Want to Go for a Walk?

Tracing Abraham's path to Mideast peace

Ajlun, Jordan - High-tech gadget in hand, a man trudges down from a rural hilltop with the information he was seeking about a journey that took place some 4,000 years ago.

The means are modern: Using a tiny global-positioning device to measure their location via satellite and a map superimposed on topographical images provided by Google Earth, Daniel Adamson and Mahmoud Twaissi are tracking the route that Abraham might have trod.

The ends, however, are as ancient as can be. The two researchers, one British, one Jordanian are tracing the footsteps of the ancestral patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the hope that people today will rediscover the common roots of many generations past – and inspire coexistence and understanding in the present.

This is the making of the Abraham Path, a route that will start in Harran, Turkey – the place where many sources suggest Abraham heard "the call" from God and will continue into Syria, down through Jordan, across the river into the West Bank, winding through both Israeli and Palestinian territory before ending in Hebron, or Al Khalil, described in the Book of Genesis as Abraham's burial place.

Eventually, the route would go to Egypt, where Abraham was also a sojourner. In the much longer term, the founders hope to have the path go into Iraq – Abraham's birthplace was Ur and possibly to Mecca, the home of the kabbah, the holiest site in Islam, which Muslims believe Abraham helped to build.

To its initiators, the dream of building the path presents an endless array of possibilities: for religious pilgrimages, for developing the region's underrealised tourism potential, and, most important, for breaking down barriers of fear and misunderstanding between East and West. To sceptics, however, it sounds like an idealistic peace plan that doesn't easily fit into the landscape of a volatile Middle East, where even different sects find themselves embroiled in conflict.

But the project, conceptualised and studied for several years under the auspices of the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University, doesn't intend to ignore or overcome the political realities of the Middle East. Rather, it seeks to increase contact between average people, on a point of reference to which followers of all three major monotheistic religions can relate.

"We're not creating this path. This path already exits. In some ways, we're just dusting off the path so you can see the footsteps," says Harvard's William Ury, a world-renowned expert on conflict negotiation and a co-author of the bestseller, "Getting to Yes." The concept of the project dawned on Professor Ury after decades of working to bring warring sides together, from the Middle East to Northern Ireland.

"It occurred to me that Abraham was the single most underutilised resource in the Middle East. He represents faith, hospitality, and kindness towards others. So the question was, could one somehow evoke the ancient stories to be a catalyst for coexistence, as well as understanding and even an economic source for growth."

Is a Syrian government about to give out visas to Israelis? Would the average American or European feel safe travelling there? Will Israel give out visas to Muslims from around the region to walk through the part of the path that will wind into its territory?

"We have to go slowly," Ury acknowledges. Parts of the path could take years to establish, and its founders say that they don't plan to play Pollyannas about some of the harsh realities on the ground.

"On the trip, from the point of view of religious, social, and economic relations, we found that the idea had a lot of resonance and despite the difficulties and issues, and we got a green light to really proceed. Now what we're faced with is how to assist, how to inspire the actual building of the path."

They hope to have the path open to visitors by the spring of 2008, the first leg of a path that will open gradually.

Among the goals of the path is that it will lead visitors through rural areas where they can interact with average people. One facet of the route will be a network of families willing to host visitors in their homes. And with an eye towards housing larger groups of visitors, there are several projects under consideration to build travellers hostels and other lodgings ready to receive guests during the journey.

Indeed, for the path to truly take route, the local initiative needs to be as strong as the international. As such, the drive to open the Abraham Path in Jordan has been winning over many important advocates. One of them is Ammar Khammash, one of Jordan's foremost architects and ecologists. Khammash says that too much of Jordanian life is focused on crowded urban spaces, and the path will help people reconnect with their roots.

But Dr. Hamid Murad, an Islamic leader in Jordan, sees it more as a way to approach Middle East reconciliation in a very different light one that all three faiths find illuminating.

"We go to conferences all the time with Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and then we agree on all kinds of things, but we never feel the results on the ground," says Murad, who's been involved in numerous interfaith efforts.

"It's as if I'm running my car engine, but I never take it out of the garage," he says. "So maybe it's better if I walk with my own feet."