Tag Archives: Israel

Student Voices: Planting the Seeds of Peace

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Israeli and Palestinian teenagers gathered in Jerusalem at the close of the HNMCP training program

Today’s dispatch comes from Krystyna Wamboldt (JD ’12), Rachel Krol (JD ’12), and Professor Robert Bordone (JD ’97), who represented Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) on a recent trip to Jerusalem.

Tucked away in an idyllic corner of Maine is a summer camp that features many traditional American activities: singing around bonfires, flag raising ceremonies, Color Wars, and chilly dips in the lake. Less ordinary, however, are the daily dialogue sessions, where Israeli and Palestinian campers heatedly discuss their identities, homelands, politics, and pain.

Meet Seeds of Peace, the organization that runs this one-of-a-kind camp – and our client organization for a very unique clinical project. We – Krystyna Wamboldt (JD ’12), Rachel Krol (JD ’12), and Professor Robert Bordone (JD ’97) – partnered with Seeds of Peace to lead a skills-building workshop for the organization’s older youth, focused on interests-based, problem-solving negotiation.

As part of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP), our three-person team traveled to Jerusalem in January 2012 to teach negotiation and mediation skills to a group of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, all former campers at Seeds of Peace. For three days, the “Seeds” did a range of activities, including several role-plays and active listening exercises. On the final day of the program, the students put their new skills to use in a group negotiation simulation created by Workable Peace about the conflict in Northern Ireland.

“It was incredible to look around the room and see both Palestinians and Israelis working together during the Ireland simulation,” said Rachel. “It was a challenging negotiation, yet they were communicating effectively, asking questions, listening to each other, and asserting their own interests while working towards a common goal. It was a wonderful sight!”

We emphasized how important it is for negotiators to seek to understand the other’s viewpoint. A breakthrough moment occurred when one Jewish Israeli student bravely volunteered to play the role of a Palestinian opponent of Jewish settlements in front of the class; when she spoke, there was an audible gasp from the other students. The Israeli student turned to her peers and said, “This is much harder than it looks.” “It struck me then how rare it was for these teens to articulate the other side’s perspective, at least in public,” Krystyna reflected. “There are still so many barriers to communication.”

For the majority of the Palestinian and Israeli participants at Seeds of Peace, the camp in Maine is the first time that they have ever met someone from “the other side.” Over the course of the summer, their initial fear and mistrust of the “enemy” gives way to friendship and understanding, as the campers get beyond the stereotypes and grow to know one another as friends.

Yet once they return from camp, the Seeds struggle to reconcile these friendships with the realities of life in a conflict region. Back in their home communities, there are many barriers – both literal and figurative – that prevent them from staying connected. Their classmates and neighbors may not understand how they could be friends with “terrorists” or “murderers.” Even getting permits to visit each other at home is often impossible.

As part of its strategic mission, Seeds of Peace is working to expand the opportunities for these youth to keep interacting and dialoguing with each other in their home region once they return from camp. Partnering with our HNMCP team was part of its initiative to build leadership skills in this next generation of peacemakers

“For HNMCP’s part,” says Professor Bordone, “This project presented a rare opportunity to give our students a chance to see the challenges and the opportunities for people-to-people diplomacy. While I don’t harbor any illusions that our work in January will magically ‘solve’ this intractable conflict, I do believe that efforts to create connections, relationships, and genuine dialogue between people with profound differences can influence and impact decisions made by their governments down the road. Facilitating connections across these divides can be one important part of a larger series of preac-building activities, including official diplomatic talks and efforts at economic and security cooperation. It was a tremendous honor to begin this relationship with Seeds of Peace and we hope it will be the start of more joint work between our respective organizations.”

One participant said that the program taught him “how to overcome obstacles in the negotiation process and how to be a good mediator between people, which as Seeds is something we often experience.” Our hope is that the Seeds continue to practice the negotiation and mediation skills that they learned during the HNMCP workshop to work together on resolving their own conflict.

“We learned a lot of new things,” said another Seed. “I think we should be proud of ourselves.”

Recent “Student Voices”
Camping Out for Kiobel
From Farm to School in Mississippi
A Thursday at Pinal County Jail
Update from Florence…, Arizona
Dispatch from Tel Aviv

Participants in the HNMCP/Seeds of Peace workshop participating in a final exercise of the workshop

Krystyna Wamboldt (JD ’12), Rachel Krol (JD ’12), and Professor Bob Bordone (JD ’97) in Jerusalem

Student Voices: Dispatch from Tel Aviv

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Nana Boakye (JD ’13), Lillian Langford (JD ’13), and Elian Maritz (JD ’13) outside Bethlehem

Welcome to the first installment of “Student Voices”, a new series that features the stories of clinical students at Harvard Law School. Today’s dispatch comes from Elian Maritz, a second-year student who is studying international migration and development. She has participated in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic and spent her winter term studying and working at Tel Aviv University Refugee Rights Clinic for an Independent Clinical.

One of the things we’ve learned in our time in Tel Aviv is that there is no “weather conversation” here; no matter if you’re talking to a friend at a bar or your taxi driver, politics are everywhere and everyone seems to have a strong opinion. As my fellow clinical student Nana observed, “everything is a hot-button issue.” Since arriving, we have been privy to debates about the role of women in Orthodox Israeli society, the laws on residence rights of Palestinians who marry Israelis, debates on the role of the Supreme Court, the high cost of living for young Israelis – just to name a few.

Within this context, we’ve managed to arrive during a particularly contentious moment in the politics of asylum law in Israel, as the country just passed a strict new law, authorizing the detention of undocumented immigrants for up to three years. Refugees and the debate over how they should be treated are currently at the forefront of Israeli politics, and we are right at the center of this national debate. Nana and I are at the Tel Aviv University Refugee Rights Clinic and Lillian is at Ramat Gan Academic Center of Law and Business Clinic, but as we’ve learned, the community of practitioners here is extremely tight-knit and our supervisors often work in concert, both on specific cases and broader policy issues, including bringing a legal challenge to the recent legislation.

Asylum is a relatively new field of law in Israel, as it is only within the past ten years or so that non-Jewish refugees have begun to seek asylum here. The refugee population primarily comes from Africa, with the majority being from Sudan and Eritrea. What this means is that Israeli courts often look abroad to places like the U.S. for guidance on how to interpret the Refugee Convention. Because of this, our knowledge of asylum law from the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic is actually very relevant and useful, despite the fact that we worked a completely different country.

Though our primary work is focused on helping with this type of research for asylum petitions, we’ve also had the opportunity to do much more. One recent highlight was a trip to meet with Justice Salim Joubran on the Supreme Court of Israel. Justice Joubran is the only Arab Justice on the Court, and was very gracious to take the time to sit down and talk to us. He spoke with us about his vision of the relationship between the Court and Israeli society (yet another “hot-button issue”). One thing I was particularly struck by on our tour of the Court was how the shelves lining the Supreme Court library were filled with hundreds of U.S. case law reporters (a type of case publication), a reminder of how influential U.S. jurisprudence is across the world.

And despite attempting to quickly educate ourselves about all these “hot-button issues,” we are still managing to find time to enjoy Tel Aviv and the rest of the region (see picture above for proof). All in all, it’s been an amazing experience and a wonderful complement to our work this past fall at Harvard. We will be very sad to leave!