In the last week, Israel bombed Beirut, assassinated the leader of Hezbollah, and launched a ground invasion of Lebanon. Israel claimed that its attacks were a response to rockets being launched by Hezbollah into northern Israel. The invasion of Lebanon marks an escalation of Israel’s year-long war in Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians. In the past few days, Iran fired missiles at Israel in retaliation for the attacks on Hezbollah, and there are now fears that these conflicts will spiral into a regional war.

For Tarek El-Ariss, the scenes of devastation in Beirut and civilians fleeing fighting are eerily familiar. El-Ariss grew up in Lebanon and survived its 15-year long civil war that raged from 1975 to 1990. He is now James Wright Professor and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College.

Prof. El-Ariss has been deeply engaged in facilitating dialogue in the Dartmouth community around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the past year. This campus-wide conversation was featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes, in the New Yorker, and other national media. But these peacemaking efforts fractured on May 1, when Dartmouth’s president called in police to break up a small student encampment protesting Israel’s war in Gaza. This resulted in the arrest of 89 students, faculty and community members, some violently.

“I don't think police has any room on campuses,” said El-Ariss, who said that members of his class went out to support the protesters. “I think campuses are places of intellectual engagement and dialog. This is what I do and this is what I focus on.”

Prof. Tarek El-Ariss has a new book, “Water on Fire: A Memoir of War.” He writes that he had “to learn to cohabit with war,” but that the experience continues to live inside him like a bullet buried in his body.

“The war is in us. It manifests itself in different shapes and forms and pain,” said El-Ariss. “Sometimes the bullet burns you, and sometimes you forget about that pain, and then it comes back. But you're always reminded of that which you have experienced, and you take this experience with you wherever you go, both with its bad parts, like the pain and the anxieties, but also in the survival mechanisms that you develop in order to survive this experience.”

El-Ariss said that to find a solution to the conflict in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon, “You need to begin to acknowledge the humanity of the other and not think that I can eliminate the other so that I can preserve myself.” Attempting to wipe out a perceived adversary has “led to more instability and to more long term danger for those who are applying this model.”

“It's been 75 years at least, and that model is not working.”

El-Ariss said that as he views the spiraling Middle East conflict, “the despair and the hope coexist. There is the pain and the possibility of overcoming the pain. And these two things I have to hold on to, both at the same time.”