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September 1947—5 March 2000

Peace as Mother’s Milk

Palestinian peacemaker Hussein Issa once said that “peace and democracy education should be given to infants with their mother’s milk.” In light of the events that overtook him and his family when he was still an infant, it was a remarkable observation.

Issa was born just two months before the UN voted to partition British Mandate territory into two states, one Jewish and the other Arabic. The following year, when Israel declared itself sovereign, Issa’s family was relocated from their ancestral farm in Ramle to a refugee settlement just outside of Bethlehem. His father died soon afterwards—of a “broken heart,” according to Issa’s son Ibrahaim—and Issa grew up in abject poverty. His harsh childhood and youth inspired him to find ways to rescue future Palestinian children from the same fate. Graduating from Bethlehem University in 1980 with a degree in education, Issa shortly afterwards opened a day care center that blossomed in a few years into a primary and secondary school. It was called “Hope Flowers.”

From the very beginning, Issa’s vision for Hope Flowers was to educate children in conflict resolution and reconciliation. Recognizing that enmity between Israeli and Palestinian adults in most cases was too entrenched to allow for fruitful dialogue, he pinned his hope on their children. Separatists on either side, he believed, were misguided. Because “Israeli and Palestinian destinies are inevitably tied,” he was convinced that there was “no choice but to work together to try and forge a culture of peace.” To that end, Issa regularly brought Israeli and Palestinian kindergarten children together so that they could see beyond the stereotypes and begin to build relationships.

After coming of age in a cramped and noisy refugee camp, Issa knew how starved Palestinian settlement kids can be for glimpses of nature. So he purchased land for a communal farm where Hope Flowers students could work, making contact with the soil as well as producing fruits and vegetables to eat and sell. He also arranged regular day trips out of the refugee camp that took students into the countryside. He believed that the excursions were essential for the development of inner tranquility, which in turn was the foundation for nonviolent conflict resolution.

Issa died of a heart attack when he was only fifty-two. But Hope Flowers, now supervised by his son, continues its work of teaching rising generations of Israeli and Palestinian children the way of peace. It is the mother’s milk that will nourish them throughout their lives, and hopefully help build a less troubled relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.