VISION -- Half Jewish, half Arab
Neve
Shalom ~ Wahat al-Salam
village builds trust
Thursday, 27
September 2007
"Where
there is no vision, the people perish."
Can you imagine Martin Luther King
saying "I have a plan"?
Today, VISION is what matters.
. . and is mostly missing.
A "plan" is not adequate, without a DREAM of
what life will look like down the path.
Most needed today are picture-stories in real life
-- small models demonstrating what life will look like.
People communicating, living, learning, and creating
well together.
Concrete, undeniable, real-life
examples.
Like the 13 North American summer camp-like programs
for the
And others worldwide, like the new 2007 PeaceInsight program in the
NEVE SHALOM ~ WAHAT AL-SALAM
From a vision, a clarion call
to all humankind
A powerful vision-turned-example is NEVE
SHALOM ~ WAHAT AL-SALAM -- Hebrew and Arabic for OASIS OF PEACE - located between Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv-Jaffa
They live their vision as a cooperative
village, jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of
Israel who reside together and are engaged in educational work for peace,
equality and understanding between the two peoples.
Their own relationships are the proving grounds
and bed-rock basis for their pioneering educational work of their School for
Peace, Childrens Educational System and Pluralistic
Spiritual Centre.
Besides its educational work, NS~WAS and its members
also conduct other humanitarian aid programs.
Some summer programs are offered for overseas guests
who can reside in their 39-room hotel and gather to engage and learn in the
village conference halls.
The village is situated equidistant from
THE VISION came from one citizen, Father Bruno Hussar.
He foresaw a village where Jews, Muslims, and Christians
would live together and learn to listen, understand, respect, and trust one
another.
Born in
In 1972, Father Bruno convinced the Latrun Trappist Monastery, a
producer of wine in the
It was on this hillside, overlooking the
He had a VISION of a village where Jews and Arabs from
the country would live together in harmony and peace and collaboration, . ."to prove by its
existence that cooperation is possible."
In 1979, the first families arrived -- one
Jewish, one Arab.
In April, 1987, 15,000 Palestinians and Jews gathered on
the hillsides of NEVE SHALOM~WAHAT AL-SALAM to affirm their vision.
See their PHOTO at http://traubman.igc.org/nswas-openday.htm
In 2007, their
vision lives on.
See their VIDEO at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIDe_uPe67I
.
"Some people thought we were crazy,"
said Nava Sonnenschein, a Jewish resident who moved
with her husband to the village in 1980 while pregnant with the first of their
three children.
"I was hauling buckets of water for cooking,
laundry, and showers," she laughs.
"We needed to have a very big vision to live
here."
We must choose a VISION.
Like a global village, a true community.
Can we all -- no exceptions -- "live together and
learn to listen, understand, respect, and trust one another?"
Can you see it?
Now. . .what's the plan?
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Published in the Los Angeles Times -- Tuesday, 25 September 2007
On the Web at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-peacetown25sep25,1,3692212.story?page=1&cset=true&ctrack=7&coll=la-headlines-world
Half Jewish, half Arab, Neve
Shalom
tries to overcome mutual mistrust.
Divisive pressures test the community's
resolve.
by Ken Ellingwood,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
NEVE SHALOM,
On this evening of celebration, the fireworks sizzled,
sweets beckoned and jubilant guests congratulated the Arab bride's parents with
a double kiss and hearty "Mazel tov!"
"It's very normal," said Nava Sonnenschein, one of the Jews clapping at the edge of the
dance circle. "For here."
The usual rules of the Middle East often don't apply
in Neve Shalom, founded in the 1970s as a utopian
village on a hilltop in
Though most Jews and Arabs in
The tree-shaded hamlet, whose name means "Oasis
of Peace," is defiantly mixed, its bougainvillea-splashed lanes a mishmash
of stone Arab-style houses and boxy, modern Jewish homes.
Schoolchildren learn Hebrew and Arabic together, a
rarity in
The community's name is in both languages. In Arabic,
it is Wahat al Salam
(though the Israeli government has never recognized that part).
"We don't go out and protest in the classic
way," said Ahmad Hijazi, a 40-year-old Arab who
moved from northern
A half-hour's drive from
But this is no theme park. The affections and hurts
are real, the gains and setbacks intimately felt. Alongside its taboo-breaking,
the community has shown how hard it can be for Jews and Arabs to fully
understand each other, even when they are trying.
Few know better than Abdessalam
Najjar, a 55-year-old village leader with a balding
head and pencil-thin beard tracing his jawline. Najjar, the father of the bride, moved to Neve Shalom in 1979 with a new wife, Ayshe,
and a heart full of hope.
He was 27 and willing to take a chance, she 19 and in
need of some persuading. Najjar, a devout Muslim, had
been involved in discussion groups with Jews while studying at a branch of
The Najjars were the first
Arab family to join Neve Shalom. Almost 30 years
later, they are mainstays, well-liked and respected across the community. Najjar has been mayor and is working with a Jewish
colleague in developing the community's new spiritual center for interfaith
conferences, lectures on peace topics and prayer.
The couple built a life and home in Neve Shalom, "slowly, brick after brick," Najjar said. After the arrival a year later of the first of
their four children, Ayshe watched over the village's
growing crop of babies -- Jews and Arabs -- and he turned his efforts to
helping start the village's bilingual school. He was one of two teachers.
He says residents have succeeded in creating an
environment for raising tolerant children. For the grown-ups too there have been
learning opportunities and innumerable debates, important and petty. Najjar, for example, has argued with his mostly secular
Jewish neighbors over his right to pray at work and over whether he could keep
a few sheep at home, as many rural Palestinians do. (He lost that one.)
Najjar said he once believed
that conflicts break out only "between bad people." No more.
"This conflict can be between two good
guys," he said.
Neve Shalom's
residents, mostly left-leaning professionals and academics, have been tested by
two Palestinian uprisings, war in
To much of the rest of
The village today carries tempered aspirations and
scars from past political fights. Not all of these are over yet.
Jewish and Arab residents spar over whether Neve Shalom Jews should perform compulsory service in the
Israeli army. Arabs in
They disagree too on some of the issues at the heart
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as what to do about Palestinian
refugees who fled homes in present-day
Arab residents are resentful that, despite the talk of
equality, Hebrew is the village's lingua franca. While the Arabs learned Hebrew
by attending Israeli schools, few grown Jews in Neve
Shalom have mastered Arabic.
Some residents from both groups, now in middle age,
fear that the village has lost some of its political daring. It is perhaps telling
that the burning issue these days is not potential peace talks but whether Neve Shalom residents can formalize their hold on the plots
where they built homes years ago on land that was shared without private
ownership.
"There are so many things we don't talk
about," said Ayelet Ophir-Auron,
51, a Jewish special-education consultant who moved to the village with her
family four years ago.
But residents say it may be success enough that Neve Shalom has managed to sustain its vision of mutual
tolerance in a society with deep inequities between Jews and minority Arabs,
who make up a fifth of
They assert that the project still has drawing power,
even if it is from the fringe of Israeli society, and point to a waiting list
of potential newcomers. The village is full but hopes to begin adding 90
families in the next year or so by turning some of the vacant land surrounding
it into housing lots.
"It is enough that we are here," said Rayek Rizek, 52, an Arab former
mayor who with his wife runs a cafe and gift shop at the entrance to the
village. "It will never maybe bring the solution to the conflict. But
there is still a small idea that maybe it is a candle in the midst of a big
darkness."
Neve Shalom, a short drive
off the main highway between
Village business takes place in the two-story
administration building. Two resident committees run the village and,
separately, the elementary school, School for Peace and spiritual center. Key
decisions, such as passing the budget and picking new residents, are voted upon
by village members in the style of a town meeting.
Neve Shalom has no stores
other than the cafe-gift shop, though it sports a 39-room guest house. Its
swimming pool is frequented by visitors from as far away as
The village is a far cry from the rough encampment
that Rizek and his wife, Dyana
Shaloufe-Rizek, encountered when they arrived in
1984.
Neve Shalom had been founded
a decade earlier by a Dominican priest, Bruno Hussar, on a thistle-covered hill
leased from a nearby Roman Catholic monastery. Father Bruno, who was born to
Jewish parents, envisioned a place where people of different faiths could live
together, though without a fixed political ideology.
Neve Shalom's
first young couples arrived in 1978, motivated by the chance to craft an
egalitarian way of life between Jews and Arabs. The village looks out over the
site of a key battle in the 1948 war that broke out with
Shaloufe-Rizek, who had been
a student activist at
"There was nothing. No paved roads. A lot of
flies and mosquitoes," Rayek Rizek
recalled.
But it was an exhilarating place for Jews and Arabs to
confront their yawning ignorance about one another.
Dorit Shippin,
a Jew, arrived with her husband, Howard, the same year as the Rizeks after searching for a community that was, she said,
"pluralistic enough and open-minded." She recalled being stunned to learn
that
"My father participated in the 1948 war, and
especially for this generation, the stories that they have are not stories of
destruction and deportation of Palestinians, but they are stories of
conquering, freeing, friendships and survival," Shippin
said. "It was quite shocking to hear the other side of the picture."
For their part, Arab residents began to assume the
burden of shared leadership and to confront a fuller portrait of Jews than the
unflattering images many had grown up with.
The community's discussions were earnest, often
heated. But the outbreak of the first intifada in
1987 drove home for many residents the fundamental gap that remained in how
each side viewed the world.
"The Palestinians saw it mostly as a kind of
legitimate struggle of the people under occupation, and the Israelis saw it as
an unnecessary kind of uprising that threatens their life, and their existence
here," Rizek said.
Some residents wonder, though, whether the community
too often has steered around explosive issues to preserve neighborly harmony.
"As the years went by, it became more and more
challenging to talk about the difficult issues," said Boaz Kitain, a Jew who has been mayor and run the elementary
school and School for Peace. "We stopped talking about the difficult
things."
The community was thrown into turmoil when Kitain's 20-year-old son, Tom, an Israeli soldier, died in
a helicopter collision en route to
The Kitain family asked to
put up a memorial. But some Arab residents found it unthinkable that a
community dedicated to peace would commemorate a soldier on a military mission,
even one who had grown up in their midst. The debate grew bitter. To the Kitains, it only aggravated their grief.
Despite an eventual compromise -- a plaque on the
village basketball court saluting a "son of peace, killed in war" --
the episode proved damaging. Kitain's wife, Daniella, once active as fundraiser for the village,
withdrew from community affairs. She has never rejoined.
Community relations have fared better since then,
despite the buffeting effects of the second intifada,
which further worsened Jewish-Arab relations in
Both times, Neve Shalom's residents threw themselves into common action.
After the second intifada broke out in 2000, they
formed a motorcade to show support for families of 13 Arabs killed during
rioting and delivered medical aid to Palestinians in the West Bank, a big swath
of which sits within a 30-minute drive.
"This is when residents felt even more that we
have to come together and try to do something for the outside," said Hijazi, the development director.
There is also much thinking here about the future.
The community plans to keep up its education efforts,
mainly through the School for Peace, which over the years has provided training
workshops for 40,000 peace and human rights activists and others. Supported
heavily by foreign donations, it has served as an incubator for the Israeli and
Palestinian peace movements, with alumni sprinkled among important activist
groups on both sides.
A planned residential expansion, which would nearly
triple the number of families to almost 150, could lend the project more
symbolic clout by increasing its size.
Some residents are urging a more activist role for the
community in Israeli politics at a moment when polls show abysmal relations
between Jews and Arabs.
"It's time for us to go out more, even if they
don't want to hear us," Dorit Shippin said. "We have to stop apologizing, really,
and be relevant."
The community claims a tangible accomplishment in
rearing a generation of children to have friends across lines of religion and
ethnic origin. Those young people have at times been unnerved by how much the
egalitarian ideals of Neve Shalom clash with the
stark realities of wider Israeli society.
"It's like a dream," said Sama Daoud, a 19-year-old Arab
who lives with her parents in Neve Shalom. "It's
different from the outside."
Tali Sonnenschein,
15, said she and her friends were well aware of the tensions and stereotypes
that cleave the world outside Neve Shalom.
She sees no reason, though, why that should stop her
little community from seeking some way out of the mess.
"I get to live in this place and have a different
opinion -- that everybody can learn to live together," she said.
"It's a little cheesy, maybe. But that's what I learned."
Reporter Ken Ellingwood receives e-mail at ellingwood@latimes.com .