Grassroots peace movements, religious leaders, and civil society groups are not a substitute for high-level political negotiations, but they are the indispensable foundation for creating and sustaining any lasting peace agreement.

Their role is to transform the societal conditions—the deep-seated fear, mistrust, and dehumanization—that allow violence to recur, thereby creating the public mandate for political leaders to take the necessary risks for peace.

I. Grassroots Peace Movements and Civil Society Groups: Building Trust and Empathy

Grassroots organizations and civil society groups (CSOs) act as the crucible for reconciliation, engaging ordinary people across the divide and addressing the conflict's structural causes from the ground up.

A. The Power of People-to-People (P2P) Engagement

The primary contribution of CSOs is in fostering cross-border human connections that counteract years of mutual demonization. This is often achieved through:

• Dialogue and Shared Activities: Organizations like the Parents Circle – Families Forum (bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who choose reconciliation over revenge), Combatants for Peace (former fighters on both sides working non-violently), and Women Wage Peace/Women of the Sun create spaces for dialogue. They demonstrate that the "enemy" is a complex human being with shared hopes and sorrows, which is crucial for building the empathy and trust necessary for compromise.

• Cooperation on Shared Needs: Groups like EcoPeace Middle East utilize common challenges, such as water and environmental management, as a non-political basis for cooperation. By working together on practical, life-sustaining issues, they build a model of interdependence and mutual benefit, proving that collaboration is possible and advantageous.

• Integrated Education and Shared Society: Organizations like Hand in Hand establish integrated Arab-Jewish schools within Israel. By educating children in both Hebrew and Arabic, celebrating both cultures, and building relationships from a young age, they lay the long-term cultural foundation for a shared future based on equality and mutual respect.

B. Advocacy and Creating a Political Constituency for Peace

Beyond interpersonal connection, CSOs play a vital political role by holding leaders accountable and shaping public discourse:

• Empowering Moderates: Groups like Standing Together (a Jewish-Arab movement in Israel) and various Palestinian youth movements focus on organizing communities around shared goals like social justice and an end to the occupation. They amplify the voices of the moderate majority, countering the narrative of extremists and creating a visible, active political constituency that demands a diplomatic solution.

• Addressing Power Imbalance: Unlike official diplomacy, which often avoids thorny issues, many CSOs actively engage in advocacy for justice and human rights. They provide crucial support to marginalized communities, draw international attention to violations, and work to transform the asymmetrical power relations inherent in the conflict. This focus on justice is vital, as lasting peace cannot be built on an unjust foundation.

• Trauma-Informed Peacebuilding: CSOs are uniquely positioned to address the deep, generational trauma and pain on both sides. Peace is not just a political paper; it's a societal healing process. Groups specializing in trauma-informed care and reconciliation help communities process their grief and fear, making them less reactive and more open to future compromise.

II. The Unique Role of Religious Leaders and Institutions

Religious leaders and institutions hold immense influence, possessing moral authority, community access, and unique theological resources that can be mobilized for peace or, conversely, for conflict.

A. Leveraging Moral Authority and Community Access

In societies deeply rooted in religious identity, religious figures—rabbis, imams, priests—often have a level of credibility and legitimacy that secular politicians or foreign diplomats lack.

• De-Legitimizing Violence: The most critical role is to use their moral authority to explicitly condemn violence committed in the name of their faith. By issuing joint interfaith statements and sermons, they can strip extremist narratives of their religious justification, making it harder for armed groups to recruit and operate.

• Accessing the Core Community: Religious institutions (mosques, synagogues, churches) are powerful, trusted community hubs. Leaders can use these spaces to promote messages of peace, reconciliation, and the shared humanity of the "other." This allows peace messages to penetrate deep into conservative or skeptical communities often unreachable by secular peace groups.

• Theological Reframing: Religious traditions contain rich sources of values like compassion, justice, and forgiveness. Leaders can actively reinterpret and emphasize these texts to create a theological warrant for peace. For example, focusing on the shared Abrahamic values of hospitality and sanctity of life can build a common ethical language across the religious divide.

B. Intermediary and Mediation Roles

Religious leaders can act as trusted intermediaries, especially when official "Track I" diplomacy is stalled or has lost credibility.

• Track II/III Diplomacy: Faith-based organizations can facilitate Track II (informal elite) and Track III (grassroots) diplomacy. Their non-political, moral grounding can make them more acceptable as facilitators to deeply polarized groups.

• Dispute Resolution: In flashpoint areas like shared holy sites (e.g., Jerusalem), interfaith bodies can serve as effective dispute resolution mechanisms. By engaging clergy who have a vested interest in the stability of these sites, they can prevent local incidents from escalating into a national or international crisis.

III. Integrating the Bottom-Up into the Top-Down

For a peace process to be truly durable, the work of civil society cannot remain isolated; it must be connected to the political process.

The crucial next step is to institutionalize the role of civil society. The international community must:

1. Fund and Scale Up: Significantly and consistently fund CSOs, allowing them to scale their successful programs from small-scale projects to mass-impact movements.

2. Formal Consultation: Mandate that civil society leaders, women's groups, and religious figures have a formal, structured consultative role parallel to official negotiations. This ensures that the peace agreement reflects the needs of the populace and is not simply an elite deal.

3. Ensure Inclusion: Prioritize projects that confront power asymmetries and build a shared understanding of justice, preventing CSOs from becoming mere tokenistic window-dressing for an unjust status quo.

In conclusion, while politicians sign the treaties, it is the courageous work of the grassroots, the moral conviction of religious leaders, and the sustained effort of civil society that cultivates the shared human ground. They are the essential, society-wide antibodies that prevent the cycle of violence from resetting by replacing the culture of fear with a new, enduring culture of peace.

By Jo Ikeji-Uju

https://ubuntusafa.com

https://ubuntusafa.com/Ikeji