After a career of peacebuilding in the Middle East, Mason PhD student finds there is still more to learn

George Mason University PhD student Carol Daniel Kasbari is a longtime activist, speaker and writer who has lived and studied in Jerusalem most of her life. She was born in Nazareth into a Palestinian family and is a citizen of Israel.

She spent more than 20 years working with Israelis and Palestinians on several grassroots and leadership levels, looking to transform the long-standing conflict and bridge the gaps between the national rights of both people living in the land.

It’s a task that has eluded peacemakers for decades. To fill gaps in her knowledge, Daniel Kasbari enrolled in the PhD program at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution in 2014. She said she is gaining insights—and discovering intellectual liberation and inspiration—something “almost impossible while living amidst the high tension of Palestine and Israel daily life for the last 40 years.”

Since she started her career in Jerusalem in 1993, she has tried to bridge the gaps between sides.

“It’s my life’s journey,” she said.

The bulk of her work has been in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but she has also worked with ex-fighters and prisoners in Bosnia and at one point was summoned by leaders in Cyprus to create a joint organization for Greek and Turk Cypriot journalists covering the conflicts there. Her model was that of one she created earlier in 1998 called the Israeli-Palestinian Media Forum.

“It’s a place for media professionals from both sides to work on stories of conflict by examining angles that they usually ignore or don’t see,” she said. “I took a bus full of Jewish Israeli journalists to a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. For them it was a first time to write about the refugee issue, which is the heart of the conflict, while being in the field and seeing it firsthand.”

While they were there, a remarkable thing happened: “They began offering ideas for solutions. This is where I see media professionals’ roles in what I call ‘conflict sensitive reporting.’” She described the program in a well-received TEDx Talk.

Kevin Avruch, dean of Mason’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, said there is much Daniel Kasbari can take from Mason.

“Like so many of our graduate students who come from conflict-saturated areas of the world, they come to us often immersed in the particulars of their conflict situation,” he said. “Many believe that theirs is unique, unlike any other conflict in history or in the world.”

Now she’s learning about how conflicts were resolved in Ireland, South Africa and other places—and more about her homeland’s history as well, something intentionally removed in her childhood education by the state of Israel.

Her purpose in life has not changed: “Sharing the land has always been my objective,” she said. “It can’t be that one side has everything and the other has nothing. We all need to learn how to share and accept our differences; otherwise we won’t survive.”