In an effort to reduce regional tensions and to promote trust building bilateral dialogue the Jerusalem and Istanbul offices of the Friedrich Naumann for Liberty decided to open up a new dialogue channel.

At the beginning of December (2011) the Foundation launched the dialogue series in the metropolis at the Bosporus convening a selected core group of distinguished experts from the civil society of both sides. Among the participants were academics, political analysts and experts on conflict management and mediation, who discussed in a one-day workshop the goals, methods, target groups and topics the planned dialogue program ought to be based on and deal with. In the prevailing atmosphere of animosities and partly also open hostility of today, geared mainly by the respective governmental level, the participants agreed that it is of utmost importance to involve a wide scope of representatives of both civil societies as mediators between the two societies. In order to change the predominantly negative perception of the other, the civil society actors ought to strive for promoting tolerance, exposing biased information and, by that, reducing tension and preparing a fertile ground for open and constructive dialogue and mutual understanding. Aiming first at the public opinion the far reaching goal of the ambitious venture is to influence also the level of political decision makers by encouraging them to undertake concrete steps to reestablish the previous relations between the two countries and to contribute to a stabilization of the region.

In the tradition of the Foundation’s applied methodologies, f.ex. during the Turkish-Armenian Dialogue, the new dialogue program will combine academic events like joint conferences, surveys as well as educational seminars and will integrate new social media tools. Topics like economic cooperation, regional development, state and religion, and civil society and the military are on the agenda for the future meetings, which are supposed to take place alternately in Israel and in Turkey.

The atmosphere among the workshop participants was characterized by openness, commitment to the cause and the determination to become a motor for change. A second meeting with an enlarged core group is scheduled for March, next year

“Freedom from Religion: International, Constitutional and Theoretical Perspective”

The conference took place between December 11th -13th 2011, in The College of Management Campus Rishon Lezion, and was being held in English.

To view the program, please visit

To view photos from the event, please click here

At “RAWABI” site, the forum members had a very fruitful, detailed and interesting presentation on this city project, how it will look like and what it would contain in 5-6 years when the project would finish. The project will be a full city with housing units, hospital, schools, shops and convention centres. The obstacles and challenges facing this major project were also discussed.

Afterwards the Forum members had an open discussion with our two guest speakers, Mr. Masri and Mr. Nassereddin mainly on the economic and political conditions in Palestine and on the background of the Rawabi-project.

It was noted at the end that building bridges between Palestinian and Israeli business people is a very crucial step in this state of missing peace.

The weekend seminar and the lectures of Prof. Aziz Haidar and Dr. Ephraim Lavie were based on the reaserch which has been conducted by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Strategic Dialogue at Netanya Academic College in cooperation with the Jerusalem office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty.

To view the program in Hebrew click here.

Firstly they were requested to portray their family history in the form of a family tree going back to the turn of the 20th century and discuss it within the groups and the plenary. The exercise enabled the participants an impressing insight into the multicultural and multiethnic background of both the Israeli and Palestinian participants and high lighted the fact that their family past many times overlaps with that of “the other side”. Finally the participants had to discuss in working groups which kind of events and projects they would like to see materialized in the upcoming year. In three main fields of engagement, ‘Site Visits’, ‘Internal Discussions’ and “Trainings”, the members of the forum came up with ideas and suggestions which will be integrated into next year’s strategic planning and event agenda.

The next session of the forum will consists of a site visit to the new Palestinian city under construction, Rawabi, next to Ramallah. The members of the forum will have the chance to visit the construction site and to meet and converse with the initiators of the project.

The 11^th session of the Forum took place in Jerusalem on Thursday October 27^th 2011.  This session was a “kick-off” event of the new enlarged Forum, in which the Palestinian and Israeli newcomers met and joined our veteran members. The forum seeks to give future Palestinian and Israeli leaders an opportunity to meet each other, network, exchange thoughts and converse with key actors of the Palestinian, Israeli and international business community and political arena.

This yearly conference took place this year in Beirut, Lebanonon 20 & 21 October 2011. The title of conference was “The Economic Implications of the Arab Spring, Opportunities and Challenges for Free Market Policies”. One Palestinian participant took part in this conference who was Dr. Hisham Awartani, Director of Palestine Governance Institute (PGI)

To view the main objectives of the conference and the program, please click here.

are kindly invite you to take a part in the movements activities in November.

To view the activities list (in Hebrew), please click here

To view the Facbook site, please click here

To view the website of “Be Free”, please click here

More on Taybeh village and Oktoberfest, please click here.