From the very beginning of Peace Lines, our first Campaign for Peace, the Mostar, Zenica, Kiseljak Call for the Sake of Peace in ex-Yugoslavia, published in the French daily Le Monde, on May 20, 1995, our pledge was for books across the front-lines.

"In twenty months, we have transported some thirty people as witnesses and voluntary copilots, with some fourteen tons of relief and translated texts (Descartes, La Boétie, Nietzsche, Spinoza, Giono, Saint-Exupéry, Plato, Plutarch, Ibn Arabi, Saadia Gaon, Nhat Hanh...).

Why books ? 'We are fed up being considered as digestive tubes' (Mr Kreseljakovic, mayor of Sarajevo until 1994).
We believe in schools and radios, independent media, more than in bags of rice."

From Bosnia in 1993-1996 to Israel-Palestine from 2000 till now, it has been books.

In Bethlehem, we printed our first bilingual manifesto. We had to start with someone... Rather him than Gandhi ? 

We had to start somewhere... To get this book into the curriculum of high schools is another story.

You have to go through the authorities, and see how far they are willing to go...

Strangely, it was easier in Gaza than in Ramallah (above, 2nd & 3rd pictures, high school students in Gaza, studying our "little red book").

In Jerusalem, at the Ministry of Education (1st picture) it is 'work in progress'.

While we are waiting for some agreement on the national level, work has started in the Jerusalem Schools (pictures on the left) and in Nablus, in the West Bank.

On both sides of the divide, the eagerness is there, the interest is immediate. When all you've heard since your birth is speeches of suspicion, physical confrontation and separatism, a new language about the ways to coexistence and dialogue rings like nothing else. Again, "since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed", as is stated at the very beginning of the UNESCO Constitution (November 1945). Martin Luther King (assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in April 1968) never claimed he had a solution for a just and lasting peace in the conflict between Israel proper and Palestine. His whole endeavour has been to focus on "dedicated minorities, the trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom". Making it clear that "it will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly  to win the uncommitted majority." Way beyond the protracted conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, there is no shortage of daily conflicts to be solved between political groups, neighbourhoods, families, couples, friends...