Guide to Dialogues About Israel-Palestine (EP)

The "Guide to Dialogues About Israel-Palestine" by Essential Partners provides a structured framework for facilitating difficult conversations around one of the most complex and emotionally charged conflicts in the world, the ongoing Israel and Palestinian conflict in the middle east. This guide is designed to help dialogue practitioners, educators, and community leaders create spaces where diverse perspectives can be shared with respect, understanding, and openness.

Aiming to foster trust and constructive engagement, the resource includes practical facilitation strategies, discussion prompts, and techniques for fostering trust and constructive engagement. From leading a campus discussion, facilitating community dialogue, to hosting an interfaith gathering, this guide offers essential tools to navigate sensitive topics and support meaningful conversations.​

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Read more about the issue guide:

This guide is designed for those leading difficult conversations on the topic, including dialogue facilitators, college and secondary educators, and faith leaders.
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Ideally, dialogues about Israel-Palestine—whether focused on a specific event or a broader discussion—take place in groups of five to eight participants, guided by a trained facilitator. A highly structured conversation format fosters careful listening, reflection, and authentic connections.
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This guide is written for anyone leading a hard conversation about the topic—such as dialogue facilitators, college or secondary educators, and faith leaders. Use this guide to create communication agreements, intervene when necessary, and ask carefully designed prompts that invite people to speak about the complexities and dilemmas as well as their convictions and values. We encourage you to adapt this guide as needed for your unique context.

Dialogue has the most impact when conducted among members of an existing group, team, or community, rather than a group of strangers. This might be congregants in a synagogue, mosque, or church, students on a campus, or colleagues in an organization. You can use the dialogues outlined here for one-time events, as part of a series of dialogues over weeks or months, for small gatherings, and for programs that involve large numbers of people broken into multiple groups.

For highly polarized situations, a trained facilitator may be necessary. Essential Partners offers regular workshops to train facilitators, acquire new tools, practice skills, and learn the elements of dialogue design. There may also be times when an external facilitator is needed. For those situations, Essential Partners provides direct facilitation services as well as long-term collaboration opportunities.

However, many people will not require training to use this guide—just comfort and skill in working with groups, an ability to support participants with diverse perspectives, and a willingness to hold space during difficult moments. Whether you have never done anything like this or you are an experienced facilitator, we hope you find what you need here.

Finally, remember that this work is messy and human. You and others will make missteps along the way. Some comments may be hard to hear. People will have different levels of understanding, varied experiences, and identities that inform their perspectives. Aim to create a space of openness, hope, and care. Encourage participants to engage with openness, hope, and care. Acknowledge that people will come with different perspectives, experiences, and readiness for dialogue.
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Resource URL: https://whatisessential.org/resources/guide-dialogues-about-israel-palestine
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About Essential Partners (EP)
Founded in 1989, Essential Partners helps individuals build relationships across differences to address their communities’ most pressing challenges.  

Its proven approach enables people to live, work, worship, and learn together more effectively. Through richer, healthier, and more inclusive dialogue, participants strengthen relationships while gaining deeper insight into themselves, each other, and the challenges they face collectively.  

Essential Partners believes that the most urgent problems can only be addressed by those who live and work together every day. Relationships rooted in trust and mutual understanding empower individuals to tackle complex issues—ranging from partisan polarization and political dysfunction to interfaith conflicts and abortion access—without compromising their core values or identities. The organization envisions a world of thriving communities, strengthened by difference and connected by trust.

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