music networking for peace?

I never believed that music can as such bring people to peace, but I do believe that it makes sense that people – young and old – develop and cultivate their cultural and artistic skills, and also that our choice to develop friendships and networks crossing and by-passing the classical bilateral lines can open people up to realities which may have seemed improbable or unreachable before such contacts existed. We are in a very depressing conflict region where there is occupation, fighting, war, terrorism,… a lot of violence and little prospect for peace, at least for the moment. The last years, I often wonder what our work over here means in such a context. One of the answers is that we are building alternative and multilateral networks of friendship. It is not bringing peace as such, but it is creating a terrain which can allow peace to exist and to persist, if ever it is been brought about one day. The Barenboim-Said music workshop which is now going on in Nazareth is a good example of such networking, as it is involving a.o. people from the Westbank, Germany, Israel and Belgium. Also the fact that adults and youngsters from the Westbank come into contact with Palestinians from Israel and with people from outside the Middle East (third parties), can give them a different perspective on certain things. Bringing in Israeli teachers into the terrritories is for the moment not possible to do, because it would not be acceptable to many Palestinians, as they are under occupation. In Nazareth though almost all music teachers are jewish Israelis. Coming to Nazareth, the Palestinians of the territories can see that within Israel it can be possible to have certain forms of constructive cooperation with jewish people and organisations, even though this can also be difficult at times. These alternative networks can for sure open eyes to different realities. These types of networks are alternative in the sense that they are crossing the classical bilateral lines of communication and cooperation. This networking on itself is for me a very important reason to continue to develop our projects with Ictus and with Music Fund in a conflict stricken region such as the Middle East. If one day there can be peace in this region, such multilateral networks can play I believe an essential role in the keeping of peace and in the building of new realities at different levels in the societies of this region. Furthermore, succesful forms of cooperation are typically much more than the sum of their parts. The collaboration within this music workshop in Nazareth, initiated by the Barenboim-Said Foundation and organised with the support of Orpheus (Nazareth) and Ictus (Brussels), is a good example for this, because bringing together the musicians of these three organisations is also bringing together many different things and adding up to an experience which is more than just the sum of the people present. The same goes for the coming together of the students of the different towns in the region (Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Nablus).