Former Israeli intelligence officer tells Northwest Arkansas business leaders that education is key to peace

The ghettos of East Los Angeles and the Badlands of Philadelphia are known as rough neighborhoods for residents, but not any more so than the northern Israeli village where Sarit Zehavi lives with her husband and five children.

Zehavi, a former military intelligence officer for the Israeli Forces, spoke to the Northwest Arkansas business community about the challenges of living in the world’s powder keg at the Cross Church Summit in Rogers on Thursday (Oct. 13). Since leaving military service Zehavi founded a business which she named after her daughter Alma. She briefs individuals and delegations on Israel’s northern border affairs, and also lectures on a broad range of issues related to current affairs in the Middle East to global audiences overseas.

Her family home is located six miles from Lebanon’s border and 34 miles from Syria in northern Israel. Across the region she said there are at least 7 flags over various zones including ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Syrian Opposition, Palestinian Jihad and Syrian refugees. Zehavi’s paternal grandmother was a refugee from Syria.

“I am very proud of our village where we live in harmony with our neighbors – Jews, Christians and Muslims. It can be done with education,” Zehavi said. “That is a message of hope I share with you today.”

Zehavi spoke about what it was like to make decisions with respect to firing on neighboring countries. She also said some of Israel’s greatest challenges with sustaining peaceful relations with its Arab neighbors relate to refugees and the lack of education among generations.

She said living in such close proximity to Lebanon and Syria is not without its challenges. Looking at a map of Lebanon that indicated sites of military weapons, Zehavi noted that many of the locations were homes or near schools or other public areas. During her 15 years of active military duty, Zehavi was protected in bunkers as a military intelligence officer amid conflicts with neighbors.

“But just think about it this way. If I launch at them and they fire back, I am safe, but my family is in harm’s way. Or they could launch first putting my family’s safety in jeopardy even if I do nothing,” Zehavi said.

Part of her work in political intelligence was to keep watch over Israel’s borders, a complicated issue given there are 67 borders to watch between international, sovereign areas and occupied territories which has created a patchwork landscape for Israel to monitor non-stop.

Today Zehavi said ISIS, or ISIL, which is a Jihadist Islamic sect that has claimed credit for the terrorist attacks in Paris is growing along the borders of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. She said this group doesn’t care about land because their aim is to get inside the hearts and minds of people, often targeting radicals and the vulnerable.

Zehavi said Israel reached a cease-fire agreement with Hamas who controls the Palestinian settlement of the Gaza Strip. But now ISIS has made inroads and is firing at Israelis in crowded public areas. Now that the war with the Hamas has ceased, she said they must try and contain ISIS – a job no country has been able to do thus far. She said two groups were recently apprehended inside Israel trying to set up ISIS cells.

She spoke briefly on the differences of the two Palestine settlements within Israel’s border: The Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Gaza Strip is about 20 miles long and 4.5 miles wide and home to about 2 million Palestinians, which is controlled by Hamas, an Islamic Militant Group following the Sunni fundamentalist ideology. While 99% of Gaza residents are Muslims, predominantly Sunni, there are also a few ethnic Arab Christians.

The West Bank, another sovereign territory within Israel is controlled by the Palestinian authorities, but she said no one really knows how many people live in the West Bank. Her best guess is around 2 million people, which she said includes roughly 700,000 Palestinian refugees, not from Syria or Iran, but Haifa and other cities that are part of Israel, or formerly Palestine.

“It’s been 20 years since the OSLO Agreement and still as many as 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank are living in refugee camps. In these camps they speak Arabic only which makes it easy to control the education the children receive. Refugees are at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Any long-term peace solution has to include education about choices and democracy,” she said.

Throughout the Middle East, Zehavi said religion dictates politics, education and culture which makes for spirited encounters at every turn. In her homeland not only is it important to fend off Al-Qaeda and ISIS but there are different Muslim sects battling each other.

She said the refugee outpouring from Syria and other parts of the Middle East is a world concern given that ISIS is lurking. Syria, her neighbor, has been destroyed by war.

“Literally infrastructure has been leveled. But this is also a new opportunity to rebuild, not only infrastructure but also democracy so perhaps the next generations can live in peace,” Zehavi said.