For many of us, discussions about the Israel-Palestine conflict are heated and take place online. My experience with the Bridge Builders Programme (BBP) completely challenged that idea and showed me how doing so can lead to a deeper understanding of the issue itself.

The gift of offline spaces for difficult discussions:

The most important part of the Programme, for me, was taking a discussion that usually occurs online and bringing it into an offline space. On social media especially, people often express their beliefs without empathy or kindness, shielded by anonymity from any real consequences or from understanding the true impacts of their words.

Beyond this lack of empathy, online debaters frequently fall prey to out-group homogeneity - the inclination to view members of other groups as more alike than they truly are. As a result, conversations about issues like Palestine-Israel often become binary; you’re either pro- or anti-.

Our basis of empathy and respect carried us through:

However, in our discussions, we saw that views on issues like Israel-Palestine truly fall on a spectrum. And when I say “saw,” I don’t mean figuratively. One night, we played a game in which the moderator would pose a question, and we would stand in various points of the room depending on our perspective. After getting past questions like “cats versus dogs?” (cats, for sure) or “pineapple on pizza?” (most definitely not), we discussed political issues (think Brexit, voting policy, and Palestine-Israel).

Though we disagreed with each other, each standing on slightly different points on the spectrum, our basis of empathy and respect carried into even this silly game and ensured we didn’t get too heated.

Another big focus of the Programme was the emphasis on dialogue as opposed to debate; few times did we sit down and argue about a proposed solution or throw statistics back and forth.

Dropping the goal "winning"

Rather, we just talked. None of us went into these discussions with the goal of “winning” or even persuading those with which we spoke. This mindset of prioritizing understanding over victory set us up for a lot of constructive dialogues.

Though I am Jewish, my closest friends in the Programme were an English-Somali Muslim and an English-Eritrean Christian.

My experience with the Bridge Builders Programme emphasized our shared humanity over our differing views, and that is a lesson that will stay with me far beyond discussions regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict.

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The Bridge Builders Programme is Solutions Not Sides' flagship youth engagement programme, bringing together 16-19 year olds for a week to learn about Palestine-Israel, interfaith dialogue and leadership development, while spending it with Israeli and Palestinian peace-builders.

Applications for our 2025 edition are open now, to find out more, head to https://solutionsnotsides.co.uk/sns-bridge-builders-programme.