Meetings with Grantees and Staff at a time of Increasing Conflict – Day 1

Welcome to the first installment of my travel journal, sharing reflections from my recent visit to Israel/Palestine. I’m Dr. Norbert Goldfield, Executive Director of Healing Across the Divides, an organization dedicated to peace-building through health in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Over the course of one intensive and deeply moving week, I met with our grantees and staff, all working tirelessly in the face of immense challenges.

This series will take you inside these encounters, highlighting the resilience, perseverance, and ingenuity of the people and organizations striving for change amidst increasing conflict. From early childhood education projects in Bedouin communities to mental health interventions for trauma survivors, these stories reflect the realities and hopes of those living in deeply divided societies.

Here’s where I’ll start—with my first steps into this remarkable yet turbulent region after a night flight from Italy.

Meetings with Grantees and Staff at a time of Increasing Conflict – Day 1

I arrived at 3 am Monday morning after taking the night flight from Italy. At the airport arrival hall before customs I am greeted by photos and memorabilia honoring Israeli hostages still in Gaza intermixed with the permanent wall installation of Roman era mosaics. The ubiquitous presence of photos of the Israeli hostages clash with the current war going on in Gaza and the West Bank.

I make my way via train to Beersheva with Jennal Johnson ,chair of the board of Healing Across the Divides, who joins me at one of my train stops. In Beersheva, Jennal and I meet up with Veronica Vigdorchik, our Israeli representative and together we go to our first meeting with the wonderful mixed Jewish-Bedouin/ Palestinian staff working at Al-Baqour. Their focus is on Bedouin early childhood education. They’ve had spectacular success with mothers, many of whom are illiterate, coming from many villages. Al-Baqour has completed its first year of a three year grant and is just finalizing their year 2 plan. The staff outlined some of the challenges they are facing including significant developmental delay of many of the children resulting, in essence, of two diverse groups of children needing services. Another issue is transportation with almost impassable dirt roads that are full of holes in the unrecognized (meaning no services whatsoever ) villages in which they live. These roads, which I deal with in my afternoon meetings, become completely impassable after virtually any rain.

The early childhood education and library intervention involves both Hebrew and Arabic -highlighting another obstacle – the absence of qualified bilingual educators. After the presentation, we talk with the staff about the current political situation in Israel. The ongoing demolition of homes in Bedouin unrecognized (and even recognized) villages dissuades Bedouin from participating in demonstrations against the Israeli government that we read about in the newspaper. Why bother going to demonstrations in favor of democracy for the Israeli Jewish middle class when the government is destroying your home?

In the afternoon we met with the Bedouin and Jewish leadership of another grantee, the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV). From the unrecognized village, we met for example with Amira who is in counselling school studying for her PhD. She lives in an unrecognized village of a Bedouin leader, Meigal Alhawashla. He has documentation from Ottoman times of land ownership – that is unrecognized by the Israeli government.

Since most Bedouin villages are unrecognized there are no “safe/ secure” rooms such as those that Jewish families have when they are under attack. During the attacks from Hamas after October 7, many Bedouin would hide under overpasses – hardly a safe area. After October 7^th when many Bedouin, along with Jews, were killed by Hamas, emotional trauma affected many Bedouin of all ages – hence the intervention that Healing Across the Divides is funding. One pregnant Bedouin woman was shot by Hamas on October 7^th – her baby was killed by the shot. She is pregnant again and is about to give birth in the coming days. She participated in the program that Healing Across the Divides has funded.

Initially funded jointly by Healing Across the Divides and the Jewish Federations of North America, the RCUV is working to engage with and mitigate the tremendous emotional trauma that occurred after October 7^th. The intervention is focused, as is most of the work of Healing Across the Divides, on the women of the family. The intervention consists of group sessions. As they are not used to receiving mental health care, initially participants were expecting food baskets or other concrete services they are needing. Not only did the women continue to come but they asked for more services.

Together with Amira and Esti Rozenfeld the director of development for the RCUV, we also learn from other members of the RCUV about some of many the challenges confronting life in the unrecognized villages. There are constant demolitions of homes by this government. A particularly tragic and, yes disgusting, example of this was when the entire village of Umm-al-Hiran was destroyed so that a Jewish village could be built on top of the ruins. And the thousands of Bedouin living in unrecognized villages pay taxes and receive no services. Note that the tragic situation confronting the Bedouin in the Negev today was not always this way. Meigal Alhawashla told us how Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister of Israel in the 1960s, told his family and other Bedouin families that they could live wherever they wished. But… that situation didn’t hold or, more importantly, was not set out in stone. I had these conversations with Meigal while hearing the continual sound of jets taking off from a nearby airfield going for bombing runs in Gaza.

And yet people don’t give up hope and have amazing ingenuity. As we continued our conversations, we heard from Meigal Alhawashla about an innovation that he developed to grow feed for his goats at virtually no cost. He takes half of the sprouts living and growing rapidly in the water. 5 days later the bath of water is completely full. This feed production only doesn’t work in the winter months of Dec-February. Otherwise and most importantly in the summer when the heat leaves the ground parched, Meigal Alhawashla’s goats have a ready supply of virtually cost-free seeds for his animals. I right away thought of the herders in Susiya in the West Bank – constantly under threat of demolition and settler attacks. I am hoping to link together, via seedlings, the herders in these two communities.

After learning about seedlings and the ongoing trauma of unrecognized villages as a backdrop, we went to the home of another leader living in the unrecognized village of Alzarnua for an Iftar or break the fast dinner after the day long Ramadan fast. In attendance are several different community leaders of different unrecognized villages working with her RCUV, the leadership of the RCUV, and members of Rabbis for Human Rights, including the director. I spoke at the event about working and even expanding our health related work with Bedouin communities in unrecognized villages.

The stories from Day 1 captured just a fraction of the struggles and triumphs I witnessed on this trip. Yet, they underscore the importance of Healing Across the Divides' work in uplifting voices that are all too often silenced.

Thank you for joining me on this first day of my journey. Over the coming entries, I’ll introduce you to more grantees, projects, and personal stories that illuminate the profound impact of community-driven health equity initiatives. Please subscribe to ensure you don’t miss these updates, and consider sharing this series with others who might be inspired to support this critical work.

If you’d like to contribute directly, our donation page is always open. Together, we can amplify hope and resilience in the face of adversity. See you for Day 2!