Skilled negotiators have tried and failed to bring Israelis and Palestinians together for decades. But with the promise of education, MIT and a group of technologists who want to change the political and social landscape of the region by bringing the alienated groups together, through MEET.
Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow is a non-profit organization that for the past 14 years has brought together Palestinian and Israeli high schoolers to learn, imagine and build technology together. With the program running in Jerusalem and Nazareth, MEET has created a network of 385 alumni who have gone on to study, work and lead in the global tech industry.
Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow
This type of cross-cultural exchange was commonplace in the 1990s, when Israel and Palestine were actively involved in peace negotiations under the Oslo Accords. But as prospects for peace dimmed, such programs all but disappeared, says Anat Binur, an Israeli and MEET cofounder. “Back then, there was a moment of hope,” Binur told Forbes. “The kids coming to the program today would never ever meet someone from the other side unless it was a settler or at a checkpoint.” This growing absence of humane exchange and lack of diplomatic progress became the driving force behind MEET.
Binur, now a venture capitalist founder of a startup in Palo Alto, co-founded MEET along with her brother Yaron and a few Israeli and Palestinian friends back in 2004. The second Intifada was well into its fourth year, she remembers. For the founding team members, who were on both sides of the conflict, it was hard to be away while there was trouble at home. Joined by their childhood friend Assaf Harlap, Binur and Yaron began to fundraise and recruit instructors for MEET and teamed up with Sandra Ashab and Abeer Hazboun-Sader to develop the curriculum and recruit students.
The program brings together volunteer academic students from MIT, Berkeley and Stanford to lead courses in computer science, entrepreneurship and leadership. Over a span of three years, students complete 600 academic hours of immersive work in mixed gender and bi-national groups. “The vision was to create a network on a business, economic and political front,” Binur said.
The students, ages 14 through 17, learn things like Python basics and ideally find commonality. MEET’s goals of a “deeper understanding” is based on the notion that a shared interest in tech could be a starting point for broader understanding among students from across the national divide. Taking a step back from the computer screen, the students are given the opportunity to discuss the elephant in the room, the longest standing conflict in modern day history.
Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow
As students learn to code, build critical thinking skills and how to make a business plan, they are also asked to share personal stories about growing up in political turmoil. In the “Deeper Understanding” segment of the MEET program, Israeli and Palestinian students are encouraged to discuss the stereotypes they have heard about the other side. MEET seeks to further break barriers by challenging teenagers to come up with technologies that can help challenge cultural stereotypes. The 2016 class, for example, addressed the stereotype that there is a lack of Palestinian healthcare professionals. To combat this stereotype, the group created an app that calculates estimated ER wait times of hospitals in both Palestinian East Jerusalem and Israeli West Jerusalem, which tends to have busier wait rooms. The idea was to encourage cross-cultural exchange through medical care, because when you’re gushing blood you’re not necessarily concerned with the stereotypes associated with the neighborhood in which the doctor stitching you up.
For prospective students, the opportunity to have an MIT program under their belt before they turn 18 is a powerful lure. “My motivation was not necessarily to meet Israelis, because I didn’t feel like they would understand where I was coming from and the community that I live in,” said Subhi Beidas, lead software engineer at Shippo, and a 2006 alumni from Qalandia.Years after Beidas graduated, a student enrolled in the program reached out to him to talk about her next step after the program --joining the Israeli Defense Forces. “She wanted to say ‘This is what I’m about to do. I know this might mean something to you, but I’m genuinely interested in knowing what this means to you.’” Unfortunately, the humbling reality of the classroom fades when students turn 18, Palestinians begin college and most Israelis begin their mandatory military service. “Even though we have our differences, us getting to the point of talking about it is the point of MEET,” Beidas said.
MEET’s ultimate goal – to create a meaningful and educational joint experience that would help promote reconciliation -- may remain elusive. But the program has proven to have a positive impact. Consider Helen Wexler, a first-year MEET alumni and Forbes Israel's 30 Under 30 honoree. As the Director of Jnext, a $22 million entrepreneurship program sponsored by the Israeli government, Wexler’s work focuses on transforming Jerusalem into a tech a hub. “My experience in MEET in cross-cultural teams, with people who are different than me, has helped me both in working with East Jerusalem and working with the Haredi sector in the city,” said Wexler.
This year MEET plans to launch MEETx, an extension of the program that will shrink the geographic distance for students and provide them with a “borderless hub.” MEETx allows MEET to reach more future Palestinian and Israeli leaders by expanding its range and recruiting the brightest and most promising students, no matter where they live. This project will be a gigantic leap forward for MEET’s reach and impact, with the end result of increasing the number of young people touched by our life-changing programming by 50% over the next three years. MEET’s impact model is not necessarily about perception change on its own, but giving the opportunity to the students who will shape the landscape of the future. “Our goal is to get these young leaders in the program who will then create change in their communities,” Binur said.
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