| Summary/Abstract |
This August marked 20 years for me in the Israeli-Palestinian peace-building field. Straight out of college in August 1995, I served as a bunk counselor for a group of Israeli and Palestinian teenaged delegates at the third summer of Seeds of Peace (SOP) International Camp in Maine, USA. Inspired by the dialogue I witnessed that summer — and sobered by the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in the fall — I moved to Jerusalem, where I spent eight years working with Israeli and Palestinian SOP alumni to expand what began as an American summer camp into a year-round, cross-conflict youth program on the ground in the Middle East. In 2004, I left to write my doctoral dissertation, a long-term study of peace activism among the first 10 groups of Israeli and Palestinian SOP graduates. I have since moved on to conduct evaluations of many other Middle East peace-building initiatives.
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