On the past weekend, out partners in Palestine started with a series of trainings for new facilitators for our Dialogue Seminars for Israelis and Palestinians. Because of the pandemic, the training had to be postponed several times – we are so happy it can finally happen!

In the Vacation From War Dialogue Seminars, a Palestinian and Israeli facilitator jointly facilitate each dialogue group. Especially for the Palestinian team, it’s a challenge to find new people – not only because of the fact that doing dialogue work in the Palestinian context (and increasingly also in the Israeli context) implies high risks and not seldom goes alongside with political repressions, but also because there are not many facilitation trainings offered in the West Bank.

In this first workshop, our team members gave an introduction to facilitation skills and methods and also shared tools for self-awareness. Also, they talked about characteristics and challenges of facilitation of political dialogue – here, they shared their year-long experiences as coordinators and facilitators of the Dialogue Seminars.  But the future facilitators also came with experiences: all of them have been participants in the Dialogue Seminars in past years and went through the challenging and complex dialogue process themselves.

More training days for deepening knowledge are already planned. As the process continues, members of the Israeli team will also support the training with their experiences in order to prepare participants better for Palestinian-Israeli joint facilitation.

We are proud and impressed seeing the dedication of these activists who keep being on working despite the difficult political situation and the pandemic.