Mohammed Dajani, leader of the Palestinian Wasatia movement, said he believes understanding the other side is to see the human side of conflict.

Dajani, the founder of the Wasatia movement and professor of political science at al-Quds University in Jerusalem, spoke about his experiences as a scholar and Palestinian peace activist on Monday in Maxwell Auditorium. The event was hosted by LIME at Syracuse University, an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue group that works to encourage discussion about events in the Middle East.

Born in Palestine in 1946, Dajani and his family were forced to leave their belongings behind and migrate out of Jerusalem when Israel was established as a state in 1948.

His childhood experiences in the Palestinian exodus out of Israel shaped his hostile attitude toward Israelis that carried with him for much of his life. Dajani’s animosity toward Israelis was so intense that he refused to talk to the Hebrew professor in the office next to him when he was an Arabic teacher at the University of South Carolina.

“I carried with me the heritage of hatred and believing that I’m right and they’re wrong,” Dajani said.

Dajani’s attitude was changed by two experiences he had when he returned to Jerusalem to visit his dying father in 1993, he said. When visiting his father in an Israeli hospital, Dajani said the Israeli doctors’ treatment of his Palestinian father surprised him.

“They treated him like a human, not like a Palestinian,” Dajani added.

A few years after his father died, Dajani and his family were returning from a visit to Tel Aviv when his mother suffered an asthma attack. Dajani and his brother tried to drive back to a Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem, but as her condition worsened, they drove into the Israeli checkpoint at Ben Gurion Airport against their fears that the Israelis would refuse to help them.

Instead of turning them away, Dajani said Israeli security forces quickly vacated the gates and quickly treated his mother.

“I was watching my enemy help my mother live for over two hours,” Dajani said. “It was an experience that helped me see the good in the other.”

Dajani began to educate himself on Jewish culture and question his beliefs that Palestinians were always correct.

Soon after, he began to working with Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders to come up with conflict-resolution plans in the wake of continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dajani said the meetings between leaders were becoming hopeless because neither side wanted to compromise.

During those meetings, Dajani said he realized both sides’ “big dream” to live in a world without the other would not be possible unless one side killed everyone on the other. Instead, Dajani pushed religious leaders to accept the “small hope” that they could live together in peace. He said he believes these talks, in addition to the Oslo Accords in 1993, have contributed to an emerging movement for peace in Israel and Palestine.

“Most Israelis and Palestinians are moderates who want compromise,” Dajani said.

Dajani founded the Wasatia movement in 2007 to represent the moderate Palestinians. He said Palestinians need to be open to thinking about the conflict from an Israeli point of view to achieve the peace.

In 2014, Dajani traveled with 27 students from al-Quds University to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. He said many of his students were not aware of the true history of the Holocaust because Palestinian textbooks do not teach students what really happened. Some Palestinian textbooks even taught students that Germans were the victims of Jewish violence.

“Palestinians look at the Holocaust only in small pictures,” Dajani said. “As an educator, I was trying to bridge the gap between the small picture and the real picture.”

Dajani’s trip to Auschwitz was widely politicized, with many Palestinians calling Dajani a traitor to his country. Dajani said the trip’s goals were misinterpreted and politicized out of context.

“To the students, it was an educational experience,” Dajani added. “I try to take the politics out and leave the education in.”

In a polarized Palestinian political climate, Dajani said he hopes the Wasatia movement will be a third alternative to the extremist Hamas and secular Fatah parties. Dajani said the whole concept of his movement is open a dialogue for compromise rather than conflict.

“We should walk on the path of peace whether others do or not,” Dajani said

Published on October 26, 2016 at 1:21 am

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