See also a small-scale application: a Desert Peace Process 2002 and the pages about the RedSeaPartnerSHIP, especially my late and sad insight...

The Partnership Song - 1. stanza

My peace work in the seventies
Shutafut/Mushaaraka/Partnership

Maryam, alias Christa-Rachel Bat-Adam, married Rachel Rosenzweig, born Eva-Maria-Christa Guth
This "Driving backward" was stimulated by pp37, Adora&Erfurt, May 2002;
last update: 2003_06_26

Continuation of
Biographic background to my Thesis and Books

Two months later I started to do, what I taught.
To walk my talk.
I had needed this job outside my home,
and I had needed to encounter those Zionist pioneers
who transformed from pale city employees into agricultural laborers,
and who revived a language that had been dead for 2000 years.
They were putting into action, what my book was all about.
And what they could do, I could do.
They gave me strength and courage and faith.

I had launched peace-work before, several times.
I stopped, when I realized, that it endangered my marriage.
This time I was determined to not let anyone or anything stop me.
My goal was "Man and Labor" - not to work for peace.
But it was what I needed to do first.
"We blamed our parents in Hitler Germany: Where have you been?
I don't want my children to grow up into more terrible wars and terror
and ask me: where have you been?"
That's how I started with what in 1977 became a NGO, a "non-governmental organization",
called "Partnership".

Sorry, I haven't come around to give an overview.
I'll insert what I wrote in August 1997,
when we worked on the Red-Sea-Partner-SHIP:

In most of the groups we talked to during this tour, there were both , Jewish Americans and Arab Americans. There would always come the moment, when one or the other from among these two would say something like: "We have done enough, now it's up to the other side to act." And I would always say: "Does this mean, that you have given up on self-determination and entrusted your destiny in the hands of "the other side"? There was always silence. Nobody did ever answer my question with : "Yes"....

IN those six years - from November 1974 to August 1980 - I've written hundreds of documents, thousands of pages:
- the Partnership Song

- Concepts

- Programs

- Reports

- Petitions

- a detailed diary for the members of the Partnership Committee

- Letters in Hebrew, Arabic, English, German

Only a few of these documents are inserted in Healing-K.i.s.s..
Most of it I gave to "Partnership", when I left the organization..


In the middle of the "Jewish-Palestinian Initiative 1980" , all my work in "Partnership" came to an end,
because the situation in my home had suddenly matured towards my lekh-lekhâ from it.

In January 1981 I asked the Committee of Partnership to let me go.

Nimr Ismir continued as the Arab chairperson and Prof. Benjamin Yanouv replaced me as the Jewish chairperson.
They asked Benjamin, if it was "because of Partnership", that Rachel's marriage had been "ruined".
He answered: "No! It was because of Partnership, that Rachel held on to it for too long."

And indeed, it took me all those many years to understand,
that my marriage was not the proof of my belief in partnership.

The difference is the condition of dependency:

Only when there is a dependency from which there is no way out,
like in the case of parents-children, siblings, and these two nations,
is there a chance at all for succeeding with this hard work
of turning a dependency, if its "negative", into a partnership.

This is not the case between people who are married to each other.
Though immense suffering is involved in separation,
not only for the two partners, but also for their children,
departure from a marriage dependency is possible,
and if departure is the right thing to do,
it will be beneficial for everyone involved.

Though some people, like Nuri Al-Uqbi, the Bedouin leader at that time, did not understand me,
and thought that I was betraying our cause and enjoying my private happiness,
I haved never left "the cause" .

Few people know, that my Desert Vision and Creation is an answer to the real problem of the conflict:
the lack of equality in self-esteem.
On the very first homepage of Healing-K.i.s.s. I stress,
that my vision of DESERT ECONOMY
is intended to be
a  CHALLENGE  for  ISRAEL&ISMAEL   
big enough to dwarf the gap in self-esteem
and to transform
the negative dependency between them
into a positive dependency, i.e. a Partnership

To demonstrate my continuous caring for Israel&Ismael,
I'll add another piece to the puzzle of my work "on the cause":

After my divorce, Yitzhak Peri, the principal of my teacher college wanted to help me. In addition to 3 double hours in Jewish Thought I was to teach 2 or 3 double hours in Arab Literature. 7 years earlier he had hired me to teach the history of Zionism, which in turn made me start with the work that became "Partnership". Now - in addition to a little more money for completing the raising of my children - he gave me the chance to deeply immerse myself in Arab Thought - for 3 years. Then, in 1984, I resigned - to Peri's great regret - because I wanted to be totally free for my "lekh lekhâ".

Yitzchak Peri among the 70 faces on my book

In 1982 the college organized an exhibition of all its activities.
It's for this exhibition that I "sculpted" the following document
about my teaching Jewish and Arab students Arab Literature.

It was a sunny day and we studied outside. The Jewish students were mostly my age. They had immigrated from Arab countries in their childhood or youth. The three students to the right are a true reflection of Israeli society: There is Yosi, in soldier uniform, who had immigrated from Syria recently, there is Abdul Rahmaan born in an Arab village in Israel, and there is Esther, originally from Egypt. It was with her that I made my first of two study trips to Egypt , in 1982.

"The language in this course is Arabic!" "The task of the teacher for Arabic in a Jewish class and of the teacher for Hebrew in an Arab class is a kind of "vocation". Even the best teacher can fail because of the special psychological conditions in which he has to teach. Hence a special training is demanded, which will enable these teachers to cope with both - objective problems connected to the Jewish-Arab conflict , and a host of emotions behind indifferent or hostile behavior which the teacher might meet. In the life situation of this mixed Jewish-Arab class the pupil-teacher has a chance to acquire both, psychological-philosophical tools, and the practical experience, which will help him to fulfill his task."