The Israeli-Palestinian conflict often seems intractable. The two sides have tussled over a plot of land slightly larger than the State of New Jersey for more than 60 years. Both sides' arguments are as old as the conflict itself. Most Israelis say that they support peace and a two-state solution, but that neither of those can be achieved while Israel's neighbors pose a military threat and rockets from Gaza keep hitting Israeli towns. Palestinians, with the support of much of the Arab world, insist that they have at least as much of a right to the land as the Israelis do, if not more. They maintain that there is no hope for peace so long as Israel's aggressive settlement building and harsh security measures continue to affect hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
The protests that have swept through the Arab world in the past few weeks further complicate the situation. Israel faces the stark reality that political changes in Egypt and Jordan may upset the fragile peace that it has made with those two countries.
The vagaries of international politics aside, I have had the unique opportunity to see the conflict from both sides firsthand. I spent a semester abroad in Alexandria, Egypt, and I just returned from a ten-day Taglit-Birthright trip to Israel. While I certainly do not claim to have a solution for the struggle, I have come away from those two experiences with guarded optimism for the future.
I've heard firsthand what both sides have to say. My Egyptian friends invariably sided with the Palestinians. I listened to dozens of arguments decrying the perceived injustices — historical and current — that the Israeli government perpetrated against Palestinians. "Our government may have made peace with Israel," they would say, "but that does not mean that we like Israel."
My Israeli friends, on the other hand, routinely speak of their Palestinian adversaries as "terrorists" — a word that in and of itself precludes any hope of peaceful negotiation. Many of them were convinced that the other side had nothing but bad intentions. One friend expressed his belief that, were Israel to give the Golan Heights back to Syria (a return to pre-1967 borders) as part of a peace deal, Syria and other Arab states would become emboldened and proceed to sweep through the rest of the country.
The real tragedy, however, is that my friends on both sides form their opinions in an echo chamber. My Egyptian friends have never traveled to Israel and have never met an Israeli. Likewise, my Israeli friends have little contact with Palestinians and steer clear of their neighborhoods in Israeli cities. None of the Egyptians I met knew Hebrew, and the Israelis didn't have the option of learning Arabic until high school (many don't know the language at all).
Nonetheless, I came away from the trip heartened by the belief that my Egyptian and Israeli friends would take an instant liking to each other if they met. They listen to similar types of music, have the same types of conversations about their latest love interests, follow the news closely and, despite the fact that the Egyptians are Muslim and the Israelis are Jewish, grapple with similar religious questions. The idea that there is some fundamental incompatibility between Arabs and Israelis is simply not true.
But the fact remains that there are seemingly insurmountable barriers between the two peoples. The challenge for both sides — one that neither side has met — is to move past the stereotypes and acknowledge the humanity and sincerity of the other. My Egyptian friends would have a much harder time supporting the random shelling emanating from Gaza if they knew some of my Israeli friends whose homes are within the rockets' range. And my Israeli friends would likely change their views of Arabs if they learned Arabic and had the opportunity to genuinely connect with Palestinians and other Arabs in their native language.
I cannot predict if we will live to see a political solution to this problem. But even if the two sides do reach an agreement, the only way to consolidate peace in the long term is for Israelis and Arabs to make a genuine effort to get to know each other and be able to stand in each other's shoes.
As I am happy to report from my experiences in Egypt and Israel, such progress is possible. The vast majority of people on both sides want peace. But instead of simply talking past each other about their specific ideas of how to achieve that peace, a good first step for people on both sides would be to sit down with their counterparts, share a meal and start chatting. Both sides would soon realize that they have much more in common than they might have assumed.
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Michael Kremer is a senior majoring in International Relations.
