SDDP Act Beyond Borders Vision Building in Larnaca in 2010

Act Beyond Borders: Vision of “what ought to be” Report Title SDDP Act Beyond Borders Vision Building (Larnaka 2010) Project Act Beyond Borders Triggering Question “What are descriptors of a mutually beneficial co-existence of Israelis and Palestinians?” Dates 24th - 31th February 2010 Author(s) Anna-Maria Drousiotou Editor(s) Yiannis Laouris, Larry Fergeson, Kerstin Wittig, Aleco Christakis Total Duration 6 days Statistics Participants=21 Number of ideas=69 Number of Clusters=10 Ideas received Votes=6

SDD Co-Laboratory Overview

The workshop was facilitated by Dr.Yiannis Laouris (CNTI), Dr. Aleco Christakis , Dr. Antonis Loizou, Mrs. Maria Kyprianou.

This report was prepared in the context of the project “Human Rights and Reconciliation – Civil Society Acts Beyond Borders’.

The project brought together stakeholders from Israel and the Palestinian Territories with the view of facilitating the peaceful conciliation and management of group interests and promoting solutions on divisive matters or controversial areas.

The Triggering Question (TQ) was:

“What are descriptors of a mutually beneficial co-existence of Israelis and Palestinians?”

In response to the TQ, the 21 participants of the interactive co-laboratory collected a total of 69 descriptors. In the next step, a smaller group of the participants clustered all ideas. The following ten clusters were formed:

Cluster 1: Freedom of Movement
Cluster 2: Sustainable Future for Israel
Cluster 3: Civil Society
Cluster 4: Equality and Self-determination
Cluster 5: Controversial Issues
Cluster 6: Allocation of Priorities
Cluster 7: Economic Cooperation
Cluster 9: Coexistence Tools
Cluster 10: No More War

Having classified all ideas according to the clusters, all participants voted for their most favourable descriptors. The votes were widely spread among most of the descriptors. The descriptors that received the most votes were:

Descriptor# 50 (12 votes): The Palestinian refugees will return.
Descriptor# 9 (10 votes): Moving from one city to other without wasting time at checkpoints.
Descriptor# 7 (8 votes): Each people dealing with the problems and desires independently but with cooperation and mutual assistance.
Descriptor# 68 (7 votes): A major decrease of both nationalism and religiosity ideas and perceptions of life among people of both sides.
Descriptor# 36 (6 votes): Israel and Palestine will be a major player in the world economy.
Descriptor# 60 (6 votes): After one year from now we will not see any Palestinian in Israeli prisons.

The voting results were used to select ideas for the subsequent structuring process which resulted in the creation of what is called ‘a tree of influences', shown below.

Tree of Influence

Influence tree

The highly complex ‘tree of influence’, also referred to as an ‘influence map’ consists of five different levels of influence. Descriptors at the bottom are considered to be the most influential. Making progress or achieving results in the bottom descriptors makes it a lot easier to address those that lie higher in the map.

Findings' Summary

In summary, almost all participants agreed that the following ideas are the most influential and agreed that further actions must take these ideas into account:

Descriptor# 17: Mutual agreements and programs in order to create mutual basis of understanding.
Descriptor# 22: The fulfilment of Palestinians’ national ambitions.
Descriptor# 16: The important thing is that the war is stopped and no more people are killed from the two sides - Palestinian side and Israeli side.
Descriptor# 2: Security and sustainable reality for Israelis and the Jewish people.
Descriptors#7 (cycle): Each people dealing with the problems and desires independently but with cooperation and mutual assistance. Descriptor# 22: The fulfilment of Palestinians national ambitions, Descriptor# 16: The important thing is that the war is stopped and no more people are killed from the two sides - Palestinian side and Israeli side, Descriptor# 2: Security and sustainable reality for Israelis and the Jewish people, Descriptor# 7: Each people dealing with the problems and desires independently but with cooperation and mutual assistance.

Participants

The participants of the SDD co-laboratory are:

Name	Job title	Country
Abeer George Youssef Awwad	Student	Palestinian
Aia Harel	Student	Israeli
Anat Romberg	Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed -Youth organization	Israeli
Dar Nadler	Public administrator	Israeli
David Swissa	NGO/PR	Israeli
Erez Naar	Head of Scholarship and dormitories / Student	Israeli
Hana Azmi Al-Atrash	News Producer	Palestinian
Husam Hussein m. almeghari	President of PDC	Palestinian
Itamar Tas	Student	Israeli
Iyad m. a. faqih	Business man/merchant	Palestinian
Jehonatan Golany	Business man	Israeli
Karin Reingewertz	Director of NGO community work	Israeli
Lior Reshef – Deri	Chairman of a student union / Student	Israeli
Majd Jammal	Project coordinator	Palestinian
Manal Isam Ali Ghaben	Assistant home mother	Palestinian
Qais Osama Abdel rahman Maghary	Sales Section Manager	Palestinian
Roi Shindler	Lawyer	Israeli
Shadi ahmad Abdullah alassi	EST employee	Palestinian
Simon Dabit	Project manager	Palestinian
Yasmin Celine Confino	Administrative assistant to the CEO, advocate	Israeli
Ziyad mohmd mohmd alaydi	Business man	Palestinian