At long last, I encounter Encounter.

It has been a little over nine months since I first began my journey with the Encounter program in Jerusalem. Nine months that I have not been sure how to begin to write. Nine months – the figure seems apt. As if this piece of writing were subject to some sort of gestation period. As if it had to grow inside of me until it could sustain itself in the world. As if it lived off of the nourishment I could provide it, growing, developing. And now, nine months later, here I am. Commuting between Toronto and Hamilton. Miles from Israel. Miles from Palestine. Miles from the conflict.

The gestation metaphor is nice. I can say that I went into “labour,” so to speak, as I read about and watched news coverage of what is going on in Israel now – in Israel, and in Gaza. In both – innocent victims of a war they did not start, a war whose end cannot come too quickly. In both – casualties; in both – propaganda. I read, I watch, I reflect.

When Israel first invaded Gaza, my mother called her friend Nadia in East Jerusalem – “How are you?” she asked. “How are things?” Nadia answered her, “We’re in Jerusalem. Don’t be silly. We’re fine here.” Two days later, an email. “Things are really bad. It’s scary. I worry that there will be another intifada. I worry about my sons – they are learning to hate Israel – to hate Jews. I worry about my family. I worry it is going to get worse. All I want is peace, and for my sons to be safe.”

I am taken back to the weeks when my mother visited me in Jerusalem. We spent afternoons with Nadia and her family – at her mother’s house in Beit Hanina, at her uncle’s house on the Mount of Olives, exploring the Old City, drinking coffee at Aroma on Har Hatzofim. We sat there together, in those moments – two Canadian Jews and a Muslim Palestinian family. I bonded with Nadia’s niece, Juman, 15, with English better than my own. Top of her class. Confiding in me about boy problems. So much like me. Yet.

When Israel first went into Gaza last spring, before the ceasefire, Juman’s school held a fundraiser – a bake sale to benefit children in Gaza. She said to me, “It is so sad what is happening there, to those innocent children.” I agreed. I could say nothing else.

And now, here I am. Nine months since I began my journey with Encounter. I am preoccupied with Gaza, with Israel, with the people being hurt on both sides. But I went on Encounter to learn about Jerusalem, to hear the stories of Palestinians living in Israel. That is not Gaza. Yet.

Since I have been home, I have alternately absorbed myself in and distanced myself from Jewish activities. I have spoken my mind, regardless of the consequences. I have stood up for Israel. I have stood up for Palestine. I have made new friends and I have alienated old ones. I have learned to speak in “I” – I share what I heard, what I saw, what I learned. And I have still not been able to write about it. Until now. Until it was fresh in my mind again. Until Gaza brought it back.

An image remains with me – standing near the security barrier that cut an Arab village in two, an old woman walked by our group, holding a grocery bag. I was standing a little distance away from the group, absorbing my surroundings rather than the facts and figures our guide was sharing. I looked at the woman, and she looked at me. “Marhaba,” I said, putting the little Arabic I know to use. “Marhaba,” she answered, smiling. In that moment, recognition. A shared moment between a young, Jewish student, and an old, Muslim villager. A true “encounter.” Fleeting, yet everlasting in my mind. I sometimes wonder what she thought of the whole scene – a group of Jews staring at the barrier their “homeland” had built to protect them, listening to a Palestinian man holding a clipboard, explaining the “situation” in a language she likely did not understand.

Later that day, at dinner, I sat with one other member of my group, and two women who were part of the Palestinian group who shared their stories with us. As we ate, the conversation inevitably turned to politics. One of the women was vehemently against a two-state solution – she would be fine with the disappearance of Israel, the Jewish state, and hoped that one day, a one-state solution would be realized. I listened. I told her I disagreed. I told her that I’d love to see a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. I told her that I was for peace, but that I didn’t think a one-state solution would provide it. She disagreed. Over a plate of hummus, we agreed to disagree.

I have little to say about the facts on the ground. There are numbers – of citizenship-less Palestinians. Of checkpoints. Of settlements. Of towns cut in two by the security barrier. Of roads for Israelis only. Of roads for Palestinians only. Of abandoned shops. Of competing national narratives. Of wars. Of victims. Of heroes. Of survivors. There are contexts, there are decontextualizations. There are demolished houses. There are examples of reconciliation. There are terrorist attacks. There are services denied. There are soldiers. There are identity cards. There is Hamas. There is Yisrael Beiteinu. All of this is obvious. But these figures, for me, have little to do with Encounter. Of course, without them, there is no Encounter. Yet.

These figures – these competing sufferings, these competing desires – do not begin to tell me the story I heard from an Israeli woman my own age, who, as a teenager, was in the Dizengoff Centre in Tel Aviv when a suicide bomber attacked. She still has the shrapnel scars on her back. These numbers do not begin to tell me about the Palestinian woman whose sister died because the ambulance that was called for her had to wait for an army escort, and got to her house too late. These facts do not begin to tell me about the real pain on both sides, of two groups who are sick of fighting and just want to live side by side in peace, whether they agree on what that peace looks like or not.

We visited the open house run by Ibrahim Abu El Hawa on the Mount of Olives. As we drank tea, he cried – he dreamed of a better life for his children, but feared this meant that they would leave Jerusalem, only to lose their ability to come back home. Some had already gone this route, and he worried about his youngest. I thought about all the families separated. Ibrahim from his children in America, Nadia’s uncle’s wife from her parents and her siblings in Nablus. Nadia referred to as her “sister,” and explained to us that not only was this because she truly felt like the two were sisters, but because she had been cut off from her family, and needed that kinship. I thought about a Palestinian friend, who, because of her Israeli citizenship, needed to know the back roads she could travel to avoid checkpoints so that she could visit her family in the Palestinian Territories. I thought about my Jewish Israeli friends who wanted to visit the Taybeh brewery, or smoke nargileh in Ramallah. I thought about the Christians living in Israel who were unable to make their Christmas Eve pilgrimage to Bethlehem because they could not cross the checkpoint.

So, it has been nine months since I participated in Encounter, and I still think about these things that I heard, that I saw, that I experienced. The more I think about it, the more I realize: yes, it took me nine months to write about Encounter, but this is because to write about Encounter is not to write just about Encounter. It is to write about my year living in the midst of one of the world’s most contentious regions. It is to filter through twelve months of life in Jerusalem, to relive the anxiety I felt the first time I went through a checkpoint. To revisit the fear I was overcome with every time there was a terrorist attack. To think about my friends on both sides of this messy conflict, who are living in the midst of political and military turmoil and uncertainty. To dream of peace. To wake up to the reality that there is none. To continue to believe in human rights and equality. To wish it necessarily coexisted with national security. Encounter encouraged me to think long and hard about all of this. To face it. To talk about it. To resist silencing it.

Thanks to Encounter, I say I.

I have heard your stories. I have told you mine. I have listened to your pain. I have shared with you mine.

I have heard your hopes. I have told you mine.

I have encountered you. I have let you encounter me.

And after it all, as difficult as it is, I believe that there will be peace.