Tech Put This Palestinian Activist On A Path To Build Peace

Jaffa, Israel — I met Palestinian peace activist Adnan Jabir on June 20, the day Palestinian militants killed four Jews from the Jordanian town of Eli. The killings came in response to an Israeli military operation that killed seven Palestinians two days ago in Jenin, a day before hundreds of Jewish settlers attacked Turmus Aya in the West Bank.

The same week, the Israeli government announced thousands of new Jewish homes in the West Bank. The cycle of violence seems to have spiraled out of control.

I wonder if you will recognize Adnan. But he broke into a sweat in Jaffa Park, near the home he shares with his American-Jewish boyfriend. He had just filmed a video for the online series Peoples of the Middle East, which premiered on July 1 near Jericho, and the bus back to Tel Aviv was stuck in traffic. I was surprised and scared.

We are happy to announce new episodes on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok in Arabic, English and Hebrew editions. Fear that any Palestinian involved in peacebuilding will be censored by their peers or worse, and this series of videos will be the most public movement I've ever been a part of.

"I'm looking forward to the feedback," he said while playing one of his cell phone videos. "I will talk about the Israeli Jew and say that he is a good person. Even early in my career I was criticized for talking about peacekeeping organizations. Now they criticize me more."

Adnan is a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur and fluent in English after a year at George Mason University and nearby Virginia Community College. Born in East Jerusalem to a Muslim family, he studied English but not Hebrew at a private Christian school in the Old City.

He said it was unfortunate. “On the other hand, I had this billboard in my head. The only Jews I saw were on the train tracks, at the Aroma Cafe, or at the American Eagle store in Mamilla. In the old town. "I know from the news. that they buy Jerusalem and buy the land.

After returning from the US, he graduated from the Faculty of Information Technology at the Arab American University in Jenin, but could not find a high-tech job in Israel (he has an Israeli travel document, but like everyone else). in this Jerusalem). Palestinians with a Jordanian passport). He interviewed with five companies, each time meeting an Israeli Jew at the interview table. He says that neither one is suitable for the other. He lost his job for a year.

Many young Palestinians in your position become desperate and then angry. Fortunately, in 2018, Adnan heard about Tech2Peace, a two-week workshop that takes young Israelis and Palestinians to remote locations to learn and talk about technology. Adnan did not want to engage in peacebuilding, he hoped that the seminar would help him find a job.

If Jenin or my friends in East Jerusalem had known that I was in the peace program, they would have called me a "normaliser".

I was afraid to enter the program because of the word "Hello". "If Jenin or my friends in East Jerusalem knew I was in the peace plan, they would call me a 'normalizer.' This is not a good label to slap a Palestinian youth. "I took the risk because I need to understand Israelis, I want a relationship because I want a job."

He tells his friends he's going to a tech conference and is headed to Jerusalem, a small town in the Negev desert.

It was the first time on the Egged bus. It was the first time I spoke with Israelis, really . Within two weeks, he made his first Jewish friends, and the course of his life changed.

Let me put Adnan in context here. I spent years living in and documenting Israel. In the 1990s, I was working in Tel Aviv when Israel signed a peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization and Jordan. I was there when the Oslo Accords looked like they were going to happen. Peace was coming, panic was in the air.

I was there when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, when the bus bombing began in earnest, and when things began to unravel.

Today, it is hard to find young Israelis or Palestinians who believe that peace is possible, let alone a two-state solution. Gen Z is incredibly cranky and has a right to be. Its managers spent time many times.

So it's rare and exciting to find a young man like Adnan, with a clear vision and a sharp mind, who believes that things will get better. Her eyes lit up as she recounted how she joined 20 peacekeeping organizations in the five years since her first workshop. He studied at the Arava Institute and lived for six months in his host Kibbutz Ketur.

He currently serves on the board of directors of Tech2Peace and earlier this year founded the Technology for Peace Forum, which brings together technology leaders in the region to learn from each other (most recently at the Middle East Peace Coalition, Good Revolution). ) He speaks to American Jewish groups and members of Congress. Last night he met world leaders, including Israel, at an event where he proudly showed me his selfie with Israeli political leader Tzipi Livni.

Our interviewee, Adnan, is speaking to a journalist for the first time, but he likes it when people talk about Jews and Palestinians working together to solve problems through technology. According to him, the answer is: a person works alone. Looking into our eyes.

"Why do I have hope?" he asks rhetorically. “I'll tell you why. Look at the city of Jaffa, where Israelis and Palestinians live in mixed areas. You don't know how to say 'Hello' or 'Shalom' when you greet someone on the street,” he said. .

“Is there hatred? Yes, nobody is perfect. Is there racism? Yes, like every city in the world. But this city is proof that Palestinians and Israelis can live together, and that it all starts with education."

Still stressful. It took Adnan five years to gain the confidence to publicize his cause for peace. And when he did, he chose what he called a "trusted" platform: LinkedIn. He explained that many educated people went there. He says he has few followers on social media, even though a BDS report published by many pro-Palestinian media portrays him as "normalizing." Life went on as usual.

He says this is the goal.

"I want the next Palestinian to enter the Tech2Peace program to feel that it is not something strange. That's the rule.

Israeli soldiers attacked Christians during the "Sabbath of Light" celebration in Jerusalem