OCMS alumnus, Salim Munayer, talks about Musalaha, the organisation he founded with a vision for reconciliation.
For over thirty years, Musalaha has been teaching, training, and facilitating reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds based on biblical principles of love, justice and forgiveness. Participants begin their journey through the Desert Encounters guided by the Stages of Reconciliation, developed through trial and error amongst Musalaha staff. In the neutrality of the desert, participants can freely build relationships away from daily reminders of conflict and in-group pressures. After the desert, a series of workshops lead participants through challenging discussions on history and narrative, approaches to conflict management, trauma, reclaiming identity, and forgiveness. Through these conversations and the relationships built, groups are then invited to return to their communities and together address the core issues of conflict in society to bring about lasting change. Today, Musalaha has impacted over 5,000 lives through this reconciliation process, which is now expanding into Summer Camps for children, women’s groups for Muslims and Christians, and most recently the online Musalaha Academy built to reach international communities with this interpersonal and communal reconciliation process.
