1, Yakar's Center for Social Concern has been in existence since September 1997. By design, it remains of modest size because so much of its work is on a person-to-person basis, with the aim of making contact and creating trust.  At the same time it has continued to function as an unusual organisation - secular but on a Modern Orthodox base, and reaching out to a wide spectrum of people, religious and non-religious Jews, Muslims and Christians.

2. The Center arranges public and private meetings to give Israelis authoritative information about current events, and also to bring together people with diverse viewpoints as a means of bridging divisions. Meetings in recent months have included: (a) the noted lecturer, Dr Avivah Zornberg, on Yom Kippur atonement. 

(b) a meeting on Lebanon and Gaza, with three different views - Danny Rubinstein of Haaretz, Professor Raphi Israeli of the Hebrew University, speaking for the rightwing, and Ziad Abu-Zyyad, former Palestinian cabinet minister.

(c) AB Yehoshua, passionate and brilliant in speaking about his latest novel.

(d) Zionism: Triumph, Failure or Something Inbetween, discussed by outstanding scholars from the Hebrew University, Professor Gideon Shimoni and Dr Alex Yakobson.

(e) Moral Dilemmas of Soldiers Serving on the West Bank presented by Breaking the Silence with a commentary by famed biblical scholar Professor Uriel Simon.

(f) Syria: Peace or War? - discussion led by Dr Alon Liel, former Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry.

Planned meetings will bring rabbis, imams and priests to the same platform, and there will also be a meeting about Jewish law and peace. Plus a meeting, 40 years after the Six Day War, on the place of Jerusalem in peace efforts.

3. Considerable effort goes into personal contacts across the barriers. Physical contact is becoming far more difficult because of security tensions and the building of the security barrier/wall/fence. Israel allows few Jewish citizens to cross into Palestinian territory and places severe restrictions on Palestinians entering Israel. Murder and kidnapping of Jews on the Palestinian side discourage travel across the borders. Keeping up contact is time-consuming and wearying. Despite this, the Center has significantly increased its contact with Palestinian community leaders through my attendance at conferences in East Jerusalem and through cooperative projects.

            In 2006, I twice went to Amman, Jordan, to speak on the same platforms with Palestinians: at the World Conference of Middle East Scholars, and at the United Nations University's International Leadership Institute. I went to The Hague, Holland, to speak with Israelis and Palestinians - two on each side - about Jerusalem at a seminar organised by Dutch Christians. And I did the same about shared history and the Holocaust for a Dutch group visiting Jerusalem.

I was in Krakow at the request of a Palestinian colleague to speak about culture and identity at a Polish-organised conference. This is now taking us into new fields: an Israeli-Palestinian-Polish project is being developed to take young Israelis, Palestinians, Poles, Jordanians and Germans - all of them of leadership class - to Auschwitz to sensitive them to the suffering of the other; and then to bring the same group to Israel to examine abandoned Arab villages. That does not mean seeking moral equivalency but is intended to convey the pain and aspirations of the other. A second project being developed will further European-Mediterranean cooperation with training in non-violence.

Also last year the CSC co-sponsored a conference in Istanbul where two dozen Israeli and Palestinian academics, journalists and religious leaders met to discuss shared histories. This was a follow-up to the book, Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, published jointly in 2005 by the CSC and its partner, the Palestinian Center for the Dissemination of Democracy and Community Development (Panorama). A second book, Shared Narratives, is currently being edited. Funding is currently being sought for Shared Histories 3.

In March 2007, I was a guest at the annual Jewish Book Week in London to speak about Shared Histories together with a co-editor, Paul Scham of the Institute for Middle East Studies in Washington DC, and a participant, Dr Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Ambassador in Britain. Dr Hassassian and I did joint interviews for BBC radio and television.

Also in March I spoke about "Israel and apartheid" at a seminar organized by rthe American Jewish Committee in New York.

A four-city lecture tour to South Africa is scheduled for May 2007 with Bassem Eid, Director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.

A joint South Africa-Israel-Palestinian project, to help the three societies to learn from each other, is being developed with CIPS (Institute for International Political Studies at Pretoria University) and the Palestinian Society of Democracy and Community Development (SDCD).

4. Hebron has been in the news this year so the CSC has arranged bus tours there so that people can get on the spot information. Other tours are planned to visit "unrecognized" Bedouin villages in the Negev.

5. The CSC is a base from which to write about Israel, for publications including The Guardian, London; FACTA business magazine, Tokyo; The New Statesman, London; Haaretz, Tel Aviv.

6. There is little optimism about the possibility of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I believe that in this time of lack of political will and direction on both sides, it is crucial to work for people contact - to create links which keep people in touch and able and willing to work together for peace. The Center for Social Concern seeks to contribute to this.

Benjamin Pogrund

Director, Yakar Center for Social Concern

Jerusalem 14 April 2007