Sulha adopts a mixture of victim and offender centric approaches for achieving forgiveness. One of the leading figures in the Sulha community is Elias Jabbour, a self-identified Palestinian, Christian, Arab citizen of Israel, author of Sulha Palestinian Traditional Peacemaking Process, and Director of the House of Hope. Jabbour was gracious enough to invite me to visit on December 3, 2017, to his home in Shefaram, Israel. We discussed the Jaha’s role in the Sulha peace process and the future study of Peaceology over a 90-minute conversation (Content from the interview has been paraphrased from handwritten notes).
SULHA AND THE ROLE OF THE JAHA IN SULHA
The knowledge and understanding that stems from traditional Arab conflict resolution practices provide insight into a given community’s values and norms. One aspect that kept coming up involved the notion of saving face. Jaha plays an important role in this regard.
Parties in conflict often find themselves locked in disagreement, ultimately seeing no way to come out of it without blemish to one’s honor. Sulha is a traditional Arabic form of conflict resolution common in Palestinian and Bedouin communities.
Sulha incorporates four common elements from Arabic culture (forgiveness, reconciliation, ritual, and honor) to build a lasting resolution between conflicting parties. Jaha plays an important role in Sulha.
Typically occupied by a trusted elder(s), the main duty is not to take sides. If the Jaha favors one side over the other – whether it is the offender or the victim, it becomes difficult to bring the parties to the table to discuss grievances. Further, placating one party over another reduces the credibility and power of the Jaha to be trusted.
Anyone with the right qualities may be chosen as a Jaha, but all decisions from a Sulha process are made by consensus; therefore, the Jaha must be well-respected elders from the community. The Jaha role is an unpaid position adding credibility and honor to the process.
Sessions are built on establishing trust, as trust creates equality and reason to move forward. The Jaha offers a unique blend of mediator, arbitrator, diplomat, investigator, and psychologist rolled into one person or team of persons.
“You can’t make peace with a gun.”
Jaha learns to choose the right words, when to speak, and when to remain silent. Respect is a key element in the process.
NO ONE SIZE MODEL FOR ALL SULHA RECONCILIATION
A Jaha embodies love and deep respect for the human condition. The Jaha holds faith in humanity by recognizing that humans make mistakes. Mistakes are differences that comprise an individual’s character. Love for parties in conflict is not the same as failing to admonish wrongdoing.
Love grows from wisdom. The Jaha must be wise in his ability to differentiate between ambiguous situations. Wisdom helps parties overcome anger and grief. A central understanding of the Sulha peace process focuses on the Jaha, not engaging parties when they are angry.
Dispelling such emotions becomes part of a method for keeping parties safe and secure since defending against revenge attacks can lead to a loss of human life – an important consequence the Jaha always considers.
Of course, a Jaha is not only wise but also a good listener. In Sulha, it can be beneficial to meet separately with parties through a process called caucusing or shuttle diplomacy in Western ADR conflict resolution. The technique allows the Jaha to independently move between both sides to investigate sensitive thoughts or expressions free from the other party. Once parties have been allowed to meet with the Jaha, parties may be brought together to achieve the ultimate goal of forgiveness by incorporating community norms and the Prophet Mohammad’s hadith – peace be upon him.
The Jaha implores parties to consider, “why do we need to forgive?”
It is not enough to restore rights. One must also restore dignity. Dignity is the way to forgiveness. If pain remains, you can’t make Sulha since forgiveness is paramount in Sulha. Jabbour mused that if you can touch another person by making a connection, the offender may be alleviated and ultimately loosen some pain and guilt. The Jaha does this by compelling the offender to admit and repent.
FUTURE OF SULHA
Sulha is on the verge of becoming extinct because newer Arab generations ask, why do we need a Jaha? In the past, principles such as shame, guilt, and honor made Sulha work.
“Sulha takes place within an unfair system. It is difficult to make peace between parties when an occupying force fails to acknowledge even the 1967 borders.”
Conditions for reconnecting offenders and victims’ families through a Sulha process are not the same as they were in the past. Violations of the Sulha process did not occur for 100-years because it was done in the right way. Today, not only does the Sulha process take too long, thereby exhausting the patience of modern disputants—space constraints make it more difficult to exile a family, separating parties in dispute until a resolution is meted out.
THE DISCIPLINE OF PEACEOLOGY
Near the end of the interview, I asked Elias Jabbour for his thoughts on the future of Sulha. Elias Jabbour believes the future of Sulha needs to expand into a wider lens by studying peace in schools through a practice of what he calls Peaceology.
“I want a society that lives in peace. If every state introduced peace, that peace would invade our homes, lives, and society. Without peace, we all will die.”
The study of Peaceology would breakdown the components of Sulha with more attention to the role of the Jaha. The field would draw on the study of the different languages of peace. What does it mean to live in communities comprised of people from different backgrounds?
Peaceology would address other tough questions, such as why do men kill other men? It would study the long-term effects of emotions that cause fear and anger in society to create interventions for limiting the spread of violence by breaking it apart with forgiveness.
Jabbour concluded that, in reality, war is easier to make than peace. Peace does not happen easily; it takes work and comes with a price. People have commitments; live busy lives. 
People must choose peace.
But people need not be afraid to walk on the opposite side of the street, for when people get out of their own way, previous streets become new avenues.
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