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 This is my mum!
 Northern Israel
 A Druze woman I have worked with
 At the CHN Gathering of Friends at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem in 2001. With me are Gillian from England, Serifa from Bosnia and two lovely Palestinian men
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Ibtisam Mahameed
www.jerusalempeacemakers.org/ibtisam
My name is Ibtisam. I am Palestinian, living in northern Israel.
My primary focus is on improving relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and I also work to improve the status of women in both Arab and Jewish society.
Even though Arabs and Israelis live very close to one another, most have no social connection whatsoever. Most of my work is in the Palestinian community in Israel, especially amongst women whose position in Arab society is still repressed. I try to help them build up their confidence, and then I introduce them to groups of people of the three major faiths - Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
For many years I have been counseling Arab and Jewish women regarding the status of women in society. As a religious Muslim woman, I work with religious Jewish, Druze, and Christian women on promoting peace by learning about each other's religions and cultures. I am on the board of Middleway, an NGO for the promotion of compassion and non-violence, and I helped found the Women's Interfaith Encounter, a program of the Interfaith Encounter Association.
My background
I am a member of the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel that lost most of its lands and rights in Israel's War of Independence in 1948. My family was from the Palestinian village of Tantura on the Mediterranean coast, which was totally destroyed during the 1948 war. The refugees from Tantura dispersed to Jordan, Syria and the West Bank. Some, like my parents, went to the village of Fureidis in northern Israel, where I now live.
I have five sisters and three brothers, and my husband (who is a housepainter) and I have three children. I am now in my mid-forties. When I grew up, very few girls in Arab villages had schooling opportunities, but my parents were very supportive and I completed high school. Since then I have studied management and educational administration.
As a religious Muslim woman I wear traditional covering. Unfortunately, Israeli society around me associates every religious Muslim with extremism and potential terrorism. My peace activist work requires me to travel alone around Israel (and the world) and spend nights away from home, something which is very unusual in traditional Arab society.
In the beginning, some members of my family found it difficult to accept my association with Jews and my work for Arab-Jewish co-existence. Some of them wouldn't even talk to me but now they support me. My family also pays a social price for my activism. For example, my daughter was the prime candidate for a teaching job in our village, but this was denied her because the village elders felt threatened by my activism on behalf of women in the community.
Given the cultural taboos of a religious Muslim woman doing this work, I am very fortunate that my husband respects and supports my work which often takes me outside our village. He encouraged me to get a degree and he supports me fully - he even helps around the house. We've been together 31 years, since we were 13 (I married when I was 18 years old). It was hard for the rest of my family in the beginning but now they all support me too. If there is a Nobel Peace Prize for men, my husband deserves it. We live in a four-room flat and I use this as my base as I try to make my contribution to peace and understanding in our region.
I ran for the town council of Fureidis in 1996. My agenda was to help both men and women, especially women, to help them get an education and challenge spousal abuse, for example. My supporters were 50/50 men and women. If I get involved in local politics again, it will be from a different place. I will support another woman so that she can succeed. I will be the teacher to teach another woman - I will not run myself. It was hard running for office but it was a great learning experience.
 Here are my husband and I at a Middleway meeting, with Ronda Zickerman and others.
 The CHN Gathering of Friends in Jerusalem in 2001, where I made many new friends from around the world. These meetings have helped me remember we are not alone - we have friends everywhere.
 Here I am talking with a man who represented the Hopi Nation in USA, at the CHN Gathering in Jerusalem.
 On a peace walk in Nazareth with the Thai monk Phap An and other good friends.
 With MK Ra'anan Cohen (on the right), back in 1998
 Elana speaks at St James' Church, Piccadilly, London, during a visit to UK with Eliyahu and Ibrahim and myself in 2002
 With Pam Perry of CHN, in Birmingham, England
 It's time for normal life to return to our land. We all need to feel safe and to work together for a better future
 The olive harvest brings whole families and communities out onto the land
 Here I am at the Way of Sulha in 2005, talking to a Jew and a Christian monk
 With Susan Halliday at the Dead Sea Conference in 2004
 The Cloth of Many Colours - with Elana, Ibrahim and Eliyahu in Birmingham, England
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About my work
I have been active in Interfaith work since April 2002 when a religious Jewish woman, Elana Rozenman, and I founded the Northern Chapter of the Women's Interfaith Encounter, a program of the Interfaith Encounter Association, doing interfaith work amongst women. We meet every month in a different community, giving the participants of three faiths exposure to different lifestyles and cultures.
We invite religious leaders from the three faiths to come to meet us, and we learn from a wide variety of religious texts about women's position in society and their contribution to it.
I am a woman in a patriarchal, traditional society that suffers from discrimination, high unemployment and much internal conflict. I live in an oppressed minority in a country founded for and existing for the benefit of another people – the Jews.
How it all started
I have been a peace activist since 1988. I started this work in my village, getting to know my neighbors. Then I worked with women in the neighboring Jewish villages, working with women on the status of women in society and against domestic abuse. It took me a long time to work on myself to know what I want to do and to talk from the heart.
My first contact with Jews was as a little girl, accompanying my mother, who used to cook for Jewish households in the nearby town of Zikhron Yaakov. I made friends and started to learn Hebrew. Then I met a Jewish woman from Zikhron Yaakov who came to my village of Fureidis to teach fitness classes. We clicked instantly and developed a deep friendship.
We then started a nationwide non-political women's network in 1992 called the Peace Begins Within Association, where I was the director. The idea of the organization is that if I'm at peace within myself, I make peace with others. We have meetings once a month between women from every sector of society, with the aim of getting to know one another and breaking down the barriers of stereotypes which reduces fears and paves the way to real unity. It is the task of women to raise our children at home in an atmosphere of openness and acceptance.
Peace activism
It took me four years to get to the point where I am today, where I see the individual, and I can speak to any person without putting up a wall. I let myself respect everyone. I also got involved with a group of women called Anwar which is based on the idea that women are connected through the womb. Through the process of giving birth, a woman becomes a mother, a teacher, an educator, a nurse.
We learn what in society is forbidden and permissible, for example, does religion really prohibit women to get involved in politics? We women work together to break the political obstacles at home, in society and in the country. We learn our rights, as religious women, to be involved politically and are supported in Islamic law, for example.
From religion I developed to be a woman leader, spiritually, politically and socially. Our group supports every woman who wants to be involved politically (to run for office, for example), with lectures, home groups, financially, and morally. Anwar has a 'Women's Parliament' every month where Arab and Jewish women work for the betterment of society.
In October 2000, after the start of the current Palestinian Intifada, the Arabs in Israel, who are mostly peaceable, law-abiding citizens, could no longer contain their frustration and they took to the streets. Thirteen of them were killed in clashes with police and the chasm between Jews and Arabs widened even more. Every Arab in Israel is feared and suspected as a potential terrorist and that's the situation in which I decided that I had to do something.
My current activism began as a response to the violence of October 2000, because I don't want the cycle to begin again. I want more Jews and Arabs to get along until everyone in the country gets along and there won't be this fear of each other anymore. In 2000 I saw the country on fire and I felt that this isn't my country, I can't live here with all the violence. I learned to be optimistic. I use the tool of listening circles, first listening to my own heart.
Ibtisam Mahameed
Current Peace Projects
In April 2002 a religious Jewish woman, Elana Rozenman, and I founded the northern chapter of Women's Interfaith Encounter, associated with the Interfaith Encounter Association (IEA), doing interfaith work among women. We meet every month in a different community, giving the participants of four faiths exposure to different lifestyles and cultures. We invite religious leaders from the four faiths to come and meet with us, and we learn from a wide variety of religious texts about women's position in society and their contribution to society. I was an executive committee member of the IEA but now I am involved in other projects and need more time. I'm still involved with them but not in management.
Before I started organizing interfaith gatherings I knew that there are Jews, Christians, Baha'is, and others, but I didn't have a connection with them. I have a Christian friend but I didn't know anything about her religion. I have a friend who is Jewish and I didn't know what 'kosher' means. I didn't know what a church is and what they do on Sunday. When Elana and I started the circles once a month, the coordinators brought a Muslim religious woman (sheikha), a Druze religious woman, a woman rabbi and a Christian sister to speak to us.
Through these meetings I learned what kosher is and now I can respect a person who tells me that he can't eat at my house. It's not because my food isn't tasty or that I don't know how to host, but because of religious customs. Just like I can't eat pork at a Christian's home, and I have to explain that it's forbidden for me and I can't eat meat at a Druze's home. Little by little we started to learn texts from the Q'uran, the Torah and the New Testament, and it's exactly the same words. But people don't live by the religion.
"Don't kill" is written in my scriptures, as well as Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i and every religion in the world. But people kill. It says not to steal. But there is a big gap between what is written and what we do. I learned about Jewish society and to respect it. I learned that deep down, we are all the same. I have also stayed over in a Jewish home and in both religious and secular homes. I have learned about different people and their customs. We are all the same. Black, white, yellow, we are all people.
For my work with interfaith encounters, I became an 'international' woman, invited to travel and speak at interfaith conferences. I am involved with PEACE X PEACE (www.peacexpeace.org) as one of the women in the network. With PEACE X PEACE Elana and I went to the Strength of Women Conference in Bangalore, India, in May 2005. It was held in the Art of Living Center and 2,000 women participated. We gave lectures there about our work and friendship and it was very special because many didn't believe that Jews and Muslims work together in Israel. All of the media asked us for interviews.
I am also involved with Women's Partnership for Peace in the Middle East, which the United Nations founded so that religious women should work for peace.
Recently, in March 2005, I received a letter from the office of Abu Mazen, the President of the Palestinian Authority, that is very valuable to me. It says that I am the contact person between them and the Israeli peace organizations (between Israel and Gaza). It's a big honor. It also says that I am the coordinator of all the women, all the women who want to go to Gaza, go through me.
I am a coordinator of Middleway (Shvil Zahav) where Arabs and Jews go on silent walks together and listen to themselves and nature. After the walks, I help facilitate listening circles. In the listening circles I hear other people's stories. I may have my own pain but other people also have the same pain. I have learned not to blame the other person. Both Israelis and Palestinians have pain. If we go the political route, it never ends, but it hopefully will end if we all meet as people. I have a lot of Jewish friends from this group (as with the other groups) and they stay at my house and all of my family knows them. If you send love, you receive love and I get that from Israeli Jews.
Middleway has different commitees and I am on the "Va'adat HaShtakhim" committee where I work with Palestinians in Ramallah, Jenin and Gaza. In April 2005, we spent three days planting olive trees in Gaza. Previously, in Ramallah we had planted 1,600 olive trees and this time we planted 500 trees. Trees had been uprooted by the Israeli army, and I am not blaming the Israeli army, but I planted the trees. The trees were contributed by a Jew but the army wouldn't let Jews in to plant them for security reasons so we Palestinians planted them.
With Middleway I also went to Gush Katif, one of the Jewish settlements in Gaza, to hear the settlers share their pain. It is very hard for them to be uprooted from their homes. I understand their pain and what is happening to them. As a Palestinian I think that it's not right that there are 8,000 Jewish settlers next to one and a half million Arabs and closing them in. But I see the Jews in Gush Katif as people, and not just as 'settlers'. I connect with my people but that doesn't mean that I can't understand the settlers' pain of being uprooted from their homes.
I'm also a coordinator with the Sulha Way Project, with the women's circle (see www.sulha.com for more details).
A few anecdotes...
I often get stopped by Israeli security because I wear traditional Arab clothing. Only after the security people talk to me do they see me as a pursuer of peace. I am a volunteer and often don't get paid for my peace work.
I'm right, you're right, but when will there be peace? Life is more important then land because one day we will all return to the earth and be under the ground. Why fight and die young? Arabs and Jews should get along with each other and spend time together.
Other Arabs used to say to me, "How could you talk to these Israelis?". I tell them that it's been a twenty year process. I was once in their shoes but my thinking has changed. I tell them this and they are surprised and then the next day they want to know who are my Israeli friends.
Once I hosted, in Fureidis, a Jewish-Arab workshop conducted along the principles of Process Oriented Psychology. A young religious Jewish woman wanted to participate but she had never spoken to Arabs before, nor had she been in an Arab village. She had heard that I am a woman of peace, so she wanted to sleep over in my house. But at the workshop she met my sister, who invited her to stay so she could overcome her fear. My sister promised her a room where she could keep the Sabbath - the Jewish woman had even brought her own food. In the end she stayed until late on the second day and was so happy that she had overcome her fear of Arabs.
When I attended a consciousness-raising workshop a few years ago, organized by the Landmark Forum, there was a lady dentist from Haifa who, when she saw my traditional Arab dress, said she didn't want to sit next to me or talk to me. After I spoke at the forum, she stood up to apologise for her prejudice and even offered me a lift home at the end of the workshop. That's the kind of change that personal contact can make.
Experiences like these help me remember that it is really worth working for peace and reconciliation in Israel and Palestine. It's a big job, with many setbacks. But seeing little breakthroughs like these, happening now, makes a more positive future come a little closer.