Virtual bridge allows strangers in West Asia to seem less strange

Moad Arqoub, a Palestinian graduate student, was bouncing around the Internet the other day and came across a site that surprised and attracted him. It was a Facebook page where Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs were talking about everything at once: the prospects of peace, of course, but also soccer, photography and music.

“I joined immediately because right now, without a peace process and with Israelis and Palestinians physically separated, it is really important for us to be interacting without barriers,” Arqoub said as he sat at an outdoor cafe in this Palestinian city.

It has been nearly two years since Israeli and Palestinian leaders have negotiated their peoples’ future and, with the region in turmoil and prospects for peace dim, interaction between Israelis and Palestinians is increasingly limited to Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank. But over the past month, the Facebook page has surprised those involved by the enthusiasm it has generated, suggesting that the Facebook-driven revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt may offer guidance for coexistence efforts as well.

Called Facebook.com/ yalaYL, the site, created by a former Israeli diplomat and unambiguous about its links to Israel, has had 91,000 views in its first month. Of its 22,500 active users, 60 per cent are Arabs — mostly Palestinians, followed by Egyptians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Moroccans, Lebanese and Saudis.

“All communication today is on the Internet — sex, war, business — why not peace?” asked Uri Savir, the president of the Peres Center for Peace and the founder of the new site. Savir was a chief peace negotiator for Israel in the 1990s as well as the director general of its foreign ministry and a member of Parliament. But he said he had never been more excited about a project.

“Today we have no brave leaders on either side, so I am turning to a new generation, the Tahrir Square and Facebook generation,” Savir, 58, said as he sat in his Tel Aviv apartment running his finger over his iPad to scroll through the site.

The YL in the site’s name stands for young leaders (Yala means “let’s go” in Arabic), and Savir said he saw the page as a place where the next generation of regional innovators could meet. It helps that he has a few connections. The page has welcome messages from Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, as well as from Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who serves as an international envoy to the Palestinians, and actor Sharon Stone.

©2011 The New York Times News Service