2006 Peace Accords Campaign

MISSION

To develop and sign peace accords addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between Jewish American and Palestinian/Arab American students on campuses across North America.

GOALS

To create a framework in which members of the Arab and Jewish American and Canadian communities on campus can work together to pursue the common goals of peace and coexistence.

To build an understanding of the “Other” by recognizing differing historical and personal narratives through compassion and tolerance.

To learn about the issues that Palestinians and Israelis grapple with at the negotiating table and acquire the skills to compromise and confront these contentious subjects.

TO GET INVOLVED
The UPZ is holding weekly conference calls to update each other, strategize, and coordinate the campaign. The calls are open to anyone interested in participating in the project. They have finished for the semester but will resume at the start of second semester - check back here in early January for the time and date of the next call, and instructions on how to join.

Click here to read questions and answers from the first conference call.

Click here to read about outreach strategies discussed on the second conference call.

Read on for a timeline and instructions on how to pursue the project.

TIMELINE
Deadline: February 1, 2006
1) Hold a preliminary meeting with all interested people to formally introduce the project and assign roles between a Palestinian negotiating team and an Israeli negotiating team. The simplest role-playing is to have Jewish students negotiate as the Israeli team and Arab-American/Palestinian students negotiate as the Palestinian team, but here are some additional ideas:
a. Have Jewish students negotiate as Palestinians and the Arab-American students negotiate as Israelis. This increases the learning possibilities because it forces participants to learn a narrative they might be less familiar with and to argue for the needs of the “other side.”
b. If you want, assign team members to ideological groups, political parties, or specific people in order to make the research more concrete (i.e., where would the concerns specific to Fatah be, what would the Labor party bring to the table, etc.)
2) Each side should break down the research responsibilities and delegate them clearly between members of the group, depending on how detailed you want the agreement to be. You can break down the issues more concretely so that one person is responsible for articulating their side’s position on water rights, another on refugees, a third on Jerusalem, etc., depending on how many participants you have.

Deadline: Throughout February 2006
3) Each side should do independent research and exchange ideas over email to write up their proposal for a peace accord. Ideally, different members are responsible for different sections or clauses, and then all the sections are compiled and agreed upon by the group.
4) The two sides exchange proposed peace accords and discuss the other side’s proposal among themselves.

Deadline: March 2006 - Before Spring Break!
5) All participants meet for a negotiating session. Participants should work through the clauses in each respective proposal, labeling the clauses in each other’s proposals with the following:
a. Outside the bounds of negotiation; not acceptable.
b. Not acceptable as proposed, but room for negotiation on the issue.
c. Acceptable.
Participants then divvy up the accepted clauses between members of the groups to work out a polished common language in which to phrase them, and when completed, add them to the finished peace accord. Then they hold brainstorming sessions on those clauses labeled a) or b) by either team.
6) Each team returns to email communications to work out alternative proposals for both those clauses of theirs that the other team rejected and clauses of the other team’s that they rejected.

Deadline: April 11, 2006 (Before Passover)
7) Teams meet again together and accept the finished clauses that were previously agreed upon. Then they renegotiate over the clauses that were a’s or b’s last time, in an effort to move them over to c. Further brainstorming should follow any remaining a’s or b’s for both teams.
8) Teams return to research and writing stage to create new alternative proposals for the areas still under disagreement.
9) Group meets together to renegotiate over remaining clauses. Steps 8 and 9 can be repeated as many times as necessary to reach a final accord, but it is suggested that teams aim for no more than 2-3 meetings without a resolution.

Deadline: April 30, 2006
10) Team members divide up responsibilities in writing a polished version of the final agreement. Congratulations! You’ve done it.

Want more info on how to get involved? Contact Us to ask questions and to receive an information packet about the project that will give you some background materials and help you get started.