Jerusalem: The Bridge to Peace

[melancholy synth music] narrator: Is it possible for ordinary citizens to make a difference in trying to solve major conflicts facing the world?

In the summer of 1991, the northern California-based peace organization Beyond War and the Stanford University Center on Conflict and Negotiation brought together 11 prominent Palestinians and Israelis in the California mountain town of Ben Lomond.

The goal of this unique assembly was to develop and reach agreement on a possible peace accord-- something official representatives of both sides had never been able to do.

Yet by the conference's end, a document was rendered, and in a public ceremony at Stanford University, it was signed by all participants.

Since the conference, they have continued to build a public peace process, developing support for the document in their respective communities.

This program is about their efforts and the problems that must be overcome if the document is to form the basis for a lasting peace.

[cheery woodwind music] Jerusalem is the birthplace of three of the world's major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Often called the City of Peace, in reality, it is now a divided city filled with fear and conflict.

Both Israelis and Palestinians lay claim to the city as their historic capital.

What happens in Jerusalem, to a large extent, determines what will happen between Israel and the greater Arab world.

- There are more wars in Jerusalem than in any other city in the world, and the people who really find the rest and peace here in the city, very strangely to say, are the dead-- those who are already buried.

Christians, Muslims, Jews.

You see all the graveyards all over the city, and they are so close together, and they live in peace.

But when it comes to those who are alive, they love the city, and they love the city so much-- Christians, Muslims, Jews-- so they are ready to kill each other to have the city.

- I think what worries me most about this prolonged conflict is that it's turning our society.

All the societies have evolved into inhuman societies, into societies which lose the basic preciousness of human lives.

There's a growing use of violence in a way which makes people insensitive.

I'm worried about raising children in a society like that.

narrator: Arabs and Jews were fighting each other even before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

And since then, there have been five wars involving Israel, neighboring Arab states, and Palestinians.

Despite United Nations resolutions offering self-determination to Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza, they continue to live under Israeli rule.

- [speaking language] - The word "occupation" is a very strange word, because if it was up to me, this would be fully annexed by Israel.

Anybody who doesn't want to live here doesn't have to stay.

I mean, I didn't want to live in America, and I'm here, 'cause I feel this is the only country for me.

It's the only Jewish country in the world.

It's not enough to tell Jewish jokes in New York or California or Florida or any of those other places where sometimes you just seem to run into Jews.

I grew up in a place that was over 90% Jewish, but that wasn't the real home for me.

I came here.

There are 20, 21 Arab countries.

If an Arab doesn't like the idea that his prime minister is Jewish, he doesn't have to stay here.

But I'm not pushing anyone out.

I see room for everyone, only if they want to live in peace.

- I think that all of Jerusalem is an Arab land.

Has been an Arab land for thousands of years, and we think that West Jerusalem is occupied right now.

As they are occupying East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem is occupied.

Jerusalem, in our consideration, is not the capital of Israel.

Tel Aviv's the capital of Israel, as they may say.

Jerusalem is our capital.

Jerusalem is for us.

[lively percussive music] narrator: In the context of disagreement over whether Palestinians or Israelis should control this region, the conference in Ben Lomond, California, takes on special significance.

Though some Israelis and Palestinians have been meeting off and on for years to try to resolve the dispute, this was the first time a signed agreement was reached and also endorsed by the PLO.

The conference participants agreed on several key proposals that might someday eliminate the conflict.

An end to the state of war and all hostile activities in the region.

Mutual recognition by Israel of a Palestinian state and by the state of Palestine and the other Arab states, of the State of Israel.

1967 borders would generally constitute the boundaries between both nations.

The agreement could be implemented in stages within a maximum timeframe of five years.

- Actually, for some years, I was involved in a dialogue.

Meeting people, Palestinians here with Israelis, but we never came to a kind of meeting in which we could sign a document together.

In which we could sit together and build a model.

I mean, I can sit with these people, the Palestinians, here in Jerusalem, but I knew that we will never be able to sign a document, unless we do it somewhere else in the world.

In Europe or in the United States, and that's-- narrator: Moshe Amirav, Jerusalem's city council member and a former leading member of the Likud Party, felt signing the document was a real breakthrough in trying to achieve a lasting peace.

- So when I met the people of Beyond War, of the global community, in California, and when I told them about this, and they were ready to go on this seminar, I felt that this is an opportunity.

We have a unique opportunity to have this meeting of people.

Palestinians from the outside, Palestinians from the inside, with Israelis from the peace camp sitting together for a few days and producing, actually, an agreement.

And this is what I was after, all the time, from the very beginning.

I wanted to have a document-- not just a verbal agreement, not just a theoretical agreement, but a document that people will sign.

The minute you sign something, it means something, and the minute the Palestinians signed this agreement, it meant a lot in the Palestinian community.

The minute we Israelis signed it, and it was published all over here in Israel, it meant a lot.

It's not just a saying.

It's signing.

Actually saying, "I am standing on these ideas."

- It was important for me, who is a veteran of many conferences, to see not only how Palestinians and Israelis react, but also how Palestinians and Americans react.

And because there is a perception among the public-- the Palestinian public, and even among Palestinian politicians, that the United States is hostile to Palestinians.

narrator: Hanna Siniora, editor-in-chief of "Al-Fajr", a leading Palestinian newspaper and one of the conference participants, feels events like the conference are a vital ingredient of making the peace process work.

- Every time you meet another Israeli, you meet a new human being.

New ideas.

A different perception.

And it helps also make Palestinians understand the fears, the ambitions, the aspirations of the Israeli side.

And it creates the medium of breaking stereotype images.

- This is the current municipal borders of Jerusalem, and this is the map that we are proposing as the new borders, and it's-- narrator: Can Israelis and Palestinians learn to live and work together?

These two men-- one Jew, one Arab-- have decided to test this underlying tenet of the peace agreement by writing a book together on the future of Jerusalem.

- Moshe has been a friend for, now, several years.

So Amirav is very opinionated.

Yet I find him a comfortable partner to work with.

We probably complement each other in attitudes.

The most important thing that I find in Moshe is the courage to discuss and face realities.

There are very few Palestinian/Israelis who would talk about the future of Jerusalem like Moshe does.

He understands that, in order to have real peace in this area, you have also, as he has, as an Israeli, to take into consideration the national aspirations of the Palestinians.

And he believes that a two-state solution is the best outcome of any negotiations between the two people.

- For me, like many other Israelis, for us, a Palestinian was either a waiter in the restaurant or enemy in the battlefield.

It's how we knew the Palestinians.

We never had Palestinian equal, and one of the most interesting experiences personally I had was by getting into the peace process and trying to fight for these same causes that Hanna is fighting, is to meet people like Hanna Siniora, and like Faisal Husseini, and Sari Nusseibeh, and all these people who are not waiters in the restaurants and not enemies in the battlefield.

And actually, they are becoming like comrades.

I mean we are fighting, the two people.

The two communities, they are enemies, and still, here I have people that I really feel that they are like comrades with me in the same unit, fighting a battlefield.

Fighting in one of the most difficult battles I have been into, and I have been in many.

And I was a paratrooper, and let me tell you this is the most difficult war I am in now, which is the war for peace.

And in this war, I have people like Hanna with me that gives me the strength.

And in a battlefield, with your unit, the most important thing is not so much the idea, but who are your friends?

Can you count that they are with you in this fighting?

And I think I can count on Hanna because he's a soldier for peace, like me.

[somber plucked string music] narrator: It's one thing to work out a peace agreement in Ben Lomond, California.

It's quite another to make it work at home.

Despite the sense of accomplishment the conference produced, there is much opposition to this or any similar agreement.

Many Israelis feel that the occupied territories belong to them, and they can do with the land whatever they choose.

- They came in the mid of the night, and they kick her out the house, and she said, "I won't go from my house.

"I want to die in my house.

I want to stay in my house.

"You kill me here.

Shoot me here.

I won't move from here."

Then they carry her by force, and they kick her out, and it was very bad weather.

Raining.

narrator: Recently, a group of Israeli Jews has begun taking over homes in Silwan, an Arab section of Jerusalem.

They claim they have purchased the houses legally because their owners are no longer living in them.

- If a Palestinian, if he moves to live in Ramallah, which is very close to Jerusalem, which is ten miles from Jerusalem, he is considered as an absentee for his property in Jerusalem.

Which is absurd, unfair.

Which is a flagrant violation of human rights.

Imagine yourself, in United States, if you live in NY, and you go to LA, and you lose your property.

It sounds meaningless.

It's so cruel.

- And we are here to settle the city of David, the ancient and original Jerusalem.

In this hill was built the city of Jerusalem, about 3,000 years ago.

And our aim is to put here a Jewish settlement.

narrator: Most settlers are not taking over Arab houses inside Jerusalem, but are expanding into the West Bank, an area the Palestinians claim is their future state.

Settler Batya Medad, a product of '60s America, moved to Israel in the settlement of Shiloh with her husband 20 years ago, because they felt they had a religious and historic responsibility.

- As human beings and Jews, we felt that this is our land.

Everything historically, biblically, can't otherwise prove it.

I'm just looking out my window now, and it's very barren.

All of this land has been empty.

It hasn't really been developed.

A few valleys here and there are-- were cultivated by Arab villagers, but there was never-- there is no history of an Arab nationalism, in the Western sense of the word.

It's very artificial, and it's very modern, and there's absolutely no comparison with our history and our ties.

- Now, if you look out around the area here, you see that there's plenty of wide, open country for everybody.

There's plenty, plenty of land, for anybody that's out here.

All the settlements, as well as I can understand, have been built on land that hasn't been taken from any private land.

There's a lot of land here originally owned by the Jordanians or the Turks that were never settled.

So anytime they had an opportunity to start a settlement has really been on these type of lands, so if you want to start at that level, as far as the last few hundred years or so, that's been the fact.

And also, this is our-- we're not coming here to take over someone else's property.

This is really our property.

We, for whatever reason, have been sent away from here, for a long, long time.

We're now fulfilling our right to return.

narrator: Despite settler claims, much of the land on which settlements are built once belonged to Palestinians who see the settlements as a direct affront to any peace agreement.

How can the possibility of a Palestinian state be preserved, they argue, if Israelis continue to take over and expropriate Arab land?

As a result, many Palestinians have joined in the intifada, or uprising, which began in 1987.

[protestors chanting in language] The intifada has particularly attracted young people.

Some students at Bethlehem University in the West Bank feel they have no choice but to continue to protest.

- We started the intifada to show the world that we are living in an injust situation.

We are being oppressed, day by day, yes, and we make the intifada, in order to have a state.

We want a state.

We are a people.

We want to be free.

We are not going to live under occupation forever--no.

We want to have our rights as a people, and I think it's our right.

Legitimate right.

- You must all see that we are defending our rights.

I mean, you can't see just a little girl, a little boy just killed in front of your eyes and not do anything.

narrator: Many Palestinians have been arrested, wounded, or killed for their involvement in the intifada.

When Israeli settlers are killed, the response has been to erect yet another settlement on the spot of their death.

- What we've done here today is, we've unveiled a monument to two of our friends who were murdered here, about two months ago, on the eve of our prime minister's departure to the peace talks in Madrid.

There was a big demonstration in Tel Aviv, and on the way to that demonstration, a bus full of people-- women, children, men-- were attacked, right at the curve in the road here, and a woman was killed.

A woman who was the mother of seven children, and a father of four children with a wife who's expecting was murdered.

Five children were injured.

They're, thank God, okay, but the two dead are the two dead.

And since that incident, we've been here.

At first, as a memorial vigil.

With the demand from the government of Israel that a settlement come to being here, as a Zionistic answer to the murder.

We feel that it is impossible to talk about any kind of peace when we're still being fired upon almost every day, when we're still being stoned, when we're still having Molotov cocktails thrown at us by the Palestinians, by whoever you want to call them.

narrator: The peace agreement signed in Ben Lomond, California, called for a cessation of acts of violence and a stop to all settlement drives.

Yet many in the Israeli government, such as Alexander Bligh, Arab affairs advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, feel the settlements are necessary for Israeli security.

- Well, I find it rather difficult to be objective on the question of settlements, being myself a resident of Ma'ale Adumim, which is the largest settlement in Judea.

We have now about 16,000 Jews who live five minutes from Jerusalem.

This is really the major junction from which the Jordanians tried to attack Jerusalem in June of 1967.

And even from this point, you hear how important-- how significant are the settlements.

We do not live there for any other reason but for security reasons.

Jerusalem should never again be a target of any offensive by anyone on this planet.

And therefore, that settlement is really one of the components of our own security, of our own defense.

And many, if not all of the settlements, do serve that function.

[soft woodwind music] narrator: While more and more settlers move into the West Bank and Gaza, opposition among Israelis is growing as well.

- For me, this demonstration is a way of, once in a week, stopping everyday activity and reminding myself and everybody else that there's something basically wrong going on in the country, and that I demonstrate against it.

I'm not silent about what's going on.

narrator: Galit Hasan-Rokem, professor of Hebrew literature and Jewish folklore at Hebrew University, was also a Ben Lomond conference participant.

A founding member of Women's Network for Peace, on whose behalf she accepted the Hiroshima Peace Prize, she believes that stopping the settlements is something she must do to stop the violence.

- I wouldn't be able to confront everyday reality through newspapers and news without doing something to change it.

I seriously think we have come to a stage where we should stop it.

I feel, like, an imperative.

I will not be quiet.

I will not be inactive in front of the injustice done.

And I think I share that with the other people acting with me.

It's just a gut feeling that I have to do something.

We have to do something.

I have to make other people do something about it.

We have this one life to live.

- When the Arabs occupied the old city, they wouldn't even allow the Jews to come and worship at their most holy shrine.

Now anyone can go there.

I don't know what you people are going on about.

The problem is that you want to drive the Jews into the sea.

You don't want the Jews to live here at all.

- We want to drive the Jews into the sea?

- Yes.

- I'm Jewish.

- Well, then, you're one of them.

Okay.

- I think I served more than you in the Israeli Defense Forces-- - Of you, I am ashamed.

I'm ashamed.

I'm ashamed that you are Jewish.

narrator: Across the street, a small group gathers to protest against the women in black.

- The logo of our party is transfer.

Transfer of the Arab population in the West Bank back to their, you know, source countries.

Where they came from, in Jordan.

And we think this is the best solution for the problems we have with the Arabs here in Israel.

If you see the history of these people, these Arabs who live in the West Bank, they came from the Arab countries.

None of them are living here more than 20 years or more than that.

It's not--they don't have the same history that we've got here, of thousands of years.

- I think we should remember that we Jews-- the Jewish people was created from the experience of being slaves and being a minority.

A persecuted minority, in the land of Egypt.

And the Torah or the Bible commands us that when we come to our land, and when we are the sovereigns in the land, we should treat the stranger-- we should treat the minority the way we wanted them to treat us when we were a minority in their lands.

And we know--the Torah says, "You know the soul of the stranger.

You yourself were strangers in the land of Egypt."

And we should love the stranger.

We should love the--that is the expression the Torah uses.

In Hebrew, it's... [speaks Hebrew] But that really means the minority in our midst, and we should respect them, and we should treat them the way we wanted them to treat us when we were in their lands.

narrator: Are the settlements really necessary for Israel's national security?

Giora Ram Furman, retired Israeli Air Force general who led the air attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, and is now chairman of the Council for Peace and Security, has concluded that the territories can be given up.

- As a former general, I am sure that the security of the State of Israel depends not only on territory or what people used to say, strategic depth.

We can compensate for giving up territories by other basic elements of national security, like economic resource.

More economic resource and new technologies.

narrator: General Furman, who also attended the conference in Ben Lomond, grew up on one of Israel's first kibbutzes.

He feels that, after an official peace agreement is signed, most settlers will return to live in Israel.

- After the peace agreement, I'm sure that most of the settlers will come back to Israel, if we suggest them new homes here.

Some of them will prefer to stay there in the Palestinian state, but only very few thousand are troublemaker now and will be troublemaker in the future.

The government of Israel must take control on those people and must remove them back to Israel.

[indistinct chatter] narrator: The settlements cannot be divorced from the economic difficulties facing Israelis and Palestinians.

In Israel, many citizens are confronted by rising unemployment and poor housing, problems some feel are directly related to the large sums of money used to build settlements.

- Tomorrow, we are demonstrating in front of the Prime Minister's office because a few days ago, a report has been generated about the poverty in Israel which is going, increasing more and more.

And so we are going to demonstrate in favor of the poor and to say that the poor are fed up with being exploited and paying for the settlements in the territories.

That the government has to take care of the social problems and not to enlarge the settlements.

[protestors chanting in language] - [singing in language] [soft string music] narrator: The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has not only diverted resources from being used to solve pressing problems facing Israeli society, but has led to severe hardships among Palestinians as well.

- It's really not easy to live under occupation because you don't know what to expect from one minute to the other.

You can be sleeping in your home, and you don't know what's going to happen to you.

You don't know if you're going to be arrested or not.

You will be driving your car.

You don't know if you're going to come back with your car, or the patrol police going to get your car, and drive to go to other village, and use it, and destroy it, or bring it back to you.

You don't know when you're going to be stopped and asked not to go to your job because the road is closed, or because you don't have a permit to go there, or the area is closed.

You don't know if you're going to get a letter saying, "Oh, you're not welcome to be working here anymore, because of political reasons, or because you are active."

narrator: Rihab Essawi, another conference attendee, is a Palestinian professor of education at Hebron University.

She lives in a village bearing her family's name and traces her family roots back to biblical times.

- As long as I remember, or according to the people in the village and to the history of the village, that our village goes back as far as Christ's time.

And the person who came here, which is 'Isa, which comes to being to Isawiya later.

They settle in here, and for my family, as long as I remember we being here, and we own most of the land in the village, and we are--well, we would say "the rulers" which I don't like to use this word, but we are the ones who have the most number of people, and the ones who are more educated and have most land.

narrator: Israeli occupation has cost Professor Essawi dearly.

- I was arrested myself three times.

My father was arrested too.

He was the head of the council in this village, and he just decided he don't want to do any activities.

He want to stay away from everything, and the municipality don't like that, on his behalf, because he'd been working and serving all his life.

Why when the Israeli comes he decided he want to quit?

But he was in jail for a few weeks, just to show him we are here.

Nothing--no accusation at all.

They came to take me, and they took him, and he was in jail.

And I wasn't even aware that he was in jail with me at that time.

Now, at this time, I have two sisters, and both sisters are married to two guys.

And both guys are in jail, and they are in the same jail in the Negev area in Ashkelon.

Both of them now.

One is sentenced for three years-and-a-half, and one been in jail for a year and eight months already, and he's not sentenced yet.

We lost our brother on the invasion to Lebanon, and last year, we lost my mother.

She was suffocated by a gas bomb, which was thrown at the house.

She had heart trouble to start with, and she couldn't really resist for a long time, and by the time I got her to Hadassah Hospital, which is just about few minutes away from here, she was finished on the road there.

- Believe it or not, the army will even shoot on ambulances carrying injured youth.

narrator: Mamdouh al-Aker, a urological surgeon and Palestinian delegate to both the Madrid and Washington peace talks, feels living under occupation is comparable to living under apartheid.

- When I say "apartheid" I do mean it objectively, because what we are face-- the occupied Palestinian territory-- that the settlers-- they are one system, and for the Palestinians, there is another system.

The laws which apply to the settlers is the Israeli law, while for us, it is a different law.

Military law.

Their courts.

Their schools.

The curriculum.

Even the streets.

The cars.

Even having the car license for the settlers, it's a different license plate.

They have the yellow plates, like the Israelis, while for us, it is the blue plate.

When they impose a curfew, like what they did there when we were in Washington negotiation around, there was a blanket curfew on the area of Ramallah and al-Bireh.

70,000 people were locked into their houses for two weeks.

This does not apply to the settlers in the area.

Not only does not apply, they can walk and move freely, but they are let to rampage in our cities and villages and do whatever they like.

They were breaking the glasses of the homes, puncturing the cars, doing whatever they like.

narrator: Five months before Dr. Aker was to attend the conference in Ben Lomond, he was summoned for interrogation and arrested on his way to treat a patient in Jerusalem.

- In February last year, I went to the Ramallah headquarters.

I was left waiting outside in the cold.

It was very cold that day, until they started the interrogation with me 12:00.

And I immediately, because I was very angry, I felt that the poor patient is waiting hungry, and I should-- by the time 12:00, not only one operation, two or three operations could have been done, so I told them, "Wouldn't it have been better that, if you let me do the operation, and now it is 12:00?"

They said, "Okay.

Shut up.

This is not your business."

So they started interrogating me until dark, until about 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Then they presented me with the arrest order, because they said, "You are not cooperating with us.

You are not answering our questions."

I said, "What questions?

Give me the charges."

They did not present me with charges.

And then when they led me to the solitary confinement, I told them, "I want to see my lawyer."

Said, "No.

No way."

narrator: Despite his ordeal and 27 days of solitary confinement, Dr. Aker was still determined to go to California and work for a peace agreement.

- The first time after I became out of bail to travel was to attend the Beyond War seminar.

And actually, I felt strongly that, in spite of all that experience, in spite of all the hardship I passed through, and I know that that was a tiny, tiny experience when it is compared with thousands-- tens of thousands of detainees who have passed through much more difficult experience and torture.

Even nevertheless, I feel that we still ready to forgive, and we have to make peace.

And somebody like me--we have nothing, but to work for peace.

narrator: While many Palestinians have suffered as a result of the occupation, Israeli society has been hurt as well.

Naomi Chazan, chair of Hebrew University's Truman Institute, feels the occupation is tearing at the very core of Israel's reason for existence.

- The most severe costs of the occupation is, well, to my mind, have been on two levels.

Number one, they've undermined the democratic principles on which the state has been created.

And in a very diverse society like Israeli society, if one does not abide by basic democratic principles, it will be impossible, and it's becoming increasingly impossible to live together.

And the second cost has been a moral cost.

One cannot maintain occupation over another people against their will without the basic ethical positions of the country and the individuals in the country being undermined.

It's almost impossible to maintain a human face when one is engaging, directly or indirectly, in actions which are inhumane.

[somber music] narrator: Part of the moral conflict in Israeli society over the occupation and treatment of Palestinians stems from Israeli memory of the Holocaust.

"Never again," Israelis vow, will they become victims of such genocide.

Yet their fear of being persecuted sometimes becomes justification for persecuting others.

- Some Jews, especially those who come from Europe, are so obsessed by the Holocaust that their--how do you say?

Their memory of it, you know, all the bitternesses there are, as it were, are projected on the Arabs.

You know, something in their imagination, in their imaginary world, the Arabs have become the Germans of them.

The Nazis of them, and so the hatred which had to be reserved for the Nazis or their successors, I don't know, has been-- it must go out somehow.

- There are two lessons that we Jews, and in fact every people, should take from the Holocaust.

The one is never again.

Never again, in the sense that we Jews, during the '30s and the '40s, we didn't have any power.

We were persecuted, and we were slaughtered.

So never again.

That means that now we have our army, and I'm serving in the army.

I'm a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces, and I still do my reserve duties.

And I think we should be strong as Jews.

But there is another lesson, which is no less important.

Perhaps is more important, and that is the lesson that no people is vaccinated, you know, immune against racism and, you know, dehumanization.

You know, we suffered from this racism and dehumanization.

We were--they showed us like rats, you know, conquering the streets, bringing disease, et cetera.

We suffered from this dehumanization.

Unfortunately, what is going on now is dehumanization of the Arab population in the occupied territories.

And I'm afraid we did not learn the full lesson of the Holocaust.

[cheery woodwind music] narrator: The Holocaust caused Jews from all over the world to increase their demand for a nation of their own.

A homeland in which they would never again feel threatened.

Today, any Jew is considered a potential citizen of Israel, wherever he or she lives.

- It is not only a country for the people who live here.

I mean, the whole essence of the State of Israel is, in the Zionist term, is to build a house-- a home for those who are not here.

So actually, this is a country not for the people who live here, but for the people who are expected to be here, in the future.

Nobody knows if they will come, so now, we have this phenomenon of the Jews from Russia coming, and you know, this is the first time that people here in Israel have this hope, by looking at these immigrants coming in.

And they understand that they are not alone.

It's not anymore a ghetto.

We felt for many years that this is a very small Jewish ghetto because we were the minority.

Most of the Jews didn't come to this country.

They were all over Russia, United States, Europe.

Only very few Jews, 2 million, 3 million, lived here.

The rest of them abroad.

Suddenly, they come, and this gives hope that Zionism is real.

That it's really a house for the Jews.

[congregation singing in language] narrator: Israel is not only a homeland for Jews and Muslims, but for Christians, as well.

The Nativity Church in Bethlehem, located in the occupied territories a few miles from Jerusalem, draws Christian pilgrims from across the globe.

Shlomo Elbaz, President of East for Peace, signed the peace agreement in California.

He sees the dual nationalism as a potential basis for peace.

- As we love this country, they do love it, too, and that's why I tell them, "You Palestinians, you love this country.

"You are Zionists because you love Zion like me.

And you are Zionists.

We are Zionists."

You can see that Zionism is racism.

There are two Zionisms, the Jewish one and the Palestinian one, and they have to come to terms.

And I think that the signs today are encouraging because we've started to talk.

narrator: Participants at the conference in Ben Lomond are trying to gain support for their agreement by engaging in a public peace process, an ongoing dialogue among sectors of both societies about the substance of the document.

- When the group of Palestinians came back from Ben Lomond to Jerusalem and the occupied territories, we called for several meetings here to discuss the document internally among Palestinians.

There was criticism.

They say you could have asked for more.

You could have changed this word or that word.

However, overall, we told them that we have to accept the document as is because it is the hard work of two groups.

And there were many compromises, and there were many things left out unsaid, but this is just a start.

This is not the end.

This is a beginning.

- Coming back home, we started to communicate it with other Palestinians.

We published it in the papers.

We talked about it in our meetings, and even going now to the real and the official negotiations in Washington and in Madrid before Washington, I always had copies with me, and I showed it to some Israelis and to some Americans, to show them that when there is the intention to make peace, it is possible.

It is very possible.

It is within our reach, but all what it needs is the seriousness and the readiness to compromise and to accept the challenge of peace.

- Yes, when I came back from the conference in California, I felt quite high because I sensed that I contributed to something together with my Palestinian and Israeli colleagues to the better understanding of both sides and the positions and will try to educate our public.

But we were faced and encountered by all kinds of accusations that we are traitors, and I didn't feel like that.

I thought that I'm making some contribution to the peace process, to better understanding of the positions of the Palestinians and trying to educate my own people.

But I'm asked if-- I'm afraid to say that we felt rather isolated, because the criticism was mounting, and only a few supported us.

narrator: Moshe Ma'oz, professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Hebrew University, and former Arab affairs advisor to Labor Prime Minister Shimon Peres, feels that, despite the document's sometimes hostile reception in Israel, there are steps that could be taken to make the peace process work.

- If it so happens that I'll become a prime minister, which is really unlikely, I would go on the podium of the Knesset, Israeli parliament, and call for peace with all Arab nations which still don't have peace relations with Israel, and especially the Palestinians.

And I would say to the Palestinians, "We have been fighting each other for a century.

"We have many problems, but we would like to coexist.

"Now, it's going to take some time "to find a formula for coexistence, "but I want to make here a declaration of intention "that the end of the road, five years from now, "ten years from now, you will have a full, "independent Palestinian state.

"But since there are so many problems involved, "and mutual suspicion, and fears, and prejudice, "and so on, we have to do it piecemeal.

"Why don't we start with autonomy?

Full autonomy."

narrator: Galit Hasan-Rokem feels dialogue groups between Palestinians and Israelis help build trust and mutual understanding, requirements for any agreement to work.

- It's about six to ten Israelis and six to ten Palestinians who meet quite regularly, every two to three weeks, and we discuss.

We discuss the problems.

We discuss the past.

We discuss history of this country.

We discuss the different histories we have.

We discuss the fact that we call the war of '48 the War of Liberation.

They call it just '48 with all the tragic overtones it has for them.

People in Ramallah-- some of them are from villages which are in Israel today.

Some of those friends in the group asked us to go with them to Yad Vashem, to the big memorial of the Holocaust, in order to understand that pain.

It's a--how do you say reciprocity of understanding.

We're trying to understand their traumas and pains and fears, and they're trying to understand ours.

And we're meeting very often.

Every two to three weeks, and when there are crisis situations, like the Gulf War, or like the snow, we call each other, and we check on the other's well-being.

And it's a very important place of meeting in our lives.

- My dream or my vision is that this will be, one day, a city of peace.

I was fighting here in Jerusalem in '67.

I was wounded here.

Many of my friends died here, and actually, this is a dream that I have.

That this city--no one will fight anymore in this city.

No one will use any violence.

That this is really going to be the City of Peace, as the prophets used to call it.

narrator: Moshe Amirav feels that Israeli and Palestinian attitudes toward Jerusalem are the key to making the document crafted in Ben Lomond work.

- We have to accept something that is very difficult for Israelis and Palestinians, which is the legitimacy of the other one.

The fact that the other one has also the right on this very land, on this very city.

And this is very, very difficult.

It's difficult to Israelis to admit that the Palestinians have any right in this city.

It's difficult to the Palestinians to admit that the Israelis who came 80 years ago--100 years ago have any right on this city that they live here for 800 years.

And the minute we will be ready, both of us, Palestinians and Israelis, to say, "This is our city."

It's not my city.

It's our city."

Then this is the magic word.

Then the process will start.

The peace will arrive.

[indistinct chatter] - My vision of the future is simple.

That we have to each preserve his national identity.

Certainly, we have fought very long, both sides, for that national identity.

Yet to learn to work together, and that's why the example of Jerusalem is going to be probably the living symbol that both people can accomplish.

Because in Jerusalem, it has to be a kind of confederate setup where both people, although they will each have their own state, have to cohabitate, work together.

narrator: For Hanna Siniora, resolving the conflict means working for an Israeli-Palestinian economic and cultural common market with Jerusalem as its center.

- In order, today, to survive economically, countries have to have relations and sometimes interdependence with other nations.

Two small countries like Palestine and Israel-- it is imperative for them to have coordination on the economic level.

The culture.

We have both a rich cultural heritage.

We have to understand each other.

Know each other more intimately.

To destroy those pictures and images of hatred, of fear, and Jerusalem with the institutions that we can create.

With the education system that we can create here would be able to help us move along that line.

- I think we have to start talking of something more global.

Something like a regional entity.

Something like cooperation between all the national entities here, to create something regional.

Some kind of community like the European community.

Let's create here the community with the Middle East with a common market, with common bodies, and with such cooperation, which will be a benefit for each of us.

That nobody will have the interest to start a war and to endanger that kind of cooperation.

- And in the case of the document we came back with, at the beginning, we have some people who thought, "This is really nice.

"A few words here, a few words there, and it's a good document.

It's all right."

And some people, they say, "Well, we'll see what you get with this."

Then not a long time later, the Madrid Conference came, and we find that some of the things which we actually used, even the wording, came out in the Madrid Conference.

And we felt so happy about it, and we like the idea.

Some of the people who did say that this is not a good document, they came back to us, now, and they said-- some of them said to me, "I wish we can get what you guys came back with, "because this is an excellent document comparing to what we are getting now."

Which make me proud of what we did, and I hope now I would say it even loud that I would hope that we get just what we have in that document.

I don't want any more.

narrator: Did the conference in Ben Lomond, California, make a difference?

Can ordinary citizens have an impact on helping resolve major international conflicts?

Both Judy Kramer and Roy Gordon of Beyond War, now called the Foundation for Global Community, feel they can.

- I think that when the delegates left Palo Alto in July, we all knew that they had a tough job to do when they got home.

And it doesn't surprise me that the framework has not been negotiated and passed in the official peace process that has taken place.

I think the effect of the document is-- there are many aspects to it.

The effect of the people who were part of it and the effect of the people who have read it, and there's a possibility that exists that didn't exist before, and I think it's too early to say, "Well, it worked just the way we wanted," or, "It didn't work the way we wanted."

It's still in process, and I feel very satisfied with our participants and the commitments that they've made and the faith that they've kept with the document.

- I think that one of the things that I've got from the whole process we've just been through is that I would hope that what we've done would be a demonstration of the fact that a small group of people, just ordinary folks, can get together and can actually make a difference on a global scene.

And I think that it demonstrates that we don't have to wait for our leaders to act.

That it's possible, and in fact, it's essential for ordinary people to act.

And that even if there was a peace agreement tomorrow, it's not gonna be effective unless there is consent and unless there is an infrastructure set up among the people.

And so what we can do is help to build those bridges, to make those relationships, and set up a system such that when the peace agreement is finally signed, that it will hold, because people have been working at the grassroots level to make it possible.

[cheery woodwind music]