Many of those watching TV coverage of the violence and tension on the Gaza border must question if there is any hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The picture has never looked bleaker.
Yet behind the scenes, there are people who still cling to hope, desperate to challenge the narrative that all is lost.
One such person is Elizabeth Harris-Sawczenko, director of the Council of Christians and Jews and founder of the CCJ study tour to Israel and Palestine.
She devised the tour three years ago to enable Christians and Jews who might only ever hear one side of the argument to hear both — and to showcase grass-roots ventures bringing Israelis and Palestinians together.
“You are either on one side or the other and that is part of the problem, especially for those on the outside looking in,” she says. “No one gets the chance to hear or see how the other side lives.”
In its third year, the tour has built a reputation as an initiative of substance, the latest version involving 16 senior UK Jewish and Christian leaders.
“This is not about a nice cup of tea and a biscuit,” Ms Harris-Sawczenko tells the JC at the outset of the programme.
“When I first set up this trip, most of the Jews had never been to the West Bank or met a Palestinian. I also think that in the Jewish community, people are not always aware of the challenges within the Christian communities.
“Often, and rightly, we work on the relationship with the Muslim community and the tensions that arise out of the conflict. But this sheds light to the importance of building relationships with Christians.”
The itinerary takes participants out of their comfort zone.
They are thrown in at the deep end with a visit to the West Bank settlement of Efrat, considered the capital of Gush Etzion.
It is moments from the junction where three Israeli teens were kidnapped and murdered in 2014, prompting Israel’s launch of Operation Protective Edge.
And like all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, Efrat is considered illegal under international law.
Welcoming the group, the local mayor, Oded Revivi, promises to answer all questions, “no matter how difficult”.
Despite the location, there is no real sense of heightened security and the town has a modern appearance.
“I was surprised just by what it looked like,” admits Derek Estill, a moderator for the United Reformed Church and a serving elder of his church in Blackburn. “I wasn’t sure what to expect.
“When people talk about giving back this land, rightly or wrongly, you are physically talking about moving thousands of people.
“You can see from being here that they are not going to want to give that up.”
Mr Estill is also taken aback by the mayor’s co-operation with neighbouring Arab towns.
“The fact Efrat has no border around it is surprising,” he adds. “I think I just expected it to be more cut off and protected.”
Ms Harris-Sawczenko says it is no bad thing if participants feel uncomfortable.
“There is no point bringing anyone to just hear from people they will agree with. They need to know what life is like for both sides.
“What we do need to do is to provide them with a space to unpick that.
“There is a lot of conflict by proxy in the UK when it comes to Israel. It is a very important piece of land for people and is often the cause of a breakdown of relationships between Christians and Jews.”
For Joe Twilley, a non-Jew who is communications manager at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the tour is his first visit to Israel — and an eye-opening one. “The perceptions of the conflict I had were dominated by people with extreme views on all sides, so it was an opportunity to get a bit more balance and reality,” he says.
“Interfaith groups are very active in marking HMD so it felt important to gain a better understanding of a situation which can cause tension between faiths.”
On a small piece of farmland not far from Efrat, the group visits Roots, an unlikely collaboration between religious settlers and Palestinians.
Alex Goldberg, barrister and founder of human rights group Rene Cassin, is encouraged by the sight of Palestinian refugee Noor A’wad and religious settler Rabbi Shaul Judelman working together.
“Their narratives come from diametrically opposed viewpoints and at the end of it they can still be friends and colleagues,” he says admiringly.
“There are many things about the project I don’t understand and some things I disagree with.
“But these kinds of grass-roots connections gave me a glimmer of hope for the future.”
Evenings for the visitors are set aside for what could be described as group therapy — a forum for participants to share uncensored feelings about their experiences.
“The ultimate goal isn’t to solve the conflict and it isn’t to become an expert,” Ms Harris-Sawczenko explains. “But if we can come together over this subject it will have an effect on communities back home.
“I’m not asking either side to give up on their values, more to acknowledge there might just be another aspect to this.”
One of the most challenging aspects of the programme is a visit to Ramallah, where they meet Palestinian Authority representatives.
Red signs warn that Jews and Israelis travel at their own risk.
For many, it is the first time they have crossed the border, which is flanked by walls and security fences. Israeli signs become Arabic and graffiti, occasionally antisemitic, is scrawled on walls.
Those wearing kippot are advised to cover them on safety grounds, an instant talking point.
“I wasn’t expecting to feel as bothered as I was,” says Rabbi Roni Tabick of New Stoke Newington Shul.
But a meeting with a Palestinian Authority minister at its ministry for foreign affairs proves more difficult.
The minister does not hold back when responding to questions — and her answers are not delivered to appease.
“Hearing a narrative that actively sought to delegitimise our own was painful,” Rabbi Tabick admits.
“The idea that Israelis are part of a European colonial project; that Palestinians are the true semites so there’s no need to worry about antisemitism.
“When people feel the need to undercut the deeply-held narratives of the other side, I feel a real sense of hopelessness about the future.”
Mr Goldberg was uncomfortable about having to conceal his Jewish identity.
“I was in a room wearing a baseball hat because we had agreed with our minders to do so in order not to put any member of the group in danger.
“But the whole point of us being there was that we were Jewish. It felt problematic that I couldn’t show that.
“During her [the minister's] discourse, she mentioned that rabbis and the yeshivah world have been inciteful against Palestinians.
“I wanted to give that world a human face, to tell her that many in our world want dialogue.
“I did not agree with everything she said. But the more we encounter each other, the more we begin to understand the other.”
As programmes executive at the Union of Jewish Students, Noah Levy is no stranger to the region. But visiting the PA has entrenched his view that Jewish schools in the UK have work to do.
“I care greatly about Zionist education and Israel as a state for Jewish people,” he says.
“But in terms of creating the best advocates for that, young people need to understand the problems other people in the land are facing and Israel’s own weaknesses and limitations.
“There is no talk in mainstream Jewish schools about that. We are not taught there is another group of people here. It doesn’t form part of our education and that is very sad.
“I want people to be as strong an advocate as they can. But they go onto campus where people are like, ‘what about the 650,000 settlers’? They can’t answer questions like that.”
For Shelley Marsh, executive director of Reshet, the network for Jewish youth provision in the UK, the most difficult aspect is a visit to a Palestinian hospital in Bethlehem where the walls are covered in pictures of those injured in the first intifada.
“It made me feel like peace is futile if we only surround ourselves with terrible images and narratives of what has happened in our past.
“How does that help us to build a future and live together?”
Mr Twilley says it is hard to grasp the “deep religious, ideological roots of the conflict, particularly for those of us who have grown up in a much more secular environment in the UK.
“Sometimes it feels too easy to say the solution to conflict is grass-roots dialogue because there are fundamental differences of opinion prompted by sincerely held religious beliefs.”
A visit to the Anglican St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem highlights how little opportunity there is for Arabs and Israelis to engage.
Rev Hosam Naoum, dean of the cathedral, located less than five minutes from Damascus Gate, describes the conflict as “part of our daily lives. Communities are becoming more and more extreme.
“Our schools are separate. We don’t speak each other’s languages. Palestinians avoid speaking to Israelis and that spirit makes it difficult to bring people together.”
In stark contrast, participants tour the Hand in Hand School in Jerusalem where Arab and Jewish children are taught together in a bilingual setting. The school marks both Israel’s independence and Nakba (“the day of catastrophe”).
Students play together, signs decorate the school in both languages and contentious issues are tackled head on in classrooms.
For Rabbi Tabick, it feels “unbelievable” to see Arab and Jewish children studying together. Mr Goldberg agrees. “Two primary school girls showed me their exercise book; one of them Arab, one of them Jewish.
They started to teach me Arabic.
“In a week, we heard a degree of pessimism. Here was a sign of hope, a shard of light in a region full of conflict.”
