but also has furnished invaluable
labor. The host communities have
provided volunteer support and the
promise of some development and
maintenance funds, a reminder of
the mutual good arising when Jews
and Arabs find good will to put a
wish into practice. Youth volunteers
from the host communities and P2G’s
youth leadership program help main-
tain the trail.

among the residents of those com-
munities. If marketed strategically,
the trail also could help make the
Central Galilee and its natural sur-
roundings and heritage sites a tourist
destination.
Michigan Jewry has been part of
the Jewish Agency for Israel’s P2G
Peoplehood program since 1994. JAFI
isn’t yet part of the brain trust behind
the trail, but that could change.

PERSONAL TAKE

PRESSING ONWARD

Richard Broder, the Detroit-based
lay leader of the P2G/Federation
Steering Committee,
has cycled, hiked
and walked devel-
oped parts of the
trail and has rid-
den in a jeep over
its undeveloped
swaths. He consid-
ers the pathway well
Richard Broder
planned and engi-
neered with appeal
for riders of all abilities — challeng-
ing terrain for mountain bikers and
flat stretches for recreational riders.
The pebbles of cooperation along
the trail excite Broder.
“It’s such a natural thing when
you find people, regardless of their
background, who have an affinity for
an activity rallying together without
the mantle of politics or conflict
above them,’’ Broder told me back in
Detroit.
“It’s just, ’Get out there and ride’.”
Underscoring that point is the
physical work that local Jews and
Arabs have invested in the trail, no
easy task made harder by cultural
barriers.
“It’s a very apolitical cause,” Broder
said. “The benefits of such direct
work are obvious: building the trail
and making it good en route to also
building relationships and, I can’t
emphasize this enough, trust.”
He added, “Any time you can
have a common goal to build trust
between parties, it’s going to move
things forward. In the case of Israel,
the issues are deep and old, but
anything that can be done to move
things forward certainly helps.”
Our Federations believe the trail
is not just a source of recreation,
but also is a spur for neighbors of
different ethnicities to comingle.
Federation dollars have gone toward
the project in the belief the host com-
munities will share in the responsibil-
ity for upkeep over the long haul.
What’s the potential dividend on
Federation trail investment? That a
trail built and maintained by Jewish
and Arab communities along the
route will promote coexistence

The Naim BeYahad trail no doubt will
succeed on its merit. Still, much of
its grounding lies in the work ethic
of Arda Ribo and Hesham Bsharat,
a Jew and an Arab, both Israeli, who
together breathed life into Michael
Mensky’s conceptual dream.
That Yafia and Nazareth are so into
the trail is encouraging given Arab
kids have so many other demands
before climbing on a bike. Those kids
may not be as in tune as Jewish kids
in the region are to the trail, but local
Arab leaders seem committed to the
extent possible, Broder says.
Via the power of sports, Bsharat is
striving to strengthen connections
not just among Arab and Jewish
teens, but also among their parents.
Using a soccer school for Arab and
Jewish teens as an example, he said:
“We need to involve parents more —
not just have them get together as
their kids play two or three times a
week and then go back home.
“Maybe we need a finish meeting at
the end of each soccer school session.
Maybe parents need to sit together
and conclude the day. Maybe we can
make new friendships.”
Clearly, the Naim BeYahad trail is
a coming together of Israelis, some
Arab and some Jewish, who find a
common calling in the contours of
the Central Galilee forest. “That is the
purpose,’’ Ribo said. “There were a
few coexistence programs years ago;
but not so much now.”
Noted Bsharat: “I think the part-
nership must put some weight on
this matter.”
He’s right, of course.
But as Ribo put it, “I think what
we have here is an amazing begin-
ning point that has never happened
within the Central Galilee partner-
ship before.”
Imagine the Naim BeYahad trail
and its Jewish Michigan-backed
quest to join recreation with coexis-
tence serving as a model for the rest
of Israel, a Jewish state of 8.3 million
people, a fifth of whom are Arab. •

YouTube link to an Israeli TV interview with a
Jewish teen and an Arab teen involved in the
trail project: https://youtu.be/E5rqLcD33OA

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March 16 • 2017

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