What happens to dialogue under trauma?
Can cooperation survive when trust has collapsed?
And what does climate change reveal about our shared fate in a region defined by borders and conflict?
In this episode of RAW, I speak with Tareq Abu-Hamed, an environmental scientist and Executive Director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies — a joint Israeli-Palestinian institute working at the intersection of climate change, conflict, and dialogue in the Middle East.
Tareq grew up in East Jerusalem and came of age during the first Intifada. An early encounter with Jewish neighbors in a nearby kibbutz shaped his life and his path. His academic journey took him through Turkey, the Weizmann Institute, and the United States, before returning to the region to help build one of the most unusual institutions here: a place where Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, and international students live and study together while confronting shared environmental challenges.
In our conversation, we speak about climate change as a security issue, the reality of shared aquifers, Gaza’s environmental devastation, and why ecology does not stop at borders. We talk honestly about October 7th, trauma, dehumanization, and what it takes to keep dialogue alive when fear and grief make it harder to see the human on the other side.
This is not a conversation about easy answers.
It’s about trust being more scarce than water in a region where nothing is separate — and where refusing cooperation comes at a real human cost.
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