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Supporting Israeli and Palestinian Peace Builders

We Believe

The Middle East Peace Dialogue Network (MEPDN) believes that Israelis and Palestinians are destined to share the same land. Central to our beliefs has always been that the two-state solution is essential to resolving the conflict. However, on October 7, 2023, Hamas shattered that belief.

The barbaric attacks, the butchery, the murder, the abduction of hostages, the jihadist principles of political Islam, finally revealed for all to witness, exposed the many dimensions of the existential threat to Israel’s existence embodied by Hamas and Iran’s other jihadist proxies. Hamas’s often and unambiguously stated genocidal intentions to wipe Israel off the face of the map was not merely bellicose rhetoric. It has been their raison d’être and their relentlessly crafted strategy for decades all along.

Now, it is clear why we could never solve the equation of land for peace. Decades of failed negotiations are finally explained. Preventing it was the Palestinian ethos that demanded from the river to the sea (no Israel), decades of refugee status (no Israel), a right of return for all refugees (no Israel) and the duplicity and corruption of UNWRA under-girding Hamas’s murderous mission (no Israel).

Israel has the right to exist as a sovereign state, just like the others formed in the wake of World War I and II.

What must happen next for Gazans to ever have a sustainable future? For all Palestinians who wish to live in peace and security next to Israel, not on top of Israel or instead of Israel, all hostages must be returned and all remaining members of Hamas must admit defeat, surrender, disarm and leave Gaza never to return. Only then, can an international consortium begin the long and arduous process of rebuilding Gaza as a home for citizens willing to co-exist next to Israel.

Despite today’s grim realities on the ground, we still believe that Israeli and Palestinian civil society must continue working together if there will ever be a chance to achieve peaceful co-existence.

Therefore, we will continue to support organizations, programs and activities that provide and promote work and employment opportunities, dialogue, education, reconciliation, cooperation, co-existence and tolerance programs and activities that bring Israelis and Palestinians together to work toward a future where both can thrive.

In the final analysis, it is in the hands of civil society to establish relationships and conditions that will enable a sustainable peace to flourish.

Eventually, these determined men and women will transform decades of deeply entrenched stereotypes, fear and distrust into a willingness to recognize each other’s right to live in peace on the land they share.

We believe in the power of the people to make political, economic and social change. Their courage, vision and dedication to the work at hand is the only answer that makes sense.

What We Do

Support organizations, activities and programs which encourage Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, co-existence and co-creation.

Provide fiscal sponsorship support to Israeli and Palestinian NGOs lacking an American Friends presence so they can successfully raise money in the US.

Provide Israeli and Palestinian NGO leaders with complimentary business and personal coaching to help them maximize their personal and organization’s performance.

Think BIG

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Nelson Mandela

“To believe a thing impossible is to make it so.”

French Proverb

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”

G. M. Trevelyan

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” 

Christopher Reeve

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.”

Robert A. Heinlein

“The word impossible is not in my dictionary.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

“Impossible only means that you haven’t found the solution yet.” 

Anonymous

“No one gets very far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.” 

Elbert Hubbard

“Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.”

Marcus Aurelius

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.”

Anthony Robbins

“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”

Vince Lombardi

“The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking.” 

Robert Schuller

“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.”

Anonymous

“In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.”

Miguel de Cervantes

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

Paulo Coelho

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”

Charles F. Kettering

“Every noble work is at first impossible.”

Thomas Carlyle

“There is nothing impossible to him who will try.” 

Alexander the Great

"We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes — understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success."

Arianna Huffington

"Instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you."

Michelle Obama

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

Confucius

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible ---and even the impossible may only be so, as of now"

Pearl Buck

“Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.”

Louis Brandeis

“To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”

Tom Robbins

“Difficult is what takes a little time: the impossible is what takes a little longer.”

Fridtjof Nansen