Facilitator

Haneen Abualsoud

Born and raised in Gaza to Palestinian Falahi Refugees, Haneen experienced life under siege, occupation, and patriarchy. Despite the challenges, her dream of freedom of movement persisted. Growing up amidst conflict and near-death experiences, her connection to life deepened, especially after becoming a mother to her two children. As an activist in Gaza, she advocated for peace and nonviolent resistance. In 2018, Haneen participated in her first peace conference, where she called for peace for Palestine and Gaza. Connected to a community of peace builders, she found support to leave Gaza and continue her peace-building work from outside. She lived in Tamera community in Portugal for two and a half years, and immersed herself in the studies of peace-building, community building and permaculture. Despite the difficult separation from her children during this time, Haneen's soul knew she had to stay outside to bring her family to her.
Haneen is now based in the South of Portugal. Her diverse experiences led her to start workshops, where she uses guided movement journeys to help others connect with themselves deeply. Believing in the importance of inner healing for collective liberation, she incorporates movement, voice, listening, and interaction, all rooted in love, and all based on intuition.

Facilitator

Miriam Elizabeth Turmalin

Born in Nazareth to a Jewish mother and a German (Christian) father, Miriam grew up between both cultures and lands. Knowing from a young age that she is an outcome of peace and love between two nations who were enemies, she was called to become a peace activist in the Holy Land.

After studying holistic art therapy in Vienna, incorporating dance, movement, improvisation, voice, music, and shamanic practices, Miriam returned to her homeland to dedicate her life to peace work. She creates spaces and ceremonies for healing and transformation, engaging in guided meditation and dreamwork. Through her performance "Moondance," Miriam embodies various archetypes and navigates the portals of life and death, acting as a spiritual midwife. In the gathering, she envisions her role as creating such spaces and guiding participants through whatever may emerge.

Falicitator

Ayelet Yekutiel

Born in Jerusalem-Al-Quads, Ayelet weaves her roles as a dancer, choreographer, and healer into a tapestry of love and compassion. With a background from 'SEAD' academy of dance and ‘Kelim’ Choreography Studies, as well as Body-Mind Centering, Contact Improvisation and Axis Syllabus, Ayelet performs, teaches and facilitates healing journeys through movement and rhythm. Currently, she leads the dance and somatics programs in the ‘Forest-Campus’ of the Food Forest in Beit-Lehem of the Galile. For years, Ayelet actively engages in peace activism and artivism, aiming to bring hope to the troubled land of Palestine-Israel.

Facilitator

Kifah Abdel Halim

Kifah has been exploring the relationship between body and mind for more than 10 years. She perceives movement as a prospect for physical and spiritual healing. In her work as a movement coach, she combines between bodywork and various methods such as yoga, meditation, qi gong, breath work, somatics and intuitive movement to help students explore their bodies and develop awareness through movement. She started dancing few years ago and discovered her passion for improvisation and self expression.

Kifah is also a professional translator working in both Arabic and Hebrew; inter alia, she is part of the Maktoob Series dedicated to translating Arabic literature into Hebrew. She believes that understanding the culture and the mentality of the other is a key for overcoming fear and alienation.

Kifah lives in Haifa, a mixed Arab-Jewish city, in the north of Israel.

Facilitator

Nitsan Joy Gordon

Nitsan Joy Gordon is a peace activist, group facilitator, dance/movement and IFS therapist, storyteller & author of Together Beyond Words: Women on a Quest for Peace in the Middle East. Her life experiences — growing up in an Israeli border kibbutz fraught with danger and violent skirmishes, facing hatred in the American South as the only Jew in her junior high school, and finding dance as a way to work through her trauma — set her on a 30-year quest to train and empower women and men as peacebuilders and transform prejudices between Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians. 

In 2003 she co-founded Together Beyond Words, a peacebuilding organization that brings Muslims, Jews, Bedouins, Druse and Christians together in a dynamic process to heal ancient wounds, recover hidden strengths, and promote emotional understanding. Using Dance/Movement Therapy, Listening Partnerships, Healing Touch, Radical Aliveness (RA), Playback Theater and Internal Family Systems (IFS), this groundbreaking approach teaches participants to harness conflict and intense emotions as a way to achieve empathy and deep connection with perceived enemies. Nitsan has led workshops and taught courses in Israel and the US for over 20 years. She lives in Israel and is the mother of two children.

Facilitator

Amira Abu Ata

Amira serves as a facilitator for groups and processes aimed at fostering social and spiritual change. Her project, Tashafi (which translates to "healing" in Arabic), serves as a conduit through which she endeavors to spread light and healing throughout the world. Engaging with diverse groups including Jews and Arabs, women's circles, and mixed cohorts, Amira employs techniques that integrate the body and mind, movement, attentive listening, and the promotion of awareness on various issues. She holds a firm belief in the profound potency of group work, wherein individuals find space for personal introspection alongside inclusion and support from the collective.

Amira is originally from the village of Kara in Wadi Ara, within the 1948 territories. She pursued her academic studies at the University of Tel Aviv, obtaining both her BA and MA degrees between 2015 and 2021. Seeking to reestablish connections with her culture and community, which had diminished during her time in Tel Aviv, she relocated to Haifa. There, she found a balance between city life and the preservation of her identity and cultural heritage.

Facilitator

Abdul Karim Qtifan

Abdul Karim has many talents and walks in many worlds.
Born and raised in Gaza, he experienced in his bones the injustice and violence of the occupation of his homeland, Palestine. In 2005, at the age of 23, he left for London, where he built a life and several successful businesses, including AK Vibes Crystals. During this time Karim started sharing different healing modalities that he was gifted with through the body, intuition, ancient memories and faith-based listening - including cupping (blood letting), dowsing, Atlantean and ancient Egyptian ancestral wisdom, and later also Sufi whirling meditation dance. 

A big personal transformation and deeper calling led him to renounce urban life and business profits, and take to the road to explore the world, as much within as without. Over the past seven years, living in his multidimensional van called Buraq, his life mission as a wandering dervish has come more into focus: to bring healing and peace to the world through the path of love. Karim's mission and its manifestations have been deeply influenced by his path as a whirling dervish in the Sufi lineage of Rumi. This deeply body-based mystical tradition holds the keys to liberation and peace through the heart. Karim will share the foundations of Sufi whirling path of love with us and hold space for healing in whatever way is needed during our time together.

Facilitaror

Eran Markose

Eran was raised in Jerusalem within a Conservative Jewish upbringing around the values of Zionism. Following 4.5 years of service as a combat soldier and officer in an elite military unit in the West Bank, he began to perceive discrepancies in the ideologies he had been raised with. 

Upon returning to Israel from India, Eran embarked on a journey of learning with various masters and teachers. His studies encompassed meditation, energy work, and other healing practices, including Trilotherapy, Energy Washout, Holoenergetic Healing, Recall Healing, and Somatic Experiencing. These modalities emphasize the intricate connection between mind and body, highlighting the transformative power of love and forgiveness.

In recent years, Eran has deepened his bond with the people and land of Israel-Palestine, integrating his personal and collective healing endeavors into the realm of peacebuilding. He believes that when we bring peace into our relationships with ourselves and our loved ones we will bring peace into the collective level as well. If we can’t heal our own wounds, how can we heal the deep wounds of a bleeding land?

Gathering Co-Organizer & Host

Daphne Percy Chorafa

Daphne was born in Sweden and grew up between Greece, Sweden and France. She studied Fine Art (BA) in Scotland between 2012-2016.  Between the years of 2018-2023, Daphne lived on the land of Israel-Palestine, where she studied dance and Dance-movement therapy (MA), focusing on the development of kinaesthetic awareness and sensitivity to expression and communication through the body. She particularly loves working in nature, immersing herself in the natural world, alone or in a group. Daphne returned to her native Aegina in July 2023, where she now lives and teaches Contact Improvisation, and just completed the building process of a spacious dance yurt, which will host the Gathering in May-June. Together with Nepheli, she co-created the Uniting in Our Humanity Gathering, and during the week she will coordinate the event and hold space for participants and facilitators.

Gathering Co-Organizer & Host

Nepheli Galgos

Nepheli was born and raised in Athens to a Belgian Jewish mother and a Greek Christian father. She completed her MA in International Community Development, researching the areas of decolonization methodologies, indigenous knowledge and the intersections between environmental, social and economic sustainability. She lived in Israel-Palestine and worked in several NGOs on the land, in Peru, Zambia and Tanzania. 

Through her personal experience, Nepheli realized that to create long lasting change on a larger scale, one must start with themselves. She is a dedicated yoga practitioner and contact improvisation dance enthusiast. Nepheli recently came back to live in Greece and studied somatic bodywork, following the Pantarei Approach. She continues to study various fields of somatics, while wishing to co-create spaces for healing and transformation. Together with Daphne, Nepheli initiated the Uniting in Our Humanity Gathering. She oversees all organizational aspects and she is looking forward to holding space for the meaningful work that will take place during the week.