Southern Israel’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies was five weeks into a semester-long program when Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. The institute, which hosts both Israeli and Palestinian students, was planning to send participants home due to the war when a group of students approached its leadership.

“The students came to us and they said, ‘Guys, we decided to stay with each other. We refuse to leave,” said Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, the institute’s director.

In the institute, a research and academic center in southern Israel’s Kibbutz Ketura, college students from Israeli and Palestinian communities study green technologies. Since its founding in 1996, the institute has developed methods for fostering dialogue between the students, despite their backgrounds on opposing sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those methods could apply to US campuses riven by the fallout from the war, Abu Hamed said during a visit to New York last week.

Abu Hamed, from East Jerusalem, joined the Arava Institute in 2008. He left in 2013 to work in the Ministry of Science and Technology, where he served as the vice and deputy chief scientist, becoming the highest-ranking Palestinian in the Israeli government. He returned to the institute in 2018. He was in New York to build awareness about the institute’s mission as it works to build shelters for displaced Palestinians in Gaza.

The institute hosts 65 students per semester. Around one-third are Jewish Israelis, one-third are from Arabic-speaking backgrounds such as the West Bank and Jordan, and the remaining third are from other areas including the US and Europe.

The lesson plan includes compulsory dialogue sessions for three to six........

© The Times of Israel