Some time ago, a young Palestinian woman named Dalia Labadi arrived at an Israeli checkpoint in the town of Zababdah. An Israeli soldier who, like Labadi, was in his early 20s, caught sight of a pendant the young woman was wearing. The pendant was somewhat amorphous, but it clearly represented the most hotly contested piece of real estate in the world.
“What’s that?” the soldier asked, grabbing hold of the pendant.
“It’s a map of Palestine,” Labadi responded.
“No. What you have is a map of Israel,” the soldier said, still holding on to the pendant.
“It’s not Israel, it’s Palestine,” Labadi insisted.
From the long line of automobiles waiting to pass through, horns started to blare. The soldier and Labadi stood toe-to-toe, both refusing to yield.
“Look at this tree. This is an Israeli tree. This is Israeli dirt, and that’s an Israeli cat,” the soldier said, as a cat scampered across the parched terrain.
“Actually, that’s a Palestinian tree, Palestinian dirt, and a Palestinian cat,” Labadi responded.
Tempers along the checkpoint were beginning to flare. The horns blared louder, and an old Palestinian man begged Labadi to call her pendant “Israel” so everyone could pass through.
The soldier and Labadi stared at each other. “I’m from Haifa, Israel,” the soldier said.
“Well, my family is from Haifa, Palestine,” Labadi answered.
“I’ve never seen you there,” the soldier said.
“That’s because I’m not allowed to go there,” Labadi responded.
There was another interminable silence. The solider never took his gaze from Labadi or her pendant.
“Well, you can go through,” he finally said, “but only because you’re from my hometown.”
Several months after the incident, Labadi retold it to a reporter and to other members of OneVoice Movement, a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization devoted to finding a peaceful resolution to the seemingly intractable conflict. And, being a student, she added a twist that was beyond the realm of any Western college student’s experience.
“You know, I had a really tough exam that day,” she said. “And I missed it, but I had a good excuse. I was tied up at the checkpoint.” She laughed.
It’s that ability to find a faint glimmer of optimism amid a landscape littered with carnage and failure that prompts representatives of OneVoice to express hope for the future.
“Ultimately, what we want to do is give a voice to the moderates on both sides — and they are the majority,” said Miriam Asnes, the international program manger for the group, which just completed a Bay Area tour, including stops at Stanford, San Francisco State University, U.C. Davis, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Cruz and San Jose State University.
The trip was sponsored by numerous Hillel organizations and the Israel Center of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation. The group also received grants from the Haas Fund.
With offices in both Ramallah and Tel Aviv, OneVoice has trained 1,800 youth leaders and has developed a platform that addresses the “10 Pillars” (including Jerusalem and the “right of return” issue) and assigned a joint task force to tackle each issue. The group has planned million-person marches in both the Palestine territories and Israel for the summer of 2007, to coincide with the 40-year anniversary of the Six-Day War.
“No one at OneVoice is saying ‘we really need to love each other’ — that’s not our goal,” said Labadi. “When you have Israelis or Palestinians who have lost children, asking people to hug each other isn’t going to work. But at least we can ask people to stop hurting each other.”
“I hadn’t met a Palestinian before I moved to New York,” said Israeli-born Eyal Oron, of OneVoice. “A Palestinian student approached me at the university I attended and said ‘hello.’ It made me nervous and upset for weeks. I had carried around this entire history with me, and it made me want to avoid talking with him. But I realized the history with that student started the moment I met him — and that’s what I try to focus on now that I’m back at Israel and working with OneVoice.”
“I don’t want to forget the past either,” agreed Dalia, “but I also don’t want my children to go through what I went through growing up in Jenin.
“You know, when I was growing up, we always played ‘Israeli and Palestinians.’ I always wanted to be the Israeli, because I like winning,” she said, pausing.
“I don’t want this to happen to any children on earth — whatever their background.”