A year after the Gaza War - two Israelis and a Palestinian gather in a small church in Manhattan to talk about whether Operation Cast Lead, carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces, was an aggressive "attack" or an "operation."
"It is an attack just like when a bomb goes off in a bus. You cannot dehumanize people by calling this an operation," says Eman Rashid, a 41-year old single mother. "I can't sit in a room with a person who calls it an operation because they don't see me as a human being."
An Israeli woman, Naama Nebenzahl, who is studying to be a psychologist, feels "emotionally manipulated" during the conversation. "This level of aggression frightens me," she says, refusing to look Rashid in the eyes. "The operation happened because of what preceded it with Hamas shooting rockets." At this point the moderator, Marcia Kannry, reminds Nebenzahl that she is breaking the guidelines of the discussion, which require people to speak of their own personal experiences and not fall back on political positions.
An American-Jew, Kannry, left New York in the seventies to become Israeli but changed her mind during her six year stay in Israel. On returning to Brooklyn, she found that tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians was not something that she had left behind.
Kannry, who is in her fifties, started the Dialogue Project in 2001 to get people from communities, facing political and religious conflict, talking to each other. In the past nine years, regular folks from New York City, Westchester County and Yonkers have joined the conversation but it hasn't been without opposition.
"As a Jewish person, it can be really difficult to speak in your own community," she says. "Even in a liberal Jewish community the word Palestine can hurt the heart."
A professor of international relations at Columbia University, Robert Jervis, points out that most of the liberal American Jewish community wants to see the conflict resolved for the sake of the Palestinians and the future security of Israel.
"It is perhaps ironical that there will be more Jews and Israelis at a Palestinian rally than any other community in the United States," he says.
Middle East expert, Rashid Khalidi, notes that US is home to large groups of "moderate" Israelis who interact with Palestinians and Arabs in several informal settings but these interactions lack the structure to translate into action.
"You find that they are very sympathetic people who are fed up of Israeli politics and don't want their children in the army," he says. "There are important exchanges of views in academia and in different walks of life but not at an intuitional level."
There will be much heated debate in the coming weeks as many of the project participants return back with the aid convoys that went to Gaza. The dialogues are confidential but some of the participants agreed to be covered for this story.
When news of the military attack against Gaza came in 2008, Nebenzahl felt the need to join a dialogue group with Palestinians. After a year in conversation, Nebenzahl feels that Israelis are more open to debate that the Palestinians.
"I am torn about this attack and there is a lot of inner criticism in Israeli society but this is missing from the Palestinian side," she says. "I feel like they do not question what Hamas is doing or their role in the conflict."
At the discussion, Kannry clarified that the official position of the Dialogue group is that the Operation Cast Lead is viewed as an aggressive attack on the people of Gaza.
But, this doesn't go down well with Nebenzahl who later questions Kannry's neutrality as the facilitator. "It is against the idea of a dialogue to have a stand," she says. "Part of me doesn't want to go back to the dialogue but I will."
Nebenzahl grew up in Israel and worked for several years as a therapist with Palestinian children at a hospital in East Jerusalem. The Israeli therapist is angry that Palestinians have claimed a monopoly over suffering in the conflict.
"Days of bloodshed..... I didn't want to wake up in the morning," she says, speaking about the Second Intifada when she volunteered to patrol the border between the West Bank and Israel. "I also have stories but I don't use them to shock people."
After the dialogue, Kannry questions whether Nebenzahl can continue in the group if she keeps breaking the guidelines. "It can be very torturous for Eman to sit with someone who cannot look her in the eye," she says. "Dialogue is about changing yourself and not asking others to change."
Rashid's parents settled in Chicago but she spent several years in Palestine including her senior year at a Quaker High School in East Jerusalem. During this time, she describes being harassed by Israeli guards when the girls from her school held peaceful protests.
Now a primary school teacher, Rashid recalls that both she and her sister were shot with rubber coated and metal bullets but what stands out most in her mind are the pretty red roofs of the Jewish settlements with swimming pools filled with sparkling blue water.
"You have water for your pools and you don't let us have water to drink," she tells the group, tearing up as she speaks. "We're all suspected terrorists...if I had been killed I would just been a statistic on your television screen."
Nebenzahl protests that the conversation is turning into a "one-sided blame game but Rashid continues, "I want Naama to understand that I felt subhuman," she says. "You (Naama) may say you empathize but you're being defensive and can't hear what I am saying."
With Nebenzahl refusing to respond, Rami Efal, a 31-year-old Israeli artist from the city of Kfar-Saba, steps into the dialogue. "Language can be very important and when you say Israelis that can be a problem," he tells Eman. "I was a soldier and I would have never acted like that."
During the 24 years spent in his hometown in the northern plains of Israel, Efal, had never met a Palestinian; but that changed when he came to New York.
Having grandparents who are Holocaust survivors, Efal, shares his belief that the present conflict is rooted in the past especially because his grandparents generation never opened up. "They came to Israel and hit the ground running without having the time to shed the anger, pain and the shame," he says
Efal says that many young Israelis feel that the present conflict cannot be resolved unless their elders let go of the baggage that came with the Holocaust. "The Israelis are fighting the Germans through the Palestinians," he says, remembering that politicians invoked the memories of the Holocaust before Operation Cast Lead. "Until my grandparents can forgive what happened in Germany this will continue...we're so closed up with fear."
The former soldier also reveals his desire to be seen as "Rami" rather than being cloaked in a national identity. "I was suffocated with the Israeli identity but not identifying with it," he says. "I didn't want to speak in Hebrew or listen to Israeli music."
But after distancing himself from his country, Efal now feels much closer to it than he did a few years ago. "I feel like I'm holding it but not being overtaken by it," he says.
As Efal and Rashid reflect on what the other one has said, the Israeli artist points out that he has never met a Muslim, Arab or Palestinian who has ever said one good thing about the Jewish culture. "We can't all be that evil."
To this, Rashid names Ofra Hazaar, a Yemeni Jewish performer, as one of her favorite singers. The group relaxes for a couple of minutes. "If I tell Israelis that I met a Palestinian yesterday who liked Ofra Hazaar now that would blow people away," says Efal, laughing.
The group then decides that at each meeting, despite all the tension, participants will name one thing they like about the others culture. The discussion, once again, turns to the contentious issue of Operation Cast Lead.
Despite the sharp exchange of words in the tense environment, Kannry is pleased with the Dialogue if, "Eman walks away upset but wonders whether she should have been more compassionate towards Naama, and Naama believes no-one understands her but is trying to understand what Eman had to say."
Many experts describe the dialogue process as a drop in the ocean with a minor role to play in finding a solution. The director of the Jerusalem Fund, a non-profit based in Washington, Yousef Munayyer explains that dialogues are pointless unless participants can attain a sense of equality.
"The social experiment cannot work unless two people recognize each other's narrative and this has proven to be very difficult," he says.
A Hillel leader at Columbia University, Jonah Liben who is majoring in Modern Jewish studies believes in the two-state solution and wants to move to Israel after he graduates.
Having attended scores of dialogues, the 22 year-old feels that these dialogue groups have not proved very useful in the past decade. "Emotion and politics leads to a delicate situation and everyone walks out frustrated," he says. On the contrary, Karen El-Badry, a middle-aged American married to an Egyptian, who is part of the dialogue group feels that dialogue is the only way of finding a solution to the present conflict. "The only good thing that comes out of the Middle East is when two people get together and establish a personal connection...the other thing is always going to be there," she says. "We have to talk to each other."