Events & Calendars CHI Salon: Roots: Palestinian and Israeli Voices from the West Bank

The Roots organization forwards collaboration and dialogue in the West Bank between Israelis and Palestinians. This Salon will feature two Roots speakers, Sarah Mandel and Khalil Sayegh, and they will share their experiences of this work and the promise of its model.

SARAH MANDEL grew up in the UK; studied at Oxford, Cambridge and Tel Aviv Universities; and has lived in Israel since 2003. She works in academic editing and lives in Gush Etzion in the settlement of Ibei Hanachal with her husband and six children. She was first drawn to Roots when she realized that she needed to take active steps to ensure that her children, growing up in the Gush, would be as peace-oriented and open to difference as she was. She didn’t want to live with blinkers, ignoring her Palestinian neighbors, and she believes in the importance of humanizing the "enemy" in order to pave the way toward peace.

KHALIL SAYEGH is a Palestinian born and raised in the Gaza Strip to a refugee family originally from the town of Majdal in historical Palestine, and today within the borders of the State of Israel and known as Ashkelon. Growing up, Khalil never interacted with Israelis, except when the Israeli air forces bombed Gaza. His negative experiences of war, alongside his bitterness and suffering due to what his people went through in 1948, made him angry and bitter toward the people he perceived as his enemy.

In 2014, after he moved to the West Bank, he dared for the first time to meet an Israeli in one of the settlements of Gush Etzion. The meeting was with one of the participants in Roots and took place right next to the Roots Dignity Center. Through that meeting, Khalil begin to see how misinformed he was about the narrative of Israeli Jews. After a long struggle with ideas and two narratives, he became convinced that only through coexistence and recognition of the other side's legitimate connection to the land will we ever achieve peace.

In 2019, Khalil met with Rav Hanan and together they started meeting with groups of Palestinians and Israelis in the north of the West Bank to foster civil grassroots dialogue between both peoples. Through these meetings was born the Northern Branch of Roots.

In January 2021, Khalil moved to D.C., where he is finishing up his master's degree in comparative politics at the American University School of Public Affairs. Prior to that, he had obtained a bachelor's degree in Biblical studies back in Palestine. He is also a fellow at The Philos Project.