Launch of M'ghar Interfaith Encounter - 14th of April 2005:

Background

Some two months ago, in mid-April, unfortunate violent events erupted between Druze and Christians in the village of M'ghar in the Galilee. Following these events two of the board members of the Interfaith Encounter Association - Deacon Jirias Mansour of Rame and Sheikh Tawfiq Salamah, Secretary of the Druze High Religious Council; and myself, Dr. Yehuda Stolov, the Executive Director of the Interfaith Encounter Association – met to discuss the proper response of IEA to these events. Following this meeting we issued a letter to Bishop George Haddad, Greek-Catholic Archdiocese and Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, Head of the Druze Community, in which we reaffirmed our commitment to form on-going groups for interfaith encounter in M'ghar and other places (the letter was shared with the e-group on the 17th of February).

As a result, Ms. Aida Shibli-Qleibo took the initiative to follow some leads that she had, resulting in a commitment of Ms. Nada Abu Zaidan, from the community center in M'ghar, to convene the group.

The Launch Meeting

On the morning of Thursday, April the 14th, Aida and I went to M'ghar to meet with the group. We told the 16 people – Druze, Christians and Muslims - who gathered at the community center about the history, ideology, activity and structure of the Interfaith Encounter Association and described the organizational details of forming and running a group – inviting them to join our network of existing 12 on-going groups.

It was so encouraging and supporting for us to see how positively the group responded and how committed they are to activate the "silent majority" to take the initiative to build the joint community of the three communities of M'ghar.

In the end of the meeting we had the commitment to go ahead, a coordinating team and a contact person – Ms. Elham Tanous. We also already had the report from the meeting, written by Mr. Rizk Azzam and copied below.

It is worthwhile noting that this is a unique group in the scenery of IEA as it is our first group that does not include Jews. It is a moving manifestation of the fact that the interfaith encounter approach is a universal powerful tool for overcoming conflicts and the building of sustainable coexistence in communities.

The Meeting's Report

The IEA deals with religious themes. The goal is to unite between members of all religions through an insight on each person according to his religion.

One of the objectives is to know religions in a deeper way and to encourage the possibility to respect all religions, to present opinions in a friendly and civilized spirit, without hurting each other's religion.

The idea is to build friendly relations between the communities. Today there are 12 groups across the country – from Karmiel and Majd el-Krum to Eilat, and there are 5 more groups in formation. There is a lot of flexibility in the groups – for women only or for men only, for young adults, for disadvantaged neighborhoods etc.

The goal of today's meeting is to form a group in M'ghar, with participation from all religions in the village. The possibility of later including Jews from villages in the area exists and is legitimate.

After the events that took place in M'ghar – the group that will be formed will work to execute actual activities in the field, as soon as possible, in order to bring the different communities in M'ghar closer together.

In the group there will be three coordinators – one from each community. They will be representing the groups in different forums. The group will decide how many times to meet in a month. Each meeting will be some two hours long. The coordinators will be responsible to prepare the theme and it is also possible that every participant will prepare an idea about the theme. The members of the group will conduct a deep discussion about the selected theme and the meetings will be summarized and reported to thousands of people in Israel and aboard.



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