For decades across the Middle East and North Africa, Arab states and Islamist movements have employed brainwashing, violent intimidation, and draconian “anti-normalization laws” to arrest human relations between their societies and Israeli citizens. This edifice of estrangement not only blocked Israeli civil engagement with the many Arabs whose governments did not recognize the Jewish state; it also ensured a “cold peace” in Egypt and Jordan, where diplomatic and security ties with Israel did not mature into a peace between peoples.

Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi’s 2018 book, Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor, combined an earnest, introspective and sometimes self-critical narration of Israelis’ shared identity with a message of curiosity and empathy for Palestinians. Through the vehicle of the internet, thousands of Arabs were able to download an Arabic translation of the book, and hundreds of Palestinians responded directly to Halevi with letters of their own.

Amid Iraq’s political crisis and collapsed healthcare sector, Iraqi and Israeli doctors came together to envision partnerships that place human life above ideology.

To support development in Syria’s liberated northeast, the Arab Council helps local engineers remove landmines and boost agricultural yields — with help from an unlikely teacher.

As part of its Program for Learning in Partnership, the CPC convenes Iraqi, Israeli, and Syrian experts in their region’s water scarcity crisis to jumpstart cooperation.

CPC’s Samuel Tadros gathered Iraqi, Tunisian, and Israeli education specialists to exchange views about the state of education reform efforts across the region.