Finding Peace Through Food & Entertainment

JERUSALEM, Israel July 25, 2008 — -- The groundbreaking television drama series "Good Intentions" gives viewers of Israel's channel 2 a "taste of conflict," as it was aptly renamed for its screening at the Jerusalem Film Festival last week.

The series aims to show the humanity of both sides of the Middle East conflict through the experiences of two women, an Israeli and a Palestinian, who, in a show-within-the-show, play the co-stars of a fictitious T.V. cooking program.

"What are we eating? Coexistence treats?" the Palestinian co-star's brother asks in one scene when he sees the bags of food his sister has brought home. "I'm not hungry," he adds.

The two lead characters on the show face resistance from their families and communities to their new "jobs" for Israeli television.

Amal Fauzi, played by Arab-Israeli actress Clara Khoury, has taken the job on the show to help take care of her brother, who was shot by Israeli soldiers and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Later, her brother burns the money she has earned from what he sees as the Israeli enemy.

Tammy Rosen (played by Israeli Orna Pitusi) is Amal's co-host on the cooking show. When her 18-year-old son's name is called out at the Israeli Defense Forces induction base at the start of his compulsory military service, he hugs his mother goodbye. "Well, mom," the son asks, "Shall we meet in Ramallah?"

The idea for the show came from The Parent's Circle Foundation (PCF), an organization made up of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost family members in the conflict. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has contributed significant funds to the project.

"Much of what you see is our daily life," PCF member Roni Damelin says. Damelin's own son was killed by a Palestinian sniper during his reserve service.

"I remember my own son going to the army. The pain I experienced is exactly the same as hers."

Israeli scriptwriter Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz says she drew much of her inspiration from the Parent's Circle.

"If you look at the friendships made between two people, a Palestinian and an Israeli," she says, "you can see it's a friendship based on personal attributes. They drink together, they laugh together. There is life going on, they are not grieving all the time."

Israeli Rami Elhanan, another PCF member, lost his 14-year-old daughter in a suicide bombing, yet he joined the group because he still hopes for peace.

"It's the first time both the narratives have been right alongside each other," Elhanan tells ABCNews.com. "It has all the clichés but it's good because people can find themselves within it."

Mazan Faraj, another member of the organization and a Palestinian who hails from a refugee camp in Bethlehem, approaches Elhanan. "This is my brother," Elhanan says.

Faraj's Palestinian father was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces. He too claims to share some of the issues faced by the women in the series.

"It's not easy for my community to understand that I work in this organization," Faraj says. "But slowly, step by step, I am working to deal with my life, to spread my message."

"I don't want to be a victim anymore," he says, adding, "I deserve a life. It's not our destiny to kill each other every day. I need to spread the message of my father, who never did anything but got killed in Bethlehem."

Ya'akov Guterman's son was killed in the first Lebanon War. Guterman thought of the idea for the series a few years ago, as a broad way to reach out to people.

"This circle of bloodshed makes no sense. There are innocent, young people from both sides."

Guterman thought of the idea for the series a few years ago, to make the conflict accessible. "Most people think about the conflict in black-and-white," he says. "The series shows all the grays and all the colors between black and white."

Weiss-Berkowitz says that the show isn't really about the conflict itself. "It's about two women who stand for truth, who do what they want in the face of the whole world, against all the odds."

According to her, knowledge is the answer to the conflict.

"Fear of the other side creates demons inside people," she says. "People don't know that they hope, that they love, just like us," she said.

The group has done over a thousand lectures in Israeli schools and has given speeches in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

"It's just part of a long term vision for the framework of peace," Weiss-Berkowitz says. "If politicians sign something, it won't be enough if only the leaders will kiss and shake hands. People need to have something in place for there to be peace afterwards."

Damelin thinks that it was "brave" of Channel 2 to pick up the show, and hopes that an Arab television station will do the same. "They can have it for free," she says. "It was part of our contract."

Many viewers have been very moved by the series, Damelin says. One particular response she remembers was a Web comment by a Jewish man whose wife forced him to watch the show.

She quotes from his letter: "I don't have the same political ideas, but I realized at the end that maybe God doesn't only belong to the Jews."

"I think that's an incredible statement to make," she says. "It means we're reaching people."