How to resolve disputes with empathy and stories – by a former peace negotiator - The Jewish Chronicle

In the following extract from his forthcoming book Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement, former Israeli ambassador Daniel Taub describes how he learned to use the power of storytelling to faciliate understanding on some of the most sensitive issues.

With younger audiences I learned that rather than regaling them with a history of the Middle East, sharing stories would be more engaging and lasting. A story does not need to be lengthy; legend has it that Ernest Hemingway won a bet that he couldn’t write a story in only six words with the moving two-sentence story, ‘For sale; baby shoes. Never worn.’

With this in mind, when meeting youngsters I would take with me a small box of objects, each of which illustrated a story about Israeli life. A packet of Bamba, the unusual Israeli puffed peanut snack, which has been found to inoculate Israeli kids from peanut allergies and which serves as a metaphor for a society that encourages its children to take risks and develop resilience. An airway resuscitation tube, as a reminder of my IDF combat medic course in which I was sworn to treat all the height of conflict. A model of an El Al plane, as a reminder of the time I was on an El Al flight with a passenger who complained that his seat was wobbly, until the stewardess explained that the seats had all been removed the night before so as to maximise capacity when rescuing Ethiopian Jews and flying them to safety in Israel, and has been hurriedly put back in place that morning. And so on.

If I make an effort to bring stories into discussions, it is in large part because I have seen how deeply they are able to affect my own thinking. In the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations I was involved with, for example, discussions of Israeli’s security measures often trod a predictably unproductive course. The Israeli side is well rehearsed at providing statistics of attempted terrorist attacks to highlight the need for its restrictions. But hearing firsthand from your Palestinian counterpart about the impact of crossing points and entry permits on the daily life of individuals has the power to provide a different perspective.

I spent a number of years as a consultant to Israel’s philanthropic and third sector and became interested in the challenges facing the Arab residents of East Jerusalem. In this part of the capital, which came under Israeli control in 1967, there are a host of serious challenges, including adequate provision of basic services and lack of opportunity for young people.

Although I had studied the reports that set out the grim situation in statistics, it was only when a Palestinian friend, a resident of East Jerusalem, shared with me the draft of his autobiographical novel that the reality hit home. His account of his childhood – funny, poignant, at points heart-breaking – did more to develop my understanding and provoke empathy than any number of dry reports. In part motivated by this awareness, I established a forum of foundations committed to working to address the discrepancies between East and West Jerusalem. Pathos and storytelling helped move me to action.

The binary channels in which we conduct our discussions tend to corral us into an arm-wrestling dynamic. In practice, there is always more common ground than we are led to believe. I have found this to be true even in the most fraught situations.

When I was called on to serve as a government spokesperson I was frequently interviewed just at the height of conflict situations. The tenseness and complexity of the situation would be aggravated by the fact that such real-time interviews take place when facts are still obscured by the fog of war, in the face of a flood of unsupported allegations on social media, and coloured by the tendency of radio and TV interviewers to bring their own binary frames to their coverage.

In such situations, and when I had a moment for introspection between interviews, I set myself a personal challenge. I would think of two people I know: the first a very thoughtful Palestinian counterpart, with whom I became friendly in the course of our negotiations, and who has shared with me some of the painful challenges of life in the Palestinian areas, and the other a good Israeli friend whose teenage daughter was murdered in a Palestinian terrorist bomb attack.

I asked myself: Is it possible to conduct the interview in a way that is not a betrayal of either of my friend’s stories? To my surprise, it has generally been less difficult than I expected. While the formal positions of the two sides don’t suggest a lot of common ground, the humanity reflected in their narratives creates a genuine space for empathy.

Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement will be published next month by Hodder & Stoughton and is available for order now on Amazon.co.uk

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