Sunday, June 29, 2014

No Peace In The End or, Yes?

Yisrael Medad
6/27/2014, 9:06 AM
Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Aisha, “Hamas activists,” as per the NYTimes, are being hunted.
As reported here:
Marwan Kawasmeh (29) and Amar Abu-Eisha (33), both of whom have been arrested numerous times and are well known Hamas terrorists in the Hevron area
Yesterday, I was touring with The Forward's Jane Eisner
  • Credit: EliePieprz
and one of the points Dani Dayan brought up in response to the question for how long his normailzation plan will last before peace kicks in was that it would take a generation.  I have a different frame.
You notice the ages of the suspects?  Twenty-nine and thirty-three.  How old were they when the Oslo Process began in 1993?  My math says less than nine and less than 13.  In other words, their formative years of 'growing-up' were as schoolchildren.
Did they have any peace-oriented programs in school?  Well, there was this one:
PEACE Programme: Palestinian European Academic Co-operation in Education, established in 1992.  It's details:
Fields/Disciplines
Institutional and staff development, quality of academic programmes in all fields and disciplines.
Objectives
Promoting international cooperation with Palestinian Universities through: exchange of staff and students; grants for Palestinian students and young academics to complete graduate studies abroad; academic projects aimed at enhancing teaching and research at Palestinian higher education institutions
Its areas of action include:
scholarships to Palestinian students and young academics allowing for them to pursue post-graduate studies abroad;
exchange of teachers and researchers as a means for staff development at Palestinian universities;
academic programs at Palestinian universities through bilateral and multilateral agreements and through consortia of member universities,

(If you want to, contact Professor Khalil Hindi , President, E-mail: President(at)birzeit.edu or Ms. Annapaola Coppola, Administrative Officer, UNESCO Headquarters Bonvin Building, room 6.43, 1, rue de Miollis -75015 Paris, peace.programme(at)unesco.org to find out how things "officially" went).
And there have been studies on peace education (one; and suggestions and reports, like this one that makes these recommendations:
- The Palestinian Minister of Education’s Peace for Education team should implement the Education for Peace Program in the following ways:
Integrate it into the core educational system at the primary and secondary levels, including training teachers to implement it   Fund its implementation in all state schools  Foster a triple relationship by working closely with parents, teachers and students  Monitor and evaluate the program’s success and further refine it   Civil society and domestic and international NGO’s should integrate the indirect methods associated with the Peace for Education Program in the following ways: Integrate it into extra-curricular activities  Raise awareness about peace education through public training sessions, starting from the grassroots level and including neighbourhood and community groups
But, to be truthful, I don't think that Qawasma and what's-his-name attended any.  Indeed, what is the percentage of attendance of PA residents in these type of cources and workshops?
More importantly, does the United States assist?  Or are the Jewish and Arab populations in Judea and Samaria kept apart, thereby assuring no coexistence or, in the end, peace.
So, how long do we need to promote first a normalization process?
At the minimum, all the years in school that they were not educated to prepare them for peace gave to be peeled away.  And then some.
In the end, there will be peace but the Arabs, and especially Hamas, will not get all they want.

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