The Human Spirit: Fear vs. Hope

By Barbara Sofer

''I know that the Arabs working here are all good Arabs," says my grandson Oze. We're sitting together at a dinner in a hotel in Tiberias. I'm surprised and saddened that he's somehow become conscious that the waiters are Arabs. We've vacationed at this hotel many times before. The waiters haven't changed. They've known Oze's father as a boy, and have happily greeted the arrival of the newest generation of guests. No one has mentioned the waiters' ethnicity, but somehow Oze knows and cares. Because he's heard so many times in his short childhood that "there are good people and bad people, good Jews and bad Jews, good Arabs and bad Arabs," he's worked out that these must be the "good Arabs."

Amid the sunshine in this city on the Sea of Galilee, the cold memories of winter return. Last December, the radius of rocket fire expanded to include the farming community where Oze's family lives. He turned pale and slept poorly, attending nursery school underground. The living room window was boarded up for lack of a safe room, and in the playground he would race for shelter at the sound of the sirens. It was his first experience of war. But then, he only now just reached five years old.

OZE'S NEW nervousness around the waiters is germane to the thought-provoking questions asked recently by the Washington-based, peace-seeking organization Search for Common Ground, which has called for papers from laypeople and professionals about fear and its impact on the conflict (to be published on the organization's multilanguage Web site). Asks Search for Common Ground: "What are the underlying fears that drive our conflict and how much of an impact does the day-to-day reality have on people's fear levels? Does fear override hope? If so, how can one use hope to override fear?" ...