A skilled conflict transformation facilitator, Eva combines grassroots-depth with policy-level insight. Through blending systemic change with personal and collective healing, she has supported international organisations across 22+ global conflict zones. On October 7, 2023, in response to the escalating Palestinian-Israeli crisis, she launched Peace Activation, a new global peace initiative rooted in the belief that sustainable peace begins within us.
This post is a short edited excerpt of how Eva’s vision loss transformed her approach to peacework and exposed unhealthy peaceworker dynamics. Hear her full interview on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
Our approach to peacework, focusing on external action, is fundamentally broken. While studying spiritual psychology, I realized working in conflict zones allowed me to hide… to hide my own internal chaos and conflict. Focusing on serving, on external actions, allowed me to deny my internal turmoil. Many of us, not all, but many peaceworkers are hiding or running away from our own issues at home and we’re bringing them into conflict zones.
I use the Karpman drama triangle to explain this dynamic, which involves victims, perpetrators and rescuers. I call it an invitation to dance. Somebody will complain about something; the victim. I hear the victim complain and offer a solution; the rescuer. Someone else amplifies what the victim complained about; the perpetrator. The interesting thing is, these roles are interchangeable. The same person can be, within one conversation, a victim, a perpetrator and a rescuer. The rescuer is someone on the spot who wants to take action, they’re the problem solver. As soon as they hear about a person’s problem, they already have a solution.
Losing my eyesight exposed my rescuer persona. I was either the rescuer or the perpetrator, never the victim. When my vision loss forced me into dependency, people pitied me, but there was no way I was taking the victim role. My role was to help, save or rescue, not someone supporting me. When I was forced to receive support, it was only rarely, grudgingly, accepted. It was much easier to be the giver of advice, money and support. To receive advice or support or money wasn’t a role I enjoyed. I spent two years battling between these three roles.
Losing my eyesight forced me to be present, to really be in my body. It’s so hard to be fully present with what is. And for me, a rescuer, to be fully present with my vision loss, and that nobody needed me, that’s devastating. So my raison d’ etre was just to take care of myself, and even that I could not do, because I could not see. So, I spent most of my time out of my body; dreaming, daydreaming, thinking about something, constantly distracted. But I actually had to ask for help, to accept help. To accept that I wasn’t needed, I wasn’t useful. It was depressing and devastating. Many of our roles are based on how useful we are, because that’s how we define how lovable we are, or how worthy we are. I had to accept and work through being worthy of love and help, when I was neither useful nor needed.
If we’re not willing to see it, we externalize what’s not healed within. So for much of my life, being a Palestinian-Israeli peace activist was a way of externalizing my unhealed trauma. But on October 23, 2023, I realized I could not escape my identities or my background. We’re all born into an identity or a nation or a tribe or a family because we have gifts to give back to that family, tribe, nation and identity. It was time to bring home the gifts I’d taken to 22+ countries around the world.
Growing up as a Palestinian Muslim in Israel, my identities were fragmented. Few people understand the fragmentation of the internal Israeli society dynamic, how we’re played against each other, each identity against the other. Growing up fragmented allowed me to see how fragmentation is part of the one. We talk about shadow parts being connected. Losing my eyesight meant I didn’t have anything to do for two years but work on my shadows. So I sought out and integrated the parts of me I had left behind in Israel. I went back and retrieved my memories, my early childhood experiences, all the places where I left or abandoned myself in situations that were too hard.
This trauma-informed approach of going back, understanding, reclaiming and integrating, showed me that while everybody does their best, sometimes their best is not enough. But it’s not a reason for us to abandon, reject or neglect ourselves. Reintegrated, I reclaimed my energy, my relationship with my parents and my sibling. I came to understand that all of the situations and institutions and systems I’d blamed for what happened to me, actually invited my experience of vision loss. They fulfilled my desire to experience true vision, which led me to Peace Activation, and my true vision of peace. Previously, there wasn’t a true vision of peace. The internal sensation of how peace feels is something we’re typically denied.
I was invited to deliver Peace Activation’s trauma-informed peace building training in Hebrew to Israelis in Israel for Israeli organizations, and in Arabic to Palestinian organizations in the West Bank. It was the same training, material and facilitator, only the languages and locations were different.
In this training people are invited to say how they feel, not to react. We hold their powerlessness and helplessness in a space where it’s safe to be seen, to be heard and to share. This peace process unfolded organically, seeded by initial activities and peoples’ interest. After the first zoom rooms where people shared, I went to my own communities in Israel and Palestine. Over time, what emerged was trauma-informed peace building training with the alliance for Middle East Peace, a network of 170 organizations in which Palestinian-Israelis work on peace, both in Israel and Palestine.
We hold space for the pain of each community, in its own right, without comparing pain’s severity, competing over suffering or weaponizing trauma. Each suffering is valid on its own. People are able to speak about their suffering in safe contexts and hear us say, “We hear where you’re coming from.”
Trauma blinds us to what’s happening in the present. What’s helpful in peacework is holding space for people to share their narratives, to feel heard and to be guided to see reality as it is in the present. It’s so easy to become human-doings and so hard to be human-beings. My experiences forced me to just be… to be with what is. That’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done; to just be with what is.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the interview, and if you like it, please subscribe and share.
