Yalla is an award-winning collaboration between young Arabs and Jews that focuses on humanizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by encouraging creative expression.
The project began as a literary journal by students at McGill University in 2004[1]. The title of the journal is derived from the Arabic and Hebrew slang word “Yalla”, meaning “lets get going!”.
The Yalla project is a not-for-profit international initiative aimed at stimulating dialogue and demonstrating the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of mainly Jewish and Arab youth. Yalla brings together poetry, short stories, essays, art, music and photography of Arab and Jewish youth[2]. The journal is distributed worldwide.
Yalla has a board which is equally balanced between Jewish and Arab members. Yalla is a collaborative effort and is not politically affiliated. Yalla has published two journals and is slated on publish a third on in late 2009.
The Yalla editorial board is currently centered in Toronto and comprises the following members: