Stairways to peace in an Israeli academic college: Contact, communication, compassion

Academic colleges in Israel are potential key agents of crosscultural transformation, cooperation and tolerance, due to their uniquely challenging multicultural environment in today's deeply segregated Israeli society: Arab and Jewish students meet on a daily basis for several years, as equal colleagues --unprecedented occurrence in their lives-- without having the required skills or experience to recognize and meet each other as such. As tomorrow's educational and professional cadres, students will undoubtedly carry their multi/cross-cultural experience into their families, communities and occupational endeavors.

In these challenging times, the window of opportunity in this volatile region has a limited life, and peace education is pivotal towards hope and sustainable change.

A workshop format was created and implemented in the Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee to facilitate empathic crosscultural communication skills between Arab and Jewish students towards the development of a planetary/ unitive consciousness towards cooperative action. (4^th stage of an ongoing Action Research which began in 1999. A fifth stage is planned to train students as peace-facilitators on campus.)

Six formal and 4 informal workshops, each meeting in 4-hour sessions during a whole semester, have taken place. The guiding principles of the workshops are rooted in a wholistic-systemic sociological framework, and the principles of planetary consciousness and activism: interconnectedness of all, sustainability, optimism, the whole person, empathic communication, personal and social/institutional transformation, synergy, from 'power over' to 'power to", among others.

Workshops' processes foster empowerment through shared visions of hope, cooperation and plans for a peaceful and sustainable society -- powerful motivators of social responsibility and action. They highlight the unique leading-role opportunity and responsibility of the academic community in promoting a deeper dialogue, a vision and a model for peaceful, harmonious and healing relationships for the best of all of life.