Kuwait Times

Published Date: December 23, 2008
By Stephanie Saldana

One day, Oula Abu Diab decided to go for a walk. In any other part of the world, Oula might have caught a bus to the trailhead and set out on her way. Yet Oula is a Palestinian from Jerusalem, and where she wanted to walk was on the other side of a wall, in a Palestinian village just south of Nablus. Though her parents' generation had travelled there freely, twenty-year old Oula grew up in an era of checkpoints and travel restrictions. She had never been south of Nablus in her entire life. "I didn't know i
f I could walk in the beginning," she recently confessed to me over coffee in Jerusalem. "My friends and family said to me - You're going where? You'll walk?

Oula was one of twenty-eight Palestinian and international students who inaugurated the first 50 km segment of the Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil, or The Abraham Path Initiative in Palestine last July. She joined students from America, France, and Germany, as well as Palestinians from throughout the region, on a journey in the footsteps of Abraham, who tradition says walked there some four thousand years ago.

With her was Eliza Norris, a sixteen year old from Colorado, and Nizar Halloum, a Palestinian who studies French literature and who now wanted to discover his own culture. They stayed with local families, telling their stories and, in some cases, eating all night. For internationals, it was a chance to discover a different Middle East than the one on the news. For Palestinians, it was a chance to meet students from all over the world, to breathe clean air, to walk through the landscape. It was a glimpse of
what normal life might look like, were it not for the conflict they had known all their lives.

When we were walking to the village of Taybeh, we saw some animals, and I didn't even know that we had those animals in our country!" Oula told me. "There were mountains-and I didn't know that we had those mountains! I always thought that we had only one kind of mountain in Palestine." I was in Taybeh when the group arrived, and I will never forget the sight of Palestinians and international students walking arm-in-arm after a hike from Nablus. I had thought it was impossible.

Founded at the Program on Global Negotiation at Harvard University, the Abraham Path Initiative was the brainchild of Willam Ury, a negotiation expert who had the simple but revolutionary idea of building a path in the footsteps of Abraham from Southern Turkey to Hebron. Eventually it will include trails in Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He was convinced that if internationals experienced the region's legendary hospitality, then lasting relationships would form, creating a grassroots movement of coo
peration. It was a plan to change the world, one traveller at a time.

Yet not everyone was convinced. Two years ago, I was hired to gather a team of Palestinian NGOs to begin charting their segment of the trail. Early on, I met with a series of "experts" who warned me that we were foolish. "Good luck," one mocked. Heeding their warnings, I urged the Palestinians to forego a route from the north, which I thought would take a dozen years to finish, and to consider an easier route through Jericho. They refused.

Abraham didn't walk that way," George Rishmawi, a tour coordinator from Beit Sahour protested. "And the North has been hit hardest by the conflict. That's where we can make a difference." I had no choice but to follow their lead. The path was theirs, after all.

It didn't take years. The Palestinians befriended every community along the path, asking permission for the trail to pass by. Instead of using GPS equipment, they asked directions to the next village. Sometimes a walking path was well known. Other times, they spent days looking for an ancient path worn down by time. In every case, the way already existed. In a few months, they charted a path in what logic said was the most volatile area of the country. It is also one of the most beautiful.

And it exists today, so that Oula can live the dream of walking in freedom. It exists so that Eliza, an American who was less than ten years old on 11 September 2001, can walk beside her. It exists so that Pedro, a Brazilian student, can be invited to a wedding. And it exists so that the villagers of Awart'a, cut off from Nablus by a checkpoint, can build an economy by having walkers stay in their homes and buy local products. Who knows if a path can change the world? All I know is that now, when Oula Abu
Diab wants to go for a walk, she knows that it's possible.

NOTE: Stephanie Saldana is a writer based in Jerusalem. She is a Senior Advisor for the Masar Ibrahim Al-Khalil - CGNews