for economic development. In the coming year MCTC is planning, in cooperation with PAVT and JAED, four more such courses as well as a course on Organization of Community Services. This course was requested by the PAVT which expressed its satisfaction with this first joint venture. (You can see a report of beginnings of this particular cooperation in Shalom 1997-3: "Mediterranean Cooperation.")

Another MASHAV institution which recently completed its first course for Palestinians is the Aharon Ofri International Study Centre, located at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel on the outskirts of Jerusalem. "Following the success of this course," says Uzi Israeli, the Centre's director, "we intend to offer several more such courses during 1998."

The four-week course on Educational Technology for 16 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza focused on technological aids, particularly computers, available to educators today. Such concepts as distance learning and the use of computers in model agricultural greenhouses were discussed as well as the use of computers in conventional and vocational education.

Jamil Oweidah, the coordinator of the course, explained that at first the Palestinians came with fears and apprehensions. "But I think their stay in a Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem provoked a positive reaction within them," he observed. "The course opened new horizons in their perceptions of Israelis...and vice versa! They met the real Israel and came to appreciate its educational, social and cultural achievements."

Mr. Oweidah, a Druze from the village of Isfya near Haifa, also stressed that with 20 percent of the country's educational system operating in Arabic (to educate Israel's large Arabic-speaking minority), Israel is well placed for educational cooperation of the MASHAV variety with its Middle Eastern neighbours.

For Mr. Oweidah, who is a school inspector for the Ministry of Education and Culture, the course was a return to the Aharon Ofri Centre from where he recently qualified as a MASHAV instructor. His decision to work on a voluntary basis to coordinate the MASHAV course in Educational Technology also contributed towards breaking stereotypical views about the Druze.

"Because we Druze serve in the Israeli army," he said, "this is the image that some Palestinians have of the Druze. I showed them a different aspect of our community."

Julia Margulies, Director of the Training Division at the Development Study Centre (DSC) in Rehovot, reports that her centre has just completed its fourth two-month course on Development of Micro Regions and New Settlement Areas especially designed for Egyptian participants. In addition, the Practical Stage of the current 53rd Post-Graduate Course on Integrated Rural Regional Development Planning, with the participation of 36 professionals from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Caribbean, among them eight from Egypt, will be conducted in the Nubaria region in Egypt, in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture.

Michael Arbel, Director of Training in MASHAV, asserts that regardless of occasional political problems in the peace process, MASHAV ensures that firm foundations are being laid on which peace can be cemented through the personal and professional relationships being built between Israelis and Arabs. Moreover, in such spheres as the environment, public health, water shortages, crop diseases and much more there are no borders and cooperation is the only way forward.

In 1998 a number of MASHAV institutes are offering courses in Arabic: Youth Leadership, Urban Economic Development, Management and Methodology of Voluntary Organizations, Tourism Development, Organization of Community Services, Educational Technology, and Organization and Managememt of Micro-Enterprises.

"Ultimately MASHAV courses enable Israeli and Arab professionals to get to know one another," Michael Arbel stresses. "Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Moroccans and others come here and visit the homes of their Israeli counterparts and realize how much they have in common."