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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As Easter, Ramadan, and Passover coincide, the Holy Land for all three religions is experiencing a spike in the ongoing conflict there as many of you have been hearing in the news. It seems almost quaint these days, in fact, to talk about a two-state solution with security and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. Even the simple words "peace process" can feel very 1990s and be easily dismissed. There are Israelis and Palestinians working on the ground for mutual understanding and a way forward that's better than permanent occupation of Palestinians and ever-expanding Jewish settlements, plus attacks on Israelis.

We'll talk now with an Israeli and a Palestinian who belonged to one such group known as Roots founded in 2014. Roots describes itself as fostering a grassroots movement of understanding, non-violence, and transformation among Israelis and Palestinians with a vision for a social and political reality that is founded on dignity, trust, and a mutual recognition and respect for both people's historic belonging to the entire land.

With me now are Hanan Schlesinger, an Orthodox rabbi originally from New York who has lived for many years now in the Jewish settlement area known as Gush Etzion on the West Bank. He is also the director of international relations for Roots. Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian activist with Roots. He grew up in a refugee family in Gaza and is currently living in Washington, DC, working on a graduate degree in comparative politics. Rabbi Schlesinger, Khalil Sayegh, thank you so much for coming on together. Welcome to WNYC.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Thank you for having us, Brian.

Khalil Sayegh: Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: I'd like to invite each of you first to tell a little of your own stories and how you wound up working with this kind of group. Rabbi Schlesinger, you know this is a New York radio station, so tell people a little bit about how you grew up here and how you wound up becoming what your bio page on Roots calls "a passionate Zionist settler."

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: I have to say that you left out part of that sentence about passionate Zionist settler. I'll get back to that in another minute. I was born in Brooklyn, spent six months there until we moved to Long Island. I grew up in Long Island. I was part of a Jewish family with a strong Jewish identity, but not very religious at all. I began coming closer to Jewish observance in high school. I also became a member of a Zionist youth movement. Then at the age of 18, 19, I moved to Israel. I've been there ever since.

In Israel, I've been a rabbi my whole life, teaching in seminaries and colleges of Jewish studies. Then about nine, nine and a half years ago, I had a career change, basically an epiphany. I met Palestinians for the first time in my life, even though I'd be living among them in an area where 85% of the population Palestinian for almost 40 years, I had a real conversation with my Palestinian neighbors. Within a few minutes, that began to change my life. It's a long story. We founded Roots. For the past nine years, we've been trying to find a way forward to create reconciliation, understanding, and transformation between the two sides.

Brian Lehrer: What was it that you said I left out in your bio?

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: I indeed call myself a passionate Zionist settler, but the rest of the sentence is, "who has been profoundly transformed by his contact with Palestinians."

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Khalil, can you tell our listeners some things about your childhood born to and raised by a refugee family in the Gaza Strip?

Khalil Sayegh: Sure, yes. Being born to a refugee family means that all the details of your life and the atmosphere is shaped by what happened in 1948 to your family, my family in 1948, or as we call it, the Nakba catastrophe, which Israelis considered the independent day or the independent war of Israel has caused the catastrophe for many families. One of which was my grandparents who lost their property, lost their land, lost their dignity.

We lost the entire Palestinian society in the way of connection and became fragmented. Finding yourself born to such a family in Gaza, where you are suffering the consequences of what happened in '48 and still living under occupation and living under a place that is being bombed continuously, being seized, shaped how you look at the world. Around 2009, after the first war in Gaza, I moved to the West Bank. Around 2012, I came more to question some of the ways we look at the Israelis and the way Israelis look at us.

It was just coming out of religious conviction that it's unethical to completely dehumanize the other side rather than any political view. I met Israelis and I found myself working with them to end the occupation and to advocate for a better future where both sides acknowledge each other's humanity and identity, yet where we have actual justice that doesn't exist today under this regime of occupation that we live under.

Brian Lehrer: It's interesting, both of you, in introducing yourselves, talked about not interacting with members of the other group. Khalil, in your bio, it says, "Except when the Israeli air forces bombed Gaza." Rabbi, in your bio, it says, "Never meeting a Palestinian as an equal until 2013 despite living among them," as you said. Can you both talk a little bit more about that? What was that like coming to interact with people from the other community in a way that let you see them as fully human and not stereotypes? Rabbi, would you start?

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Yes, so it's really important to emphasize this absurd situation in which the two sides live really, really next to each other but with absolutely no contact. We each live in our own bubble, our own narrative, our own understanding of history. We have our own maps. Everything is separate. We really live as if the other side doesn't exist. We're completely blind to their existence.

We build a story of ourselves that completely negates them, negates the foundations of their humanity, of their existence, of their identity, of their belonging to land as if they're not there, they're transparent. They're like the gray, drab scenery that passes in the background to the movie, but it's not part of the plot. Then at the end of January 2014, I was invited to an encounter, a meeting with local Israelis and local Palestinians. Only a 20-minute walk from where I live.

For the first time in my life, I had conversations in which I heard who the Palestinians are in their eyes. It's completely different than who they are in my eyes. Not only that, who I am in their eyes is completely different than who I think I am. You begin to realize, "Well, we have no idea who they are. They have no idea who we are." Each side is building their identities upon the nullification, the erasure of the other side's identity. The minute I had that personal contact, that face-to-face human contact, I began to realize that I have no idea where I live. I have no idea who they are. In a certain sense, I have no idea who I am.

Brian Lehrer: Well, take me one step further into that, and then, Khalil, I'm going to invite you to do the same thing. How do you, since that epiphany, talk to members of your own group, in your case, Israeli Jews, to put the other group, the Palestinians, who they see as mortal enemies or just see in stereotypical ways in a more whole and sympathetic light?

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: That's a really good question. Unfortunately, it turns out, and this is my experience, it's also the experience of my Palestinian colleagues, that there's nothing a member of one side can say to the other members of their side that will change their minds. I cannot convince my neighbors that Palestinians are fully human. I can't convince them that they belong to the land. I can't convince them that the Palestinians are not all terrorists. What I can do is I can perhaps convince them to meet a Palestinian. It's the contact, the face-to-face contact with the other side, with the Palestinians, that can and sometimes does make the change, but I myself can't do it.

Brian Lehrer: Khalil, same question.

Khalil Sayegh: Yes, I guess it's good to start with a little bit of background on why the situation is such as that. We can't really meet each other. We can see each other. The starting point should be the structural government design, which is the Israeli regime that is actually designed to not allow Palestinians and Israelis to meet with each other. There is actual checkpoints that separate us between each other's borders.

Everything is designed to make the Palestinians and Israelis not meet, or if they meet, they meet in a relationship that I sometimes describe as almost like a master and slave sort of a relationship. When you have this deep inequality and you have one people living under brutal military occupation, another people will have complete civil rights and, to an extent, even democracy. This is what causes the lack of connection between both sides.

Then when you are meeting with the other, you are not only crossing all these psychological boundaries that both sides have built within their minds and how much they dislike the other or hate the other, but you're also crossing these structural barriers, which is very hard, especially for the Palestinians. It's very hard. I can't go to Hanan's house and have a cup of coffee. It's not allowed. By law, it's not allowed. We're crossing all these things. For the Palestinians as a group, it becomes hard to separate between the structural discrimination that exists and inequality, and then the people.

Because, to them, it's this population. All of them, the Jews, Israelis Jews that are oppressing us. That's how people look at it. Then when you meet Israelis, you realize that some of them don't even know what's going on. Even if they know, they just envision it in a certain way that the group thing had taught them and this what is transforming, as Hanan said, when you meet with each other. Nonetheless, we still acknowledge that even when you meet in a situation that is structurally unequal. It could have the other round effect.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few questions about the prospect for eventual peace and understanding, eventual real security and real justice for both Israelis and Palestinians here in this Abrahamic holy month when Easter, Passover, and Ramadan are all coinciding for our guests from the intergroup dialogue organization Roots, Khalil Sayegh, and Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger.

Listeners of any background come in good faith. We want this not to be one of those segments, which are too easy to do when we talk about the Middle East, where people just call up and say, "Your side is doing this," and other people call up and say, "Your side is doing that." Let's try to get beyond that as these guests are doing in their organization, Roots, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. How do you each see the state of the conflict as we talk here in the Easter, Passover, Ramadan season?

I said in the intro that even to say the terms "two-state solution" or "peace process" sounds very 1990s. Since the Oslo peace process collapsed in the year 2000, it seems like it's nothing but intifadas and rocket attacks on one side, increasingly aggressive occupation and settlement expansion on the other. Both sides feel betrayed by the other. Tell me if you disagree with that extremely oversimplified history. How do you each see the state of the conflict today in terms of-- is there anything you can call a peace process? Khalil?

Khalil Sayegh: The simple answer is no peace process. I think you put it well that there is no peace process. Now, the reality of what is happening today, it should be very clear, that is Israel who hold the most responsibility over what's happening and hold the most power. The Palestinians, to an extent, they're powerless on what they can or what they cannot do. This is a situation that many human rights organizations have already labeled as an apartheid.

The Palestinians, to an extent, are living in a one-state reality where, with the last moves of the new government, we've seen Finance Minister Smotrich and Prime Minister Netanyahu making a move where they're moving the administrative authority of the West Bank from the minister of defense or the minister of finance, which many legal scholars in Israel itself has claimed that it's an actual de facto annexation.

In extent, we live in one-state reality. This is a government that not only doesn't want peace and talk to the Palestinians and consider all Palestinians criminals or terrorists, but they also claim that the Palestinian people don't exist and the entire land from the river to the sea belongs to Israel. This makes us face a reality where there is no any peace prospect. This doesn't mean that in the future, this cannot be revived to reach certain be still.

Given the situation today, we don't know what this would look like. Would it be two states again? Would Israel withdraw? Would it be a one-state? I don't know what it is. I think it's important to focus not on what the outcome would be instead of ending the occupation, giving equal rights for the Palestinians and Israelis and human rights. This should be the goal. Then this can be actualized in two states or one state or whatever the outcome would be.

Brian Lehrer: Rabbi Schlesinger, any different view of that?

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Not a different view but a different emphasis. You're right. Of course, Khalil is right that there's no political peace process going on now. This situation is going from bad to worse. What I want to add is that while there's no political peace process, there is a people-to-people peace process going on. Our organization, Roots, is one of about 100 organizations, even 150 that are involved in people-to-people work.

We're the only ones doing it specifically and exclusively in the West Bank with the two sides that are extremists, with the Israeli settlers and with Palestinians from refugee families and Palestinians who have been in Israeli jail and religious Muslim Palestinians. We're trying to bring the two poles together with a certain degree of success. At this moment where there's no political peace process, we at least can bring the two sides together on the grassroots level to begin to open their eyes, to go beyond the blindness, to see the reality of the side, to recognize the other side in both directions.

Number one is human beings. Number two, to recognize and accept the connection of the other side to the land just like I'm connected to the land. As a Jew, I'm connected to the land of Israel. I have to understand and accept and recognize and cherish that the Palestinians are connected to that same land. For them, it's Palestine. For me, it's Israel. What we're working on is that each side accept and cherish the other side's identity and belonging to the land. That foundation, after we scale it up 10,000-fold, we can begin to encourage the politicians to move towards a peace process, a political process.

Brian Lehrer: You're saying only when you have a lot of people-to-people contact, that's not taking place now. The website for your group, Roots, refers to your belief in a mutual recognition and respect for both people's historic belonging to the entire land. You were just articulating that, Rabbi. Do you have or do you not also need to have a vision of what that could mean in practical terms that could actually end the conflict with both peace and justice like where are the borders, what security guarantees or limitations do Israelis have to abandon, certain settlements, right of return? Those are some of the points on which negotiations got stuck in the past, and then all this deterioration happened. Does your group have or have any intention of working toward a peace plan? Rabbi, you first, then Khalil.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Well, we believe that we are working towards a peace plan in the sense that we're preparing the human hearts. We're accepting a peace plan. We call it "Two Truths in One Heart." When you come to that place of two truths in one heart, you can accept two peoples in one land. Now, what will that look like? We don't put forth a specific vision.

We believe in dignity and equality, freedom, security, and human rights for both sides. We believe in access to the whole land for both sides, from the river to the sea, both Israel proper and the West Bank. How exactly that will look, we don't get involved in that, but we do invite political activists from different Israeli and Palestinian political movements to talk to our activists, talk to our participants, and set forth different visions.

We've heard from the one-state solution people, we've heard from two-state solution people, and we've heard a lot from the confederation model, which is two states that are joined in a confederation. I, personally, am more in favor in the confederation model of two sovereign states that are joined together in a union, something like the European Union, than other possible visions, but I'm open.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Adam in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in, Adam.

Adam: Good morning. While I applaud the objectives of your guests and their organization, listening to the way each of them speak does not give me any sense of optimism because both are bashing one side. The rabbi was talking about people on his side not recognizing the humanity of those on the other side. Mr. Khalil was bashing the occupation and apartheid and bombing. If both sides are attacking one side, where is the possibility, where is the prospect for negotiation? I don't see either of them speaking of any kind of righteousness of the Israeli side.

It's just a bashing of the Israeli side. If you see one side as incurably evil, which seems to be the way that they're depicting it, although I certainly don't believe that the rabbi believes that, but just the tone of the speech here in this last five minutes of conversation is bashing Israel, bashing Israel. No acknowledgment of any good on Israel's side. No acknowledgment of any bad on the Palestinian side. Where is the rule for discussion on negotiation and peace?

Brian Lehrer: Khalil, should you, in order to further the work of Roots as the vision statement describes it, be talking more critically, not only of the occupation but of violence on the Palestinian side, of some of the more extremist groups, rejectionists on the Palestinian side, as you each talk back to your own sides?

Khalil Sayegh: Sure, yes. Just to start with, violent that is directed toward civilians, this is unethical. This is terrorism. This is something that I condemn, something that a lot of Palestinian condemn, and that we stand against, and it's wrong no matter what. However, indeed, it is very important to acknowledge that, on the one hand, Palestinians do have right to resist in an ethical manner where they can target people who are attacking them such as soldiers that are attacking Palestinians. This is very important. These are my personal opinions, it's not Roots.

On the other hand, it is important to understand that even this, like violence, and some of it is terrorism, and it's wrong, and it's bad, doesn't happen in a vacuum, that these many times happens as the Palestinians are living under constant violent or the constant violent of the occupation itself and its forces, but also the constant violent of settlers and settlers' attacks. Now, you may look at me and say, "Oh, well, you're bashing Israel." I would say, "No, I'm not. I'm actually just describing what the reality is right over there."

Then when you say I'm bashing Israel, which Israel are you referring to? Which government of them? I am talking today about a government that is run by extremists that even the Israeli law itself considered the minister of security, Mr. Ben-Gvir, to be affiliated with terrorist organization before. This is what we are describing right now. Now, besides only being critical of the Palestinian terrorism or violence that I am critical of it, I think there is one step further that I have to be critical of the Palestinian, which is the complete denial of Jewish religious connection to the land.

This is something that has evolved after '48 and the Nakba, where the Palestinian national movement has almost blinded itself to the Jewish connection and the religious connection to the land as a result of Zionism. Because Zionism claimed that whenever we have a connection there, thus we have sovereignty completely. Our response is to deny this connection completely. I think there couldn't be peace without us also acknowledging certain legitimacy to the religious connection to the land.

Brian Lehrer: Rabbi, the current protest movement in Israel that Khalil just referred to against the Netanyahu government's push to weaken the checks and balances of the Israeli Supreme Court, the protests seem wider than the usual coalition of younger and more secular Jews, which protest right-wing governments generally. Do you see the Supreme Court issue as a way into more of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which is, I think, not what the movement is currently focused on?

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: I tell you, I don't have any great insight on the issue you just brought up. It's true that there's a minority of us, of demonstrators against the traditional overhaul who are hopeful that these demonstrations can lead into a wider and deeper questioning of Israeli democracy and bring us to realize that going back to where we were before the judicial overhaul is going back to a flawed democracy in which Palestinians don't have citizenship, those living over the green line in the West Bank.

It doesn't seem like most of the protesters want to go in that direction. Most of the protesters would seem to be very happy to turn the clock back four months ago, perhaps kick Netanyahu out of office, but go back to where we were where there's occupation, which we Israelis are ruling over and other people. I'm not sure that there's great hope of this protest movement growing into something that's really going to work for and demand justice for Palestinians. On the other hand, our work in Roots is creating hope where there is no hope.

Brian Lehrer: Ali in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ali.

Ali: Good morning. Good afternoon, Brian, to you and your guests. Thank you, first of all, for bringing this very critical and important and tragic story forward to your listeners. I think I'd want to just level set and go a little bit further and just say, in addition to being an occupation, I think we need to change the language. It's the ethnic cleansing and the genocide of the Palestinians.

Let's be really clear. It is not a conflict. It is an occupation where one group of people has a disproportionate amount of power, funding by US tax dollars. Another group is less to settle for itself. The support for the Palestinians in any level, in any attempt to try to humanize them is always met with resistance, so much so where support of Palestinian rights is conflated with something as deplorable and as disgusting as being anti-Semitic.

It is often used as a technique to silence any critics of Israel or the occupation and any support for the Palestinians. It is deeply, deeply disturbing to me how bias and how-- when you're talking even, Brian, when you're saying like a peace or whatever solution, that's not the intention. The intention is to wipe out as many Palestinians as possible and to make their living conditions as humiliating, as demoralizing, as crippling as possible.

Brian Lehrer: Ali, I'm going to leave it there because we're running out of time in the segment. Rabbi, you heard Ali, the calls that we're getting, you heard Adam on the other side, from her earlier examples of how hard from both sides it is to get to yes on anything and how people from both sides can so easily feel that they're being dehumanized and biased against.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Yes. Was there a question there?

Brian Lehrer: The question is, how do you go on from there? I know you got to go in a few seconds. How do you work productively from this point?

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Well, we don't focus on definitions, whether it's apartheid or anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism or ethnic cleansing or genocide. We don't try to define the situation. We simply bring the two sides together to hear the other side's story, to hear their identity, hear their connection to land, hear their suffering, hear their aspirations. We already said we humanize the other side. We come to recognize their connection to the land. We come to a place of two truths and one heart where I feel that I'm a Zionist.

I'm deeply connected to the land. I'm a Jew. I'm a proud Israeli citizen, but I also want the best for the Palestinian people. I have to find a way to go forward with my Zionist vision in a fashion that doesn't trample the other side but rather lifts the other side up and gives them the fullness of human rights and connection to the land. It's a difficult, difficult process, but we see hundreds and perhaps thousands of Israelis and Palestinians who have gone through our programs and have come to that place, recognize the other side's humanity, identity, and belonging to the land.

Brian Lehrer: If you have to jump off right now because of your deadline, I understand, but I want to make sure Khalil gets a last word in here and a response to the same question, and also your vision of how you work from this point through the many obstacles that have been described.

Khalil Sayegh: Well, thank you. I guess I would say beyond the definitions, whatever is these definitions where they're accurate or not, these are for historians and legal scholars to decide. Whatever the definitions are, there are things that are happening on the ground that are true historically. Today and in 1948, many has described what happened as ethnic cleansing. Other scholars have described it as transfer of population.

Whatever the definition really means, what we know is more than half of the Palestinian population historically percent were displaced and weren't allowed to go back. That's something wrong and that's something that needs to solve. Whatever is happening today, whether it is a continuation of ethnic cleansing or not, there are structural policies in place that is preventing Palestinians from prospering and from continuing to live in Palestine. There are policies being pushed to make Palestinians' life harder and harder in there so that they can leave.

Where do you move from there? On some level, as Hanan mentioned, we need to bring more and more people together. We need certain movement of mass people that have been transformed and demand justice. Beyond that, we need politics and policies to be involved. We need to push the Israeli government to adopt policies that doesn't keep pushing for violation of policy and human rights and that respect or right to the land and the right to both human rights and also national rights.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Brian, can I just mention the Roots website?

Brian Lehrer: Please do.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: www.friendsofroots.net. Again, www.friendsofroots.net. We invite all the listeners to take a look and to peruse deeply the articles and the descriptions of our work and vision. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you both very much for joining us today.

Khalil Sayegh: Thank you, Brian.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger: Thanks for having us.

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