For Tareq Abu Hamed, his connection to the Arava Institute doesn’t have anything to do with growing up a Palestinian-Israeli in East Jerusalem. It’s because of his time at the University of Minnesota nearly 20 years ago.
“I did my postdoctoral [fellowship] at the University of Minnesota,” said Abu Hamed. “My expertise is in solar energy, and you know the godfather of solar thermal was a Jewish professor at the University of Minnesota called Ed Fletcher.
“It’s not because Minnesota has plenty of sun, but they have plenty of good scientists in this field.”
During his fellowship, The Minnesota Daily wrote an article about Abu Hamed’s work, which was seen online by Vermont Rabbi Michael Cohen, who had mentioned Arava to him. When Abu Hamed was planning on returning to Israel, he reached out to a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, who was the board chair at Arava at the time.
“The reason I joined is that it’s a place that brings people together,” he said.
Now the executive director of the Arava Institute, Abu Hamed was in Minnesota last week as part of a short tour to fundraise, meet supporters, and get the word out about what he calls “science diplomacy.”
“Using science, using academic programs and research to build bridges,” he said.
Abu Hamed also talked fondly about his time volunteering at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, which neighbored the village he grew up in.
“I wanted to give my wife and my daughters at that time the opportunity to have that firsthand experience to be in a kibbutz, to live in a kibbutz, to be with the Jewish community to experience firsthand what I experienced when I was young,” he said. “And we moved from Minneapolis to the Arava Institute. I call it from minus 40 to plus 40 centigrade.”
Despite all the international strife from the Oct. 7 attacks to skirmishes with Iran, Abu Hamed said they’ve kept all of their regional partnerships, including with Palestinian partners in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as those in Jordan and Morocco.
“We even managed to widen that partnership,” he said. “And the reason behind that is science diplomacy, the impact of using science, the academic program, to give people the opportunity to experience others firsthand, to be in direct communication that helps people to build understanding, and understanding leads to trust. Our partners trust us in the region.”
However, that doesn’t mean the institute wasn’t impacted by Oct. 7.
The inability for Palestinians to get permits and the overall freedom of movement, impacted the institute. So did the USAID cuts, travel warnings and flight restrictions, which led to fewer international students spending time there.
“The reality of people immediately after October 7 shifted to more humanitarian aid, support IDF, and but very quickly people who really understand the nature of our work continued the support for the work that we do,” he said. “We’ve been impacted, but we managed to keep running.
“People see us as the hope. People see us as Israel that they want to see. People want to see Palestinians and Israelis and Jordanians work on real challenges, real problems, creating solutions for the people in the region.”
Steve Sanderson, the Minneapolis resident who is the board chair of Friends of the Arava Institute (FAI), said that in addition to the important research being done there, is the time students from diverse backgrounds spend with each other.
“That, for me, is the secret sauce,” he said. “It’s one of the reasons why, for a third year in a row, Arava Institute under Tareq’s leadership has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Abu Hamed said that in order to have the cross-border environmental cooperation, it has to be built upon a sustainable base.
“Bringing people together, [is] what allowed us to continue our work,” he said. Abu Hamed said the students have a compulsory forum for three to six hours per week.
“They discuss the conflict, family stories, personal stories, culture, religion, serving in the army, living in a refugee camp, and it’s very hard discussions,” he said. “They cry, they shout. But this dialogue, and living together in a campus in the middle of nowhere in Kibbutz Ketura, going to the same classroom, same dining room, sharing rooms in the dormitory, the dialogue helps them build understanding. And understanding leads to trust.”
This fall semester, three students will be coming from around the world to Arava; normally that number is closer to 10, FAI executive director Rachel Kalikow said.
“The institute’s motto for a long time is ‘Nature knows no borders.’ Like Tareq said: ‘The aquifers are all shared; what happens in one place with water doesn’t stop at the border,’ she said. “It impacts the region across the borders. The electrical grid, sharing energy: This impacts one community to the next. And if these resources are shared, it creates stability, which is better for Israel, which is better for everybody in the region.
“But the institute’s methodology, using the environment as the common denominator, but then grounding it in dialogue, means that these relationships are not transactional.”