ALLMEP hosts AI-assisted community dialogues with peacebuilders in groundbreaking new AI Pulse research
According to polling data, levels of trust among the general population of Israelis and Palestinians are reaching record lows. Many on the ground are desperately fighting for a ceasefire, return of the hostages, and diplomatic horizon, but have been left wondering, “Do I have a partner for peace on the other side?” ALLMEP’s latest research initiative, AI Pulse, engaged peacebuilders in our community to better understand local perspectives, visions, and values and come up with a united strategy to move forward together.
In partnership with Dr. Oded Leshem and Remesh AI, ALLMEP launched the AI Pulse initiative to facilitate large-scale discussions among peacebuilders, with plans to extend to the general public. Remesh AI is a platform previously used in other conflict zones. Remesh enables hundreds—and potentially thousands—of participants to engage in online, text-based discussions in their native language. After these conversations take place, AI tools help distill these short answer responses and anecdotes into actionable data.
In the first phase of AI Pulse, completed in July 2024, hundreds of Jewish Israelis, Palestinians in the occupied territories, and Palestinian Citizens of Israel who work in the peacebuilding field gathered for initial discussions with peers from their respective identity groups. Following this preliminary “uni-national” stage, all three communities participated in a joint dialogue session focused on the key issues for each community. The participants responded in their own words– and in their native language– with often lengthy, complex and original answers to open-ended questions. Responses were translated in real time, so that each participant could then vote on each other’s ideas, ranking different statements by importance. Each session was followed by a poll to validate the AI analysis, and to help give participants a sense of the ideas and insights that they and their peacebuilding peers had aligned upon.
The data affirmed the resilience of the peacebuilding community and the existence of a strong foundation of common ground among peacebuilders in the region. All three demographic groups rated “peace and human life” as the key value by a sweeping majority of over 92%. This piece is incredibly important when zooming out from the day-to-day atrocities of the war. The bulk of people prioritize humanity over the idea of ‘winning’ the war or imposing political ideologies via force.
97% of Jewish Israeli participants and 100% of Palestinian participants noted that their most desired future outcome is “ending the war and achieving peace and regional stability.” This further reinforces the sentiment that people share towards developing long term solutions for peace.
There were also certain divides that presented themselves in the data, such as the strategic preferences for each community’s peacebuilding work. Jewish Israelis tended to prioritize building relationships and addressing trauma, while their Palestinian counterparts expressed more of a focus on structural changes like ending the occupation. Even more, there was a divergence in how people thought peacebuilding should be worked on – whether to prepare the public to increase support for a political solution or create public pressure to advance a political resolution. Interestingly enough, the split of opinions around this was seen between gender lines, with male respondents favoring a top-leveraging approach and female participants favoring a ground-building. These insights can provide important data points for ALLMEP members as they synthesize new approaches to programs, campaigns and messaging that can relate to both Israeli and Palestinians stakeholders, and the transformed context that the peacebuilding field is working within.
The exercise also explored how peacebuilders could unite on shared advocacy and engagement with the international community. Some of the solutions revolved around how ALLMEP can show up as an advocacy body at the next G7 summit. Proposed ideas for this included demonstrating how elite-level and ground-building peacebuilding strategies can complement one another. Other ideas were more strictly connected to how ALLMEP interacts with its member organizations. These included balancing structural versus relational approaches to peacebuilding and also creating standardized messaging that can be used across the field.
Looking forward, ALLMEP is planning on expanding this study to the wider public. The data and insights gleaned from this dialogue can help ALLMEP and its member organizations develop new interventions, ideas, and language suited to the post-October 7th reality. While realities on the ground present immense challenges for the peacebuilding community, their opinions, perspectives, values, and visions for the future will be key in reaching the wider public. These are the people who are fighting for a better future every day, despite all that they have been through. The people who believe in a shared future rooted in justice, security, equality, and peace. As the AI Pulse program continues to iterate and run continuing dialogues through the next year, ALLMEP will continue to update its generous body of supporters who make this work possible.
To support AI Pulse and other peacebuilding initiatives in the region, please donate here.
