Hillel center hosts expedition team spreading Mideast peace

Antarctica seems but a dream to most people, a snowy mirage that's a world away. For four Israelis and four Palestinians, Antarctica was a trying terrain where the dream of peace in the Middle East could begin. \nMonday night, two members of this group of eight travelers, the "Breaking the Ice" team, spoke to IU students and community members about their expedition to prove that Israelis and Palestinians could work together. The event was co-sponsored by the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Muslim Student Union, Trinity Episcopal Church, Jewish Student Association, IU Office of Diversity Education and Hoosiers for Israel.\nA friend of adventurer Doron Erel, the team's leader, conceived the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian expedition and pitched the project to Erel, saying, "Listen, I've got an idea that will change your life."\nErel accepted the challenge and began networking to recruit team members for a trip to Antarctica to climb an untouched mountain.\nNone of the members had climbing experience. Team members only had to fulfill three criteria: a desire to join the expedition, personal connections to the Middle East conflict and a belief that peace is the only solution.\nTwo members of the group had been imprisoned -- one for firebombing Israeli troops and the other for stabbing an Israeli policeman. Another member of the group had lost family to a suicide bombing. Despite the depth of pain in the group, its leader had confidence in the team's prospects for success.\n"The most important thing that made it possible to work together was that we told each other personal stories ... When you tell your stories, there is no longer an enemy in front of you. There is a human being there. That doesn't mean we agree ... there was temper," Erel said.\nSeeking support for the $250,000 trip required crossing long-standing crevices. At a June 2003 press conference in Berlin, the project won its first political supporter: Wolfgang Thierse, president of the German parliament. \n"Both of my parents were Holocaust survivors and lost all of their family in the Holocaust," Erel said. "For me to be the guest of the chairman of the German parliament announcing such a peace expedition 60 years after the Holocaust was very symbolic and very, very emotional. If (peace) can be there in Germany, it can be in the Middle East as well."\nErel thinks reaching young people is key to success. "Peace is a very boring concept to sell to young people. It's much easier to give them a gun and tell them to go shoot someone than to tell them to go to school," he said. "With this kind of project, you can still attract the imagination of young people who want to do something and want to be heroes."\nThe mission for peace is just as important now as when "Breaking the Ice" began two years ago. \n"All my life I hope for peace. Maybe now I feel something moving and it's going to be better, but I don't know," said Olfat Haider, one of two women on the team and an Palestinian living in Israel. "All the times we think it will happen, but then it fails." \nPeace in the Middle East and around the world motivated the team and brought Erel and Haider to Bloomington.\n"It's much more than the mountain climb. That's almost beside the point. The point is a group of people working together to prove that co-existence and peace are possible," Hillel Director of Jewish Student Life Jessie Mallor said.\nAt the top of the previously unclimbed mountain, the team gave it a name: Mountain of Israeli-Palestinian Friendship.\nWhen the team returned from Antarctica to Santiago, Chile, a local Israeli group and a local Palestinian group collaborated for the first time when they planned a celebration for the adventurers. The elation from that moment of collaboration countered the reality of bombings, checkpoints and tedious negotiations. \nFor Erel, returning from Antarctica does not finish the team's work in spreading its message of unity. \n"Four Jews, four Arabs sailing on a boat in Antarctica sounds like the beginning of a joke. I'm still searching for the punchline."\n-- Contact Assistant Opinion Editor \nJanet Hamilton at hamiltoj@indiana.edu.