Can Travel Be a Force for Peace? This Tour Leader Thinks So.

When they started their tour company, they wanted to win the peace prize.

Well, sort of. Mr. Abu Sarah said it was a joke between them. One of the two friends was a Palestinian who grew up in Jerusalem and the other was an American Jew. Mr. Abu Sarah and Mr. Cooper decided to apply their experience in tourism. Their goal was to transform travel and travelers into a force for peace.

A defining feature of the tour company they founded in 2009 is the dual narrative tour, in which a group of tourists is led by two guides, one from either side of a longstanding conflict or division that has affected the area that the group is in. A Unionist and a Nationalist lead the tour of sites around Dublin, Derry and Belfast. On their tour of the Holy Land, the groups visit Tel Aviv, Bethlehem and Jerusalem with both a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli Jew.

Everyone told Mr. Abu Sarah that this was the dumbest idea they had ever heard of. We proved them wrong within a year.

Over the last decade, Mejdi Tours has hosted over 20,000 guests, and the company now runs trips to the Balkans, Colombia, Egypt, Morocco, and Costa Rica. Mr. Abu Sarah is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He has written a book that makes the case for travel as a force for peace.

Mr. Abu Sarah and Mr. Cooper used the downtime to expand or develop several new trips, including a history-of-civil-rights tour of the U.S. South.

Mr. Abu Sarah was going to lead a group tour in Egypt. He talked about the danger of the single narrative, the power of bringing together opposing perspectives, and what he learned from the hardest trip of his life.

Our conversation has been edited to make it clearer.

We came across a single dominant narrative in so many places that Scott and I had traveled to, but there were other narratives that were never given a voice in the public sphere. We thought that with our tours, there would be no single story. We decided to start in Jerusalem, Palestine and Israel because Scott is a Jew and I am a Palestinian. The dual narrative is so powerful because it gives you the chance to hear different opinions, but also to understand the people you meet, to understand their fear and their anger, and to really fall in love with the place you are in.

It is extremely rare. On any group tour, you would see conflicts which are personality oriented. We have a group of people coming on the same trip who are both conservative and liberal, but because of the two guides who are different from each other, they are able to hold the conversations without fighting. We almost never have a problem between the guests and the guides, which was the other worry people had.

I used to live in Washington, D.C., which is a very divided city, and I realized that my friends and I wouldn't venture out of the neighborhoods we already knew. We got a Republican and a Democrat to co-lead a tour of the city. The first trip was amazing. If you put a Republican and a Democrat together, you would think they would just talk. That wasn't the case at all. The Heritage Foundation, which is very conservative, was one of the most interesting conversations we had. Some of the liberals in the tour group had never had a real, productive conversation with a conservative. By the end of the discussion, it was clear that you are doing this wrong or that wrong. It happens on our tours in Israel and Palestine. It happens in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.

When I was 18 years old, I had a real conversation with a Jewish-Israeli person. My brother was beaten to death in prison by Israeli soldiers, so I grew up with the idea that the other is evil. I decided to study Hebrew when I was 18 because I had to. You can survive in Jerusalem without Hebrew. I thought that none of the people in the class would want me to be here. My teacher was amazing. She spoke Arabic to make me feel welcome. It was the first time I felt like I was being treated differently than the other person.

Before that moment, I only knew one narrative of Israel, and many Israelis probably only know one narrative of Palestinians: the one they hear in the news.

It can be easier to be open to learning about issues that are thousands of miles away. When I talk about my work with Syrian refugees, people will often say, "Oh, I would like to go and volunteer with Syrian refugees in Jordan or Turkey." If not, you should go to Syria.

We tend to think of travel in terms of distance, but it's really a lifestyle. You will learn to travel when you go abroad if you travel in your own community. Going from my home in East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem was the hardest trip I have ever taken. It's just a 15- or 20-minute walk, but it challenged me the most.

People are not interested in learning when they travel. That is not true. Surveys tell us it's not true. People want to do good when they travel, and they are looking for culture and connection. I like to travel and see museums, swim in the ocean, and enjoy music. I do more than that. I like to say that travel is an act of diplomacy, as you travel and meet new people and hear their stories. It is so much fun. You will tell people about it when you come back.

The Better Travel is hosted by a woman.