Can Dreams Survive War?

On Thursday, November 20, two friends of Dreamline boarded a plane in Philadelphia headed for Jerusalem. In their bags, they each carried a Dreamline Travel Pak, a large plastic bag with all of the supplies and simple directions to make a Dreamline with 22 students.

Would there be an opportunity to use it or give it to someone who would? Would there be young people they could work with and adults to translate and explain, so they could invite Palestinian youth they would meet to share their dreams with the world? No one knew.

Each of them had met with Dreamline Program Director Jeffrey Harlan in the weeks before their departure to talk about this possibility and its value. The idea was born from longtime Dreamline advocate and Philadelphia public school art teacher Joy Waldinger. So the initiative started for Palestine Dreams.

These volunteers were part of a group whose purpose was to observe, learn, and then talk about life in the West Bank after returning to their Philadelphia-based communities. After landing in Jerusalem, they would travel north to Ramallah in the West Bank then further north to Nablus and south to Hebron. But before the trip, they knew little of their actual itinerary and what each day would hold.

They both returned a few weeks later and without their Dreamline Travel Paks. Each had given them away to others who work with youth in the area or have connections to those who do. The trip had taken them to many such places: the Yafa Cultural Center near Nablus, a mural program in Silwan in East Jerusalem, Project Hope also around Nablus and others.

At this point, like individuals on the trip, Dreamline is working with a professor emeritus at San Francisco State University, Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey, who is helping to connect a network of five schools she works with to Dreamline. The goal is to engage elementary and middle school students in the coming months.

Dreamline has touched lives in the Himalayas at 12,000 feet elevation, in a remote fly-in village in Alaska, and now, if this initiative proves successful, in one of the most conflict-damaged places in the world. The message we’ve heard so far indicates that dreams do indeed survive war and that they are more important than ever.