I've been off the grid for the last 10 days in Cyprus with a group of Palestinians and Israelis who have joined together for the next year to work on cross-community conversation and dialogue. We have sat isolated in a village for the last week discussing our shared values of justice, empathy and transformation. We cried, we laughed, we made up new lyrics to songs, we connected to each other as people.

We also traveled around Cyprus and learned about the Turkish invasion and the current separation between Northern Turkish Cyprus, and the Southern, Greek-Oriented, Republic of Cyprus. We walked through a checkpoint and crossed the green line and watched as everything that had been written in Greek suddenly transformed into Turkish. We shrugged and laughed uncomfortably as a feeling of déjà vu descended upon us as we discussed the conflict there with the locals. The same cactus we have here, grow there. So much was the same to our conflict back home. Same, but different. It added a larger perspective.