"'More person-to-person
contact" answered "without hesitation" Ambassador Dennis
Ross, veteran U.S. Department State negotiator, when asked what he would have
done differently over the many years he worked on the Middle East peace
process.
Thus reports Helena K. Finn, senior American diplomat,
in "The Case for Cultural Diplomacy" in the 2003
November-December issue of the prestigious journal, FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
"Cultural diplomacy is one of the most potent
weapons. . . yet its importance has been consistently downplayed in favor of
dramatic displays of military might," the diplomat reminds all of us.
While governments alone continue to be unwilling or inept to move beyond war
and taking sides -- dependable failures -- the citizen-driven "public
peace process" continues creative breakthroughs and exemplary creativity
while tradition-burdened "old thinkers" continue to resist and
"object."
2003 in North America saw the first-ever
Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp --Oseh Shalom~Sanea al-Salam.
Joint youth summer camps continued: Building
Bridges for Peace; Face-to-Face/Faith-to-Faith; Seeds of Peace;
Seattle's Middle East Peace Camp for Children; New Mexico's Creativity
for Peace Camp; the Sunday, July 20th
First Day of Global Arab Jewish Dialogue initiated by a Washington,
DC Arab businessman; an all-time high exceeding 60 known Dialogue groups, plus
22 more on university campuses.
2003 in the Middle East saw activity continue
despite violence and severely closed borders: Givat Haviva Center for Peace;
Neve Shalom~Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace) model village; Hand-in-Hand
Arab-Jewish schools; Peace Child Israel; Israeli Palestinian Peoples
Peace Campaign; Ta'ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership; the
Palestinian-based Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation; the
Peace Research Institute in the Middle East, in Beit Jallah, West Bank,
and many more.
Creative political solutions flowered in the
Beilin-Abed Rabbo Geneva Accord, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Statement of
Principles -- both congruent with the Roadmap -- as well as the unfolding
endeavor of OneVoice to involve more and more citizens in determining
their destinies.
There was the first cooperative
Israeli-Palestinian biology experiment aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and
the premier TV broadcasts of Sesame Stories to model cooperative
inter-cultural programming between Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian
broadcasters.
Finally, remember the first, Arab-initiated
pilgrimage of 260 Israeli Palestinians and Jews, equally, to Auschwitz,
demonstrating it's possible to transform from the "spoilers to each
other's dreams" to co-creators of a shared future.
According to the title of Arab author Mohammed
Mossad's 2003 award-winning short essay: "They only have each
other!"
Beginning January 1st, 2004,
look for something new between Palestinian and Israeli citizens --
"Breaking the Ice.
Four Israelis and four Palestinians -- two
women and six men -- will set sail from Chile on a sea and land expedition to
the distant reaches of Antarctica.
Their goal: to summit and name a previously
unclimbed mountain.
The Arabs and Jews will journey together in a spirit
of adventure with a quest for understanding.
It will force people separated by deep political and
religious differences to cooperate in pursuit of a shared goal.
In order to succeed -- and survive -- these erstwhile
enemies will have to work together as a team, sharing hardships and challenges
that none of them could surmount as individuals.
On their way, they will confront both physical and
mental obstacles.
In order to transcend those obstacles they will have
to find the way to work as a team.
Their vision is this:
A remote mountain on a
distant continent,
With four Israelis and four
Palestinians standing on its summit:
This is the dream we carry
with us.
This is the dream that carries us forward.
At its peak we will raise our
voices, making a joyful noise.
May our two people hear and
heed our call:
To end the hatred and madness
And climb the next mountain
together.
For
those interested in more depth of reporting, we will close with several news
stories about the Palestinian-Israeli team the will be "Breaking The
Ice."
In this last message of 2003, we urge
all Jews and Palestinians -- all humans on Earth -- to move toward one another
with a new quality of listening to one another and to the whole, exquisite,
interconnected living system on Earth.
With love, Libby and Len
Published 13 July 2003 -- 70South.com, the No.1
source for Antarcticles
http://www.70south.com/news/1058120894
Israelis and Palestinians in joint
expedition
Four Israelis and four Palestinians are to make a joint assault on a
previously unclimbed mountain in the Antarctic Peninsula, Bangkok Post reports.
The group of three women and five men are calling their peace mission a
"quest for understanding". The 1,000 km sea voyage to the Antarctic
is due to commence in late December when the team sets out from Ushuaia in
Argentina. Once on the frozen continent they planned to set up camp and begin a
10-day trek over the ice cap towards the base of an "unclimbed and unnamed"
mountain. If they successfully scale its 2,000-metre high peak, a brief
ceremony will be staged and transmitted live worldwide via satellite, and a
name given to the mountain. A TV crew, several reporters and photographers are
to accompany the expedition to provide daily coverage.
==========================================
Published Monday, 22 September, 2003 -- BBC News -- World Edition
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3130290.stm
Antarctic setting for Mid-East peace
bid
(Excerpt)
A group of Israelis and Palestinians aim to prove that
the two communities can work together -- by staging a joint expedition to
Antarctica.
The project - called "Breaking The Ice" --
will take the eight-member team from Patagonia in southern Chile to the top of
an unnamed peak.
The man behind the idea, 41-year-old Heskel Nathaniel,
wants to show that people can work together as individuals, despite their
troubled recent history.
"In the Antarctic, there is no way to turn
back," Mr. Nathaniel told the BBC. "We're either going to win as a
team, or fail together. We have to learn to understand each other, and to
co-operate," he says.
The 35-day expedition will be heavily publicized
during the run-up to its departure and followed by people throughout the world
via daily Internet and Videophone dispatches. The story of 'Breaking the Ice'
will be brought to television in a feature-length documentary film for
international distribution.
The eight will set sail from Chile on New Year's Day,
and pass through the Drake Passage before making landfall in Antarctica.
They will then climb a previously unscaled mountain,
and name it.
As for choosing a name, "we have about 20 days to
discuss that en route", says Mr. Nathaniel.
The expedition is the first organised by Extreme Peace
Missions. More information is on the Web at:
http://www.breaking-the-ice.de/bti_home.htm
Published 8 December 2003 -- Search for Common Ground News
Service
http://www.sfcg.org/cgnews/dec8a.doc
and
14 December 2003 -- Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN)
Palestinians and Israelis Choose the Extreme to Break the Ice
By: Walid Batrawi
http://www.amin.org/eng/walid_batrawi/2003/dec14.html
Palestinians and Israelis Choose the Extreme
to Break the Ice
By WALID BATRAWI, award-winning free-lance journalist based in Ramallah
(Excerpt -- be sure to read the full text of Walid's excellent article)
The fever of political meetings between Palestinians
and Israelis, whether official or unofficial, may end up with a political
solution to the conflict between the two nations but is yet far from breaking
the ice among citizens on both sides who have suffered during the past three
years.
Away from politics, not in Jerusalem, London nor
Geneva but in Antarctica four Palestinians and four Israelis chose to break the
ice in their own way.
This expedition that was officially announced in
Berlin last July is initiated by Extreme Peace Missions, a non-profit
organization which believes that sports can bring people together.
Published Friday, December 27, 2003 -- The Jerusalem Post
Israeli-Palestinian expedition to scale
unclimbed mountain
By LAUREN GELFOND
An atypical delegation of Israelis and
Palestinians, tired of failed peace talks and treaties, has decided to tackle a
new kind of summit.
On Saturday, the team of eight shipped-off for a
35-day expedition that will land them in Antarctica, to scale and name a
previously unclimbed peak.
After flying to Madrid and then Chile, they will board
a yacht on January 1, and sail to the world's iciest continent. There they
will spend 7-10 days walking on glaciers, driving sleds, and finally ascending
a virgin peak, to plant Israeli and Palestinian flags.
Expecting to face heavy snowstorms and winds of
over 100 kilometers an hour while in Antarctica, the unlikely teammates will
spend all waking hours on the last leg of their trek roped to one another.
The Palestinians on the expedition, all Muslims, are
soccer coach Nasser Quos, 35, who spent three years in an Israeli prison for
throwing a firebomb in the first intifada and later was bodyguard to PLO
Jerusalem representative Faisal Husseini; Fatah member Suleiman Jamal Hatib,
32, who spent ages 14-25 in prison for his activities for the group; lawyer
Ziad Darwish, 53, whose brother was killed in an IDF raid in 1982; and
gymnastics teacher Olfat Hyder, in her time the only Palestinian on the Israeli
women's national volleyball team.
Jewish Israeli expedition members are professional
climber Doron Erel, 44, and lawyer Avihu Shoshani, 44, who were in elite
commando units; real-estate developer Hezkel Nethaniel, 40, and Yarden Fanta,
33, a PhD candidate, who trekked from Ethiopia via Sudan to Israel, illiterate,
at 14.
"When they first told me [about the expedition] I
laughed to myself, it's a crazy idea," said Darwish. "But it took me
only one day to decide okay, I'm willing. The world is fed up of these peace
treaties. Peace is like a pyramid and you have to have a good base for a
pyramid understanding between the two peoples.
"We can prove that we Israelis and
Palestinians are going as one group, not two, and together we will overcome
obstacles and dangers. An Israeli will give me a hand and I'll give my hand to
an Israeli it's very symbolic."
Except for team leader Erel and friend Nathaniel,
none has previously participated in extreme sports. Erel, one of Israel's top
climbers, has climbed the tallest mountain on every continent, and is the only
Israeli to summit Mt. Everest.
"Hezi and I have been climbing for the last five
years. When you climb in the Himalayas or trek in Alaska, you come from the
peace of nature back to this crazy area and it's so difficult. You think, 'what
can I do?' And this is what I do," said Erel. "I'm not naive, I don't
think we'll change the world or bring peace. But what I saw [in training] was
that the political things that separate us disappeared in the mountains. We
were just humans fighting for what we want and we even had a great time
together."
Besides cooperating on survival, the group must agree
on a name for the symbolic summit.
"We will have 35 days on the way to discuss many
political issues. But on the social, human side, nothing will prevent us from
being friends or members of the same family, the 'Breaking the Ice'
family," said Darwish, using the official name of the expedition."
The project is the first of a new extreme sports
coexistence organization, Extreme Peace Missions. The expedition has
purportedly received the blessings of such world dignitaries as the Dalai Lama.
Darwish went to see Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat to get his blessings, he said. "He told me, 'you know Ziad,
you have to go to the end of the world to show that Palestinians are looking to
settle a peace.'"
Erel said it was difficult to recruit Palestinians in
the West Bank, not because of lack of interest, but because of travel permits.
"I didn't ask about people's political views, we don't have to agree or
sign a treaty, we just have to climb a mountain."
In a show of support, Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman
donated a painting for the main sail.
The first Arab to summit Mt. Everest, climber Zeddy
al-Rafai of Kuwait, sent a letter of endorsement, saying he was jealous that he
is not participating and wishing the climbers that their "spirit may rise
higher than mountains. [Prove] to the world that you can live in harmony even
at the worse circumstances."
As most of the expedition members are not professional
climbers, they will be accompanied by a second team, including two mountain
guides and a doctor. German Telecom, a cosponsor, will join the second team, to
broadcast two-three minutes daily, and two additional cameramen, one French and
one Israeli, will be making a documentary