Consider the following BBC item:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/73587...

Is there any communication between Israelis and Palestinians in Esperanto?

Hi

I don't live in Israel (and have never been there) so I can't comment on the current situation, but the Israeli Esperanto League has some interesting articles about Esperanto contacts between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, in the years shortly before Israeli independence.

Part I of the article:
http://www.ie.esperanto.org.il/142/8.html

Part II fo the article:
http://www.ie.esperanto.org.il/143/14.html

The article suggests that one of the early Arab Esperanto activists was none other than the uncle of Yassir Arafat (!), though I don't know if that's actually true, or if it's really just someone with the same name.

FYI, you should note, when reading those articles, that when they quote old texts referring to "Palestinians", it would have been referring to Jews. Therefore, the "Palestina Esperanto-Ligo" would have been primarily composed of Jews, not Arabs. It would have been the predecessor of today's Israela Esperanto-Ligo. I think that the modern part of the text in the articles refers only to "araboj" and "judoj", so there's no confusion in the modern parts about who is who.

A complete sidenote, I often wonder, if the state of Israel had called itself Palestine rather than Israel, what modern-day Palestinians would be calling themselves and what they would call their independent state, once they get one?

Thanks, this looks very interesting, in fact I think I got hold of Part 2 on another website.
But it would be good to hear from any readers of the forum in Jerusalem about this question, because bridging the divide between linguistic and ethnic communities was Zamenhof's purpose.