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International and national training routines held so far
Friendship Across Borders also trains professionals with a background in social work, education or psychotherapy to serve as Mentors. Mentors accompany and support Peace Promoters in their own personal development. We also organize seminars aimed at evaluating and further developing our tripartite Peace-Carrier approach.
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Face to Face 2022 - Next Level International Project of Encounter for young Israelis, Palestinians and Germans
17. – 20. Nov. 2022 in Beit Jala (West Bank / Palästina) 15 students from Israel, Palestine and Germany Facilitator: Andreas Beier, Antwan Saca, Michal Hochberg Documentation: Yuval Klap, Gerburg Rohde-Dahl |
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Face to Face 2022 International Project of Encounter for young Israelis, Palestinians and Germans
17. – 27. March 2022 in House Emsen close to Hamburg Germany 21 students from Israel, Palestine and Germany Facilitator: Andreas Beier, Ahmed Al Helou, Yasmin Rimer, Sandra Blöchinger Assistent: Heitham Hleihil, Sivan Nadler, Frieder Rieger Organisation: Jonas Monninger, Eran Bar-Am Film documentation: Gerburg Rohde-Dahl |
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Face to Face 2019 International Project of Encounter for young Israelis, Palestinians and Germans
17th – 25th September 2019 DJH Rotenberg Germany 18 students from Israel, Palestine and Germany Facilitator: Antwan Saca (Palestine), Yasmin Rimer (Israel), Sophie von Waitz (Germany) International FAB-Facilitation team: Achmed Helou, Avner Dinur, Andreas Beier Organisation: Kobi Tor, Doro Oelrich Film documentation: Gerburg Rohde-Dahl
Feedbacks
I think it is absolutely necessary that every Israeli will meet a Palestinian and talk. It is also absolutely necessary that every Palestinian will meet an Israeli and talk. I'm talking about the simple people like me, who are willing to listen in spite of all what the media and the leaders fed us with. I heard in this week so many stories, of a Palestinian from the “Hamas” who spent seven months in Israeli Jail and didn’t lose hope for dialogue, and one who was tortured and sent to prison based on no evidence, and was released after a few months because the authorities realized they got the wrong guy, and I heard many more extremely hard cases. If they didn’t lose hope, let's all give it a chance. Only then you will be able to construct a realistic and sensible opinion on the reality around us and on the whole other world so near us, that most of us didn’t know it exists. To make it short – we should never come to conclusions without meeting the truth, Face to Face! An Israeli participant
I am coming here not to a honey seminar. I am coming here to talk about conflicts, about my feelings, to talk with my enemy. To try to talk about myself, to try to tell them about me, how I am suffering under occupation. I will face new people, because I believe in hope. I believe in future, and I can see the candle. Ok, it is away from me, but I see it. I will do my best to reach my hope, to reach this candle. To try to make it growing to my people. To my family. To my generation. If I give up, that’s my death, and that’s what will not happen to me. In this seminar here I got a lot of encourage, because of you guys. I will invite myself to call you and to make connection with you. Because I feel, one week is not enough to know all of you. A Palestinian participant
I think for me this seminar had been really a roller coaster of imports and feelings and I definitively will go home things to unpack. I am really happy that I had the chance to meet you all in a way we don’t usually meet in daily life. I am sad to go home to where we live, so I want to keep the memory. A German participant
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Step Into the Fire
Facilitation Training for FAB June 29 – July 3, 2018, Beit Jala (West Bank / Palästina) Facilitation: Prof. Dr. Björn Krondorfer
15 Israelis, Palestinians, and Germans Initiation and Organization: Andrea Leute, Daniela Falkenberg, Gerburg Rohde-Dahl FAB-representatives: Andreas Beier, Avner Dinur, Antwan Saca
In this five-day seminar, five people from each respective country met to learn and practice how to guide trilateral groups through a process of trust-building and improved communication skills. All participants had previously participated in FAB’s trilateral work.
In groups of three, an Israeli, Palestinian, German prepared short sessions for the whole group as a leadership team. In this way, all participants were actively involved in the emotional labor of these processes, for which they themselves were responsible. One moment they occupied a facilitator position, but in the next moment they were again simple participants. This complex and challenging task, which sometimes led to explosive situations, demanded creativity, responsibility, and improvisation skills. Historical traumata and current conflicts were always present in the space and tested the leadership potential of each participant.
In between, Krondorfer led feedback sessions, discussing the dynamics of conflict and trust, offering observations about the current group situation, and enriching the leadership practice with theoretical models. This unique facilitation experience allowed the group to feel in intimate ways the reality of the conflicts while being asked at the same time to be responsible for moving the process forward. It would be worthwhile to repeat this facilitation training again in the near future.
Björn Krondörfer
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DIALOG - In conflict situations
organisation: Daniela Falkenberg, Andrea Leute organisation on site: Julia Lex
This time, the group consisted of four Israelis, six Palestinians and eight Germans, from their early twenties into the late sixties, some with experience in previous FAB seminars, other newcomers. As it turned out, I was far from alone with my skepticism: several others, in particular Palestinians, but also Germans came with their own reservations about the seminar and its ambitions. They found the first two days tough going. In our work in the whole group, or in smaller groups, reasoning prevailed over listening and empathizing, we repeatedly stumbled into discussions about historical rights and wrongs, and there was palpable resistance to opening up all around.
On the morning of the third day, news reached us about an attack by three Palestinians on the entrance to the Holy sites on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, known to Muslims as the Holy Sanctuary. The attackers killed two Israeli Druze policemen, and were then shot and killed themselves. Once more, we were confronted with the deadly realities of the conflict outside; once more, that helped concentrate minds and move on from there to where we wanted to go. To get there, it is necessary to open up and expose ourselves as human beings, with our vulnerabilities and flaws, our emotional baggage and our conflicted personal histories. Once that happens, reasoned arguments lose their importance, and empathy wells up.
On this third day of the seminar, and into the following day, Björn Krondorfer made us work with a powerful technique called “living sculpture”. This technique consists of breaking into smaller groups of six to eight participants around themes (in this seminar, the themes were “dignity”, humiliation” and “fear”), which then have to work out how they can assemble themselves into a “living sculpture” that represents the theme in ways that one could envisage, as a sculpture, in a public place. Each group “performs” its living sculpture without giving explanations; the other two groups share their impressions and reactions with the performing group, which in turn reflects on their own emotional responses to their performance and the reactions it solicited. In the evening of the third day, in the context of this work, the whole group listened to a deeply moving, impassioned and earnest exchange between two of our initially skeptical Palestinian participants: they, and we all, had arrived at where Björn wanted to lead us: unsettling empathy.
We left in the afternoon of the following day; there was no skepticism anymore, only a deep sense of gratitude for the shared experience and the bonds created by it between the participants. One of the Israeli members of the group later wrote this about his experience:
"For me the Fab seminar was an extremely important experience. I have tens of little stories of things that were said and that happened that made a profound impression upon me. All told, I have been on a journey of pulling my head out of the sand for the past 3 1/2 years, and this seminar was a very meaningful way station in this journey. I live in my own closed Israeli society with so many different unacknowledged prejudices and blind spots. It will take a life time of work to find them all out, to overcome them and not to revert back to them during trying times. This seminar made a really deep impression on me as part of this continuing life long process.”
The seminar also confirmed, I think to all of us, the continuing relevance of our specific tripartite format. Not only are the Germans at the heart of the Jewish national trauma and therefore intertwined with the collective traumas of both peoples that today live and struggle in Palestine, the Holocaust and al-Naqba, the catastrophic displacement of Palestinians in the war of 1948. Their presence in those settings also allows for what Björn Krondorfer calls “triangulation”: breaking up a polarized conflict through introducing a third party as a catalyst.
Hanns Maull August 2017
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"National Identity" - Palestinian Group
"National Identity" - Israeli Group
"National Identity" - German Group
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Risk the Encounter
International project of encounter for young Israelis, Palestinians and Germans
Each of the 3 groups had been prepared for this encounter in advance, in a number of sessions and meetings, by their national facilitators. Since over the last year the tensions between Palestinians and Israelis have increased (there were fatal stabbings), the students spoke about their fears and worries. In a safe atmosphere there was a lot of space given to witnessing and to listening to the personal stories of the participants. All participants had become involved in their own personal way, and they took a “little spark of hope” back home.
What does it mean for a Palestinian teenager to witness that his friend next to him is being killed by Israeli soldiers? Or what does it mean that the father is taken away by Israeli soldiers and put into prison? What does it mean to grow up as a Palestinian child in a refugee camp and feel like a beggar, when asking for food from an international NGO and having no private space.
Some of the Israeli group spoke about the inner conflict within their own society, and what it means to them. Travelling abroad, they would like to feel welcome as an Israeli instead of feeling rejected. Some of them feel like strangers in their own society, which they think of as a “sick society”. And yet, they want to live securely in this society without constant fear of a terror attack.
The German participants expressed their concern about the increasing racism and neo-Nazism in their own society. They also spoke about the “burden of the past”: the grandfather of a participant had been stationed during the Second World War close to the place where one of the worst massacres of Jewish people took place during this time. He did a lot of research and developed the deep wish that “the horror of the Holocaust never should be forgotten”.
Being creative together in different ways deepened the process of opening up for “the other”: like forming a “human sculpture” together in order to portray the topic of “national identity”; like forming sculptures out of clay about the topic “Hope and Despair”, or having an intercultural evening together. In one exercise the participants confronted each other in a respectful way with loaded words such as “Zionism”, “Naqba” “Nazi”, “Victim”, etc. In this exercise an Israeli soldier who had been stationed in Gaza during the last Gaza War 2014 and a Palestinian participant who had lost 15 relatives in Gaza during this war, told each other about their experience of fear and despair – and while doing it, felt seen and recognized by “the other”.
Some feedbacks from the closing round:
“The word occupation shocked me. We connect it with conquering land. But in the seminar I realized and understood that it is not only about occupying land but occupying freedom. I think all Israeli society should know that.”
“For the first time I was with Israelis and felt safe.”
“I realize that I want to stand up against neo-Nazism and racism.”
Oktober 2016, Andrea Leute
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Video of the seminar Oct.2015 / 15min.
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Right NOW - Touching Borders 2015
Seminar for Peace-Building and International Encounter 29th July – 1st August 2015, Beit Jala, Palestine 19 participants from Israel, Palestine, and Germany Initiator and Organizer: Daniela Falkenberg and Gerburg Rohde-Dahl Facilitation: Prof Dr Björn Krondorfer FAB-Facilitators: Dr Marco de Carvalho, Michal Hochberg, Antwan Saca Saleh
This year’s seminar was about feeling the own and collective borders which hinder us to be open for other concepts, to approach other people, and to reach out hands for peace. All participants showed each other their own borders and thus made clear how much borders affect and burden all of us. At the same time, borders are important, in order to give us support and security.
While stories with personal exclusion within the own biography touched all participants, collective borders were experienced to be oppressive and mighty. Once again, it became clear how much the consequences of World War II, the Holocaust, and the Nakba determine emotions and influence and limit us until today.
We could feel the painful dilemma between keeping the own borders which protect identity and living space on one hand, and crossing these borders on the other hand, in order to open new spaces of common ground with others. A simple solution through mere decision is not possible, but more likely a readiness to agree to a slow process of mutual approach.
Article by Björn Krondorfer: Memory Work and Unsettling Empathy
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Meeting of Palestinians and Israelis30th Jan. 2015 in „Kitchen“ of Ali Abu Awwad20 participants from Westbank and Israel Initiation und Organisation: Avner Dinur, Hanan Schlesinger
Shorashim/Judur/Roots - The Palestinian Israeli Initiative for Grassroots Understanding, Nonviolence and Transformation, is hosted on a small piece of Palestinian land in the heart of Jewish Gush Etzion. The project is often described by its leader Ali Abu Awwad, as a kitchen for mixing different people and ideologies and cooking up novel combinations that never fail to surprise and excite. It is not only Palestinians and Israelis settlers that encounter each other in the kitchen. Israelis of all types, religious and secular, left wing and right wing, all meet and interact there. (And the same is true for different types of Palestinians!)
Usually the left wingers are from Tel Aviv, but last month it was different. The Israeli leadership of Roots, Hanan Schlesinger, Shaul Judelman and Myron Joshua, together with Ali, met a delegation from FAB led by Avner Dinur from Sderot and including other Jewish and Palestinian FAB members, some of them part of the Holy Land Trust of Bethlehem, which has a long standing relationship with Roots.
The interaction between the different constituencies, respectful from beginning to end, was fascinating and enlightening. It was important to see how much we have in common, and that we have the language and the tools to listen to each other and to understand each other even when we disagree. After three hours we felt that we barley scratched the surface and that we ought to find a way to continue the dialogue.
Hanan Schlesinger http://www.friendsofroots.net/
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Between Trauma and Politics Talitha Kumi Meeting for development the Student Peace Carrier Training 2015 1st - 4th Aug. 2014 Talitha Kumi, Beit Jala / Westbank 15 participants from Westbank, Israel und Deutschland Initiation und Organisation: Dr. Andrea Leute Facilitator and consultant: Dr. Prof. Björn Krondorfer
In the midst of the Gaza ground war, FAB convened an intergenerational seminar in Talitha Kumi in Palestine – one of very few meetings which brought together Israeli Jews and Palestinians (and, in our case, Germans) without a specific political protest agenda and for several days.
That it was possible to assemble our group of four Palestinians, six Israeli Jews and six Germans despite the torrents of hatred and fear which swept both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian societies and the temporary cancellation of international flights into Tel Aviv was a remarkable testimony to the strength of FAB and its past achievements: against all the difficulties, participants made their way to our meeting in search of a place where they could feel safe and at peace with themselves and the others. Upon joining us, one Palestinian participant reported how difficult it had been to come: he just had lost fifteen relatives in Gaza to Israeli air attacks. Others, both from Palestine and from Israel, described how difficult live had become for them in an environment of intolerance, hatred and fear in their family and at their workplace. Yet we were able not only to meet but to move forward in our effort to build a space of safety and peace through mutual trust and friendship. On our “open day” on Sunday, Aug. 3, the guests from outside who joined us to learn about our work were clearly both impressed and fascinated by this achievement.
This was an unusual meeting: twice our carefully prepared agenda was overthrown, as the grim background noises of hatred, fear, violence, destruction and death intruded, unleashing powerful emotions. Our original plans had to be changed to accommodate the psychological and emotional needs of the day. We did so, and found in the end that while we did not achieve completely what we had planned to do originally with this meeting, we got something probably more valuable: we could confirm that FAB had been able to build reliable foundations for peace amongst ourselves in the past, and we were able to take further important steps forward.
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Between Trauma and Politics 2014
30 th Jan. – 2 nd Feb. 2014 Freiburg / Germany
Workshop for Peace-Building Intercultural Encounters
participants from Israel, Westbank, Gaza and Germany
Initiation and Organisation: Dr. Andrea Leute
Facilitator and consultant: Dr. Prof. Björn Krondorfer
FAB-Facilitator: Dr. Avner Dinur, Andreas Beier
How can we facilitate international and intercultural encounters that move between memory work and management of current conflicts? During the workshop-seminar, the participants will learn how the multifaceted interrelations between traumatic memory and political conflicts can be addressed and transformed within intercultural group work.
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Meeting of the Palestinian and Israelis participants of the seminar
22 nd Nov. 2013 Café near the northern end of the Dead Sea
3 from the Palestinian group, 5 from the Israeli group and 2 friends
It was VERY important and exciting to have our meeting today. Many topics came up that are important to explore - e.g. relations between Jews and Palestinians within the 1949 armistice line, dialogue versus activism, expanding the circle. To come up with a plan that meets the needs of all - that includes doing something concrete for moving the messages of peace and the end of the oppression of the Palestinian people forward.
We agreed on re-sending the link to the petition to end the blockade on Gaza so that whoever hadn't signed it yet could do so with a MAJOR request to please send it on to anyone who you think might want to sign. So far there are 1080 signatures, but there is no way enough!
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/End_the_blockade_on_Gaza/
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Between Trauma and Politics 2013 3rd – 6th Oct. 2013 Freiburg / Germany Workshop for Peace-Building Intercultural Encounters
22 participants from Israel, Westbank, Gaza and Germany
Initiation and Organisation: Dr. Andrea Leute
Facilitator and consultant: Dr. Prof. Björn Krondorfer
FAB-facilitators: Dr. Avner Dinur, Andreas Beier
We dealt with the interrelations between traumatic memory and political conflicts addressed and transformed within intercultural group work. With the help of interactive and creative approaches, which pay particular attention to personal awareness and group-specific dynamics, we became aware of the narrative, psychological, and political patterns that disrupt and prevent interpersonal and communal empathy. Core theme on the trilateral encounter between German, Israelis and Palestinians was the work on the obstacles and resistances toward peace building within the own community. Mutual finding of 3-4 issues within each national group that prevent moving forward and finding a solution to the violent conflict:
The plenum choose out of these obstacles one issue for each group:
Germans - Mistrust in being German Israelis - Comfort level with status quo Palestinians - National aspirations
In a deeper exploration each group discussed and performed the actual national obstacle in front of the plenum. This work on the own resistance was a new step within our work in FAB. All participants emphasized on the importance to continue and deepen this work.
Feed backs / reflections after the seminar by a Israeli, Palestinina and German participant:
Israeli participant: I learned that I have a lot of work to do on my stereotypes about Germans, after 30 years’ good progress shedding my stereotypes (as a Jew) about Palestinians.... read more
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The Art of Building a Vision for FAB
Using creative methods like sculpture work, we were able to envisage the basis for a continuation of FAB’s work, and work out next steps and new projects.
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International Student Seminar / Final meeting Peace-Carrier Training - IV
This meeting was expanded from the original final student meeting into a reflection and planning session on the future work of FAB.
The background to this decision was the development of the political situation (the settlement policy of the Israeli government and the anti-normalisation policy of the Palestinian leadership), which made it impossible for Palestinian students to attend this meeting. Venue and date for the meeting also had to be shifted. Eventually, two Palestinian members were able to join and to explain the situation. Together, the meeting then explored future possibilities of continuing or work together.
For the attending students this was the last international meeting. Concluding sessions in national settings followed.
Israeli and German participants expressed their joint attitude towards the political situation through a protest banner (see picture).
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FAB Seminar Supervision
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Forgetting can be helpful - but Remembering is necessary
Special format of constellation-work: „The spirit coming out of the box of oblivion/forgetting“.
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Empathy without Borders - (German) Desires and the Jewish Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
29 th Apr. 2011, Workshop of the 5th International Conference Würzburg "Conflict Transformation and Mysticism"
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Appreciation versus Degradation
International Student Seminar / Peace-Carrier Training - III
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Israeli Independence versus Palestinian Catastrophe Al Nakba
International Student Seminar / Peace-Carrier Training - II
During the visit of the villages Lifta, Sataf, Al Qastal and Al Malhah, which were destroyed during the „Nakba“, participants were confronted with the Israeli-Palestinian past. Together, the students listened to memories from the past and learned how the land of the former villages is used today. It was especially moving to hear that quite a few of the displaced Palestinian families still retain the keys to their abandoned houses, passing them on to the next generations as a sign of their hopes for their return. |
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FAB Student Training 2010/11 - part 1 UT EN 16 min. |
Regaining Hope through Self-Awareness
1st International Student Seminar / Peace-Carrier Training - I
Initiation and organisation: Brigitta M.M. Mahr
Co-organisation: Mamoun Kassem, Alon Gayer
Zidan Jwihan, Palestinian Territories
The participants had already prepared for in their respective national contexts. They had thus gained a deepened knowledge about the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Holocaust, and they had acquired skills in intercultural communication. They also had explored their own and their family biographies and reflected on their own personal attitudes towards the conflict.
The main aims of the seminar were to listen to the views and to understand the perceptions of the other sides in this trialogue; to gain a deeper understanding of conflict dynamics, to remain in contact and stay in dialogue with the others despite painful memories, prejudice and traumata, preserving their own capacity to empathize with others; and to explore together viable paths to oppose violence and contain its effects in violent surroundings.
Key modules of the seminar: “Loaded words” exercise: Dialogues on phrases loaded with conflict potential, which easily trigger emotional reactions. Exercises on communication, conflict management and active listening. “Witnessing circles”: Sharing personal experiences of fear, violence and its effects. While one group was talking, another was listening and the third supporting. Systemic Constellations Work: Individual and collective fields of conflict were explored and worked on.
Excursion to Jerusalem: Visit of historical sites and museums, which included some debasing experiences at checkpoints for the Palestinians, although they had a special official permission for this visit.
Further elements: Memory work, sculpture work, meditation exercises, reflection units, cultural evenings, soccer and dance, planning of peace-supporting activities and preparations for the return to the normal daily surroundings and difficulties at home.
Key ingredients for the success of this seminar were the mix of different approaches and methodologies, the fact that there was enough time for national groups to meet on their own, and the strong support by our Mentors who were experienced in trauma work.
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Seminar „Peace is a tree and grows slowly“
Work with sculptures: Every group agreed on a common ensemble of body postures meant to illustrate different aspects of their respective national identities. Comparison and discussion of the differences and similarities of the three sculptures.
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"Dialogue"-Seminar
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Meeting of the Facilitators
Initiation and organisation: Brigitta M.M. Mahr
Discussion, definition and agreement on the internal and external structure of FAB. First outline of the international training program.
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FAB Mentors – Pilotproject 2007 / Trailer 7 min. |
Pilot project for mentors „Let me see through your eyes“
Following the method of "Compassionate Listening", Palestinians, Israelis and Germans also were able to share personal experiences with each other that had affected their own life and work, as well as that of their families.
Further methods: Work in mixed groups of three, in national groups, an arts project and informal gatherings.
report 1 (pdf) » report 2 (pdf) »
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Configuration of Friendship Across Borders e.V. 2004 – 2007 numerous meetings in Israel, Palestinian territories and Germany with Jewish Israelis, Palestinians and Germans
Basic work to organise and establish an Israeli, Palestinian and German group. Exchange and development of common targets concerning the future work of FAB. Preparation and planning of the pilot project "Let me see through your eyes“. |
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Fears - Hopes
Wall from Palestinian side
Work with sculptures - Israeli Group (detail)
Work with sculptures - Palestinian Group
Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum Jerusalem
Lifta, destroyed Palestinian village
Work with sculptures Israeli Group
Work with sculptures Palestinian Group
Wall Beit Jala / Bethlehem
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