As the last tanks withdrew behind a newly completed fence, crowds of Palestinians celebrated. A 21 year-old Palestinian student told a New York Times reporter that, finally able to move freely, he and his friends had “seen places we've never seen before, that we've heard about for years.” 

For Mathias Mossberg, the head of the Middle East Program at the EastWest Institute, the withdrawal from Gaza represented an opportunity for positive change. A former Swedish ambassador, Mossberg began work with EWI in 2003 and began two projects. In the Private Sector Initiative, Mossberg’s team successfully interested a powerful group of financiers from Chicago to invest in a Gaza industrial property that provided 500 local jobs. EWI’s hope was that once convinced of its value, Israelis and Palestinians would transfer the asset safely. A second program encouraged frank talk between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The dialogues project was built on the motto of EWI, to bring together people who would not ordinarily speak,” says Mossberg. He remembers that, during the talks, there was a growing sense that a traditional two-state solution would not work for Israel. “So we started to think outside the box, engaging well-connected people on both sides.”

What emerged from EWI’s dialogues was a new vision of a peaceful Israel in which Palestinians and Israelis lived together side by side, as citizens of two superimposed states. Mossberg wrote about “parallel states” for Foreign Affairs and The Guardian and, after leaving EWI, continued to study the idea with the support of the Swedish government.

Mossberg himself concedes that this dual system of government is far-fetched, although he points out that all so-called realistic peace plans have failed. Recently, he presented the results of his academic study in Israel. He says the reception was enthusiastic, even among some Israeli settlers. He particularly remembers one young Palestinian woman from Ramallah who lit up at the thought.

“She said, ‘Wow, that would mean I could go see the coast,’” Mossberg recounts. “And this was so interesting because on the one hand it shows you the tragedy that people can’t go 30 miles to the coast, but on the other shows that a young person confronted with new ideas sees the possibilities and not the obstacles.”

The five years since Israel withdrew from Gaza have, of course, not lived up to Sharon’s hopes. Hamas radicalized the territory. Rocket launches, retaliations, a tight embargo and accusations of war atrocities have made a lasting peace seem all the more elusive. The industrial park EWI sought to protect was destroyed in border fighting.

But still, something has survived from EWI’s intervention in the Middle East: the tentative connections made between Israelis and Palestinians in the dialogues, and some of their ideas. Ideas that may not bring peace tomorrow, but that can offer new hope to a new generation.