by Betty Cohen
Fathom deputy editor Jack Omer-Jackaman speaks with Tareq Abu Hamed and Eliza Mayo of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, an academic research centre operating with the premise that cooperation on environmental issues that impact all the people in the Middle East is an effective path to building cooperation among communities that have been locked in conflict for generations. The student body of the Arava Institute, located on Kibbutz Keturah, just north of Eilat in the southernmost part of Israel, is comprised of one-third Israeli Arabs, one-third Jewish Israelis and one-third internationals from neighboring Arab countries. Over the course of an academic semester, these students work together on solutions to issues such as climate change and water scarcity and cleanliness, while developing trust and working relationships. (Source: Intermountain Jewish News, February 22, 2024)
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I sit on the stone patio of the apartment on a kibbutz in the desert which settlers have brought to bloom. Trees cast shadows patterning the red bricks with shadows of leaves. Indoors ten-inch tan tiles form the cool floor of the rented furnished two bedroom apartment. This visit is to meet my newborn great-grandson. The air is thick with silence, the sky pale blue. Prior to settling in the desert to make the desert bloom, his father, my grandson, lived with me. When the kibbutz was newly formed a neighboring Palestinian farmer, across the border, came to present the kibbutz with a camel, his token of Peace, which still reigns here in the Arava.
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Betty Cohen, a Princeton NJ resident, is now in the Arava to see her great-grandson. She introduced this poem via Zoom to her Princeton-area weekly poetry workshop colleagues.
A poem of Peace not War