In their educational conference call briefing, Vivian Silver and Amal Elsana Alh'jooj, Co-Executive Directors of Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED), talked about Jewish-Arab relations in Israel's south - Six Months after the Gaza Operation.

• To listen to the briefing, click here.

Vivian Silver is the Co-Executive Director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED). Born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, she moved to Israel in 1974 where she was a founding member and General Secretary of the re-established Kibbutz Gezer. She was the founder and first director of the Department to Advance Gender Equality in the United Kibbutz Movement and a member of the Knesset sub-committee for the Advancement of Women in Work and the Economy. Ms. Silver was a member of the board of directors of the New Israel Fund in the 1980s and a member of the steering committee of Shatil in the 1990s. Vivian is the vice-chair of the membership committee of ALLMEP (Alliance for Middle-East Peace) and a member of their leadership committee. She is also one of the women interviewed in the publication Sixty Years, Sixty Voices – Israeli and Palestinian Women. Vivian is a member of Kibbutz Beeri, where she currently resides, and is a founder of the kibbutz's philanthropic fund which supports grassroots, social change projects in the Negev.

Amal Elsana Alh'jooj is the Co-Executive Director of NISPED and the director of AJEEC– the Arab Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation - a division of NISPED. Amal was born in Laqiya, an Arab Bedouin village in the northeastern Negev. She began her career as a community organizer when she was 14, and at the age of 17, established the first Arab Bedouin women's organization. Amal completed her high school education in the village of Tel Sheva and went on to study Social Work at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She received her MA in Community Development from McGill University in Montreal Canada. Amal is the recipient of the Israel Small & Medium Enterprise Authority Initiative of the Year Award (2004), Israel Women's Network Citation for the Advancement of the Status of Bedouin Women (2004), Lady Globes Career Women of the Year Award (2003). In 2005, Ms. Alhjooj was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize within the framework of the "One Thousand Women" submission.