Equality within Difference: The Story of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam by Jesse Zerger Nathan

A Research Paper Presented to the Department of History and the Department of Bible and Religion Bethel College

In Partial Fulfillment Of the requirements for the Course Social Science Seminar, History 482 and Advanced Religious Studies, Bible/Religion 482 Mark Jantzen, Advisor Patty Shelly, Advisor North Newton, Kansas April 2005

Table of Contents Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................i Preface.................iii Introduction..............................1 Part I: The Story The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Brief History......................................2 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: Background and Structure...........................................9 Four Paths: A Historical Analysis of the Village Numerical Parity and the Maintenance of Practical Equality........................14 The Economics and Financing of Co-existence....................................23 Branching Out: Opening the Primary School to Area Villages......................31 Tom Kitain and a Community in Crisis...........................................................40 Further Discussion...........................................................................................................48

Part II: The Philosophy National Identities in Dialogue.......................................................................................51 A Certain Kind of Contact..............................................................................................53 Three Pillars: The Philosophical and Practical Dimensions of an Inter-ethnic, Inter-faith Community The First Pillar: The Exploring Identity, Encountering The Other...........58 The Second Pillar: Primary Education for Peace ...........................................63 The Third Pillar: A Center for Pluralistic, Spiritual Understanding.............66 Judeo-Christian Theological Implications.....................................................................68

Final Conclusions.........................................................................................................................72 Appendix A: Timeline.................................................................................................................76 Appendix B: A Map of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam............................................................80 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................81

Acknowledgments A project of this magnitude could not have been completed without the tremendous support of my community. This paper discusses the complexities and diverse experiences at one specific community, yet constant throughout this discussion is the underlying belief in the importance of community itselfas a source of hope, peace and, ultimately, support. My communitywhile not as intentionally defined as that of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salamhas provided me with an incredible amount of assistance and encouragement, and, in doing so gives me great hope as I seek to be a peacemaker. I am so thankful for this support. In trying to thank everyone one often leaves someone out, but I will try nonetheless. Most basically, I simply could not have financed the trip to Israel/Palestine for the month of study at Neve Shalom had it not been for the generous donations of so many friends and family. I have been overwhelmed and humbled by the amount of support Ive received and I cannot fully express my appreciation. Thank you. While staying at Wahat al-Salam I was welcomed into the community routine, encouraged to talk to many diverse people and allowed to enmesh myself into the daily life of the village. It was all that a researcher could ask for. Thank you Abdessalam for your time and encouragement; Howard and Dorit for being so generous with your time and resources; thank you Kamil, Ilan, Daniella, Boaz, Shireen, Ariela, Nava, Ruth and Ety for giving me a chance to talk with you about the community. Thank you Raida for allowing me to observe your classroom, as well as giving me a chance to discuss my observations with you. Thank you to the hotel staff for your generosity and help those rugged, first few days. Ori, Noam, Chris, Heidi, Felix, Wissam and Judith, thank you for including me in your activities, hanging out with me, and taking the time to engage me on your ideas and perspectives. Thank you Bob and Michal for a wonderful Saturday afternoon of eating, shopping, walking the dog and playing gamesand for access to your piano. Rita, thank you so much for helping arrange my place at the volunteer house, as well as for your engaging discussion about the village. Thank you Rayek for sipping tea with me at sunset, and, most of all, thank you Anne for a wonderful, adventurous ride (and discussion) on the way to Jerusalem. I want also to thank so many people at Bethel College who have helped me along in this process. While it is impossible to complete such a listing, I do, in particular, want to thank Professors Patty Shelly, Mark Jantzen, Penny Moon and Duane Friesen for your guidance and support. You have taught me so much more than you will ever imagine, and you have helped me to find myself. For me, the four of you are teachers in the most important and inspirational sense of the word. So many of my friends played key roles in keeping me going, especially during difficult times, and for all of their support I am deeply appreciative. The illustrious crew of dudes whom I live withJared Hawkley, Ian Huebert, Andy Gingerich, Henry Dick, Nick Schrag, Eric Stucky and Jesse Overrighthave been a constant source of intellectual and creative stimulation. For this, as well as for being the people I have depended on most for friendship and the everyday supports of life, I thank you. Thank you Andy for being the best roommate I could ever have and for always being ShowbizI could not have done it without you. Other friendstoo many to fairly name offhave helped me in immeasurable ways, sometimes without even knowing it. I am so thankful for you all. Since I first began my formal education, my family has provided me with a space in which any idea was acceptable for discussionand in which questioning was never deemed

dangerous. I am so thankful for the influence, guidance and support that has always come from my parentsSandy Nathan and Kirsten Zergeras well as from my siblingsDaagya, Jono and Josh. For all of the editing on this and many other papers, thank you. Most importantly, thank you for giving me my first and most lasting experience of what community ought to be. Finally, this project could not have been completed without the faith and support of my best friend, Steph Long. Thank you, Steph, for being the center around which my life is grounded, for allowing me to search, discover and create while providing the love, friendship and companionship that keeps me going. I love you.

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Preface The human race stands on the brink of its own undoing. Daily we are bombarded with reports of disaster and despair, from global warming to global terror. Politics often seems empty and corrupt, symbolic at best. Organized religion is increasingly hijacked by fundamentalists seeking to advance an agenda rarely concerned with the welfare of the planet, let alone the welfare of most of the planets people. Despite the dawn of the Information Age, ethnic and racial divisions rooted in nationalist fervor have spawned appalling abuses of human rights globally. The United Statessupposedly the ideal nation-statepreaches democracy abroad while curtailing civil liberties for its own citizens and ignoring the plight of thousands of its own poor, sick and isolated. Were every person on this planet to consume at the rate of the United States, the planet and its ecosystems would collapseaccording to some commentators, this collapse has already begun.1 Our task as global citizensin whatever vocation we work fromis therefore to strive in whatever way we can to reverse this seemingly inevitable spiral towards a disastrous future. I have come to believe that the most effective, practical and moral answers to most (if not all) the social, economic, political and religious problems of our times are rooted in nonviolence. It is this or else, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., nonexistence. As nationalism continues to rear its bloody head and the nation-state grows increasingly disconnected from the daily lives of its citizens, a beacon of potential hope lies in the growing movement worldwide to re-embrace community.2 In a multitude of forms, intentional and indirect, loose and rigid, community means a commitment to the clichd, but ever important slogan: think globally, act locally. A concerted effort to rebuild community means rebuilding our society at a fundamental levelrebuilding it around a new set of priorities emphasizing nonviolent co-existence with our world, not the violent, competitive domination of the world that we see manifested around us so clearly. Rebuilding in this manner is an immense task; it will require nothing short of a paradigm shift. Theology is, in many ways, the study of paradigms. It encompasses the totality of all storiesseeking to determine a pattern by which we can find meaning, and perhaps some hint of the Divine. History, on the other hand, is the story of change over timeand any historian knows that great change comes gradually, sometimes in the smallest, seemingly imperceptible increments. Studying history and theology, therefore, is more than an objective task for coolheaded scholars in classrooms and coffee-shops far from the real world. It is a task for each of us: to find the narratives that can help us envision great changes one story at a time. The story of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is one of those stories. I will not idealize this small, hilltop village. It has its share of problems and controversies. It is not a utopia and the people have never striven for that unrealistic goal. Rather, the villagers of Wahat al-Salam seek humbly to create, through their intentionality and perseverance, a laboratory in which the possibilities of peace can be exploreda nonviolent response to the sea of violence swirling around them. Theirs is a beacon that can help us see hope in those seemingly abstract ideals of nonviolence and community, in a concrete, clearly applicable way. I write this paper, therefore, not from any objective standpoint (for such objectivity is clearly a myth), but from my own personal interest in searching for alternatives to the road our
11

Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1992), 220-227 and Gordon D. Kaufman, In the BeginningCreativity (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2004), 33-52 and 71-106. 22 Elise Boulder, Cultures of Peace: The Hidden Side of History (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 87160.

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world seems headed down. I am writing as a historian and as a theologian laden with all the biases and assumptions that my background and personal narrative bring to the table. Nonetheless, as part of the search for a common meeting point in the larger academic and general discussion of these issues, this paper is grounded in as fair and unbiased an analysis of the evidence as I can mustera sort of humbly subjective attempt at objectivity, though certainly such an attempt is always imperfect. In the end, I hope that this research results in more than a paper. I hope that reading this story reveals a painting set on a much larger canvass: a story about Neve Shalom/Wahat alSalam? Yes. A story about peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine? Yes. But also, I hope, a story that leaves us grappling with the questions that these villagers have made a part of their lives questions of how we practice and live what we believe. These questions are daunting, but as this village demonstrates, ultimately approachable. Indeed only if we begin approaching these questions will we ever also begin to find answers.

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Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. -Chinese Proverb

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Introduction Few modern crises draw as much attention and intense confusion as the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. This complex conflict exists on numerous levelsas a religious dispute, a nationalist clash, a power struggle and a land conflict, to name the most common. Consistent throughout all of these dimensions, however, is the fundamental struggle between two peoples, two distinct histories and two colliding identities. Few groups have set out to address this confrontation between identities as a core element in this struggle. One such group is Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam,3 which, translated, means Oasis of Peace in both Hebrew and Arabic respectively. Neve Shalom is indeed an oasis surrounded on all sides by violence and religious strife, a village born in response to the pressing social, national and religious tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. The history of Wahat al-Salam, explored in the first part of this paper, offers a

picture of a community grappling with issues both specific to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as those more generally found among any group of people intentionally living in community. Four events or decisions in the communitys history define the story of this village: (1) the decision in the beginning years of the village to maintain an even fifty-fifty split between Arab and Jewish families in the community; (2) choosing in early in the communitys history to construct an economic infrastructure dependent on donations, with a minimal internal economy; (3) the 1990 decision to open its primary school to Arab and Jewish children from around the region, instead of keeping it solely a village school; and (4) the 1997 death of Tom Kitain, the son of two community members and a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Throughout the paper, I will alternate the title used for the village, referring at times to the community as Neve Shalom and at times as Wahat al-Salam (and additionally sometimes as NSWAS, the acronym for the full name). I believe this is in line with and out of respect for the efforts to assert equality within the village itself, between Arabic and Hebrew as the languages of two peoples and thus two identities.

Within this historical framework, the second part of the paper explores the basis for the communitys past and current successes. Neve Shalom is guided by a philosophy that recognizes the need to maintain and affirm national, religious and ethnic identity, rather than submerging identity into the proverbial melting pot. The community has applied this loose philosophy and cultivated a community through an environment of sufficient daily cross-cultural interaction, interfaith understanding and inter-ethnic dialogue. This application is grounded in three pillars: (1) a School for Peace which brings together Arabs and Israeli Jews for encounters challenging workshops that hope to facilitate dialogue between two identities, and thus plant the seeds for future co-existence; (2) a primary school that applies the lessons of co-existence and dialogue among children at a young age; and (3) a Spiritual Center that seeks to provide a place for inter-faith discussion and spiritual growth within the community. These three elements have successfully fostered peaceful co-existence at Wahat al-Salam. Additionally, these pillars offer an opportunity to explore the theological implications of witness through co-existenceand what the example of this community can mean for people of Judeo-Christian faith.

Part I: The Story

The enemy of truth is very often not the liedeliberate, contrived and dishonestbut the mythpersistent, persuasive and realistic. --John F. Kennedy

A. The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Brief History The historical narratives playing out in the minds of Israelis and Palestinians are inseparable from their particular perceptions of the present conflict. Likewise, the history of Neve Shalom cannot be understood apart from its historical context.

Roughly six million people inhabit Israel proper4, with approximately eighty percent of the population identifying themselves as ethnically or religiously Jewish, fifteen percent as Muslim and two percent as Christian. The state of Israel defines itself as a Jewish State but also as a democratic nation.5 Yet Israel/Palestine is today embroiled in a bitterly divisive conflict between two national groupsIsraeli Jews and Palestinians (both Muslims and Christians). 6 Commentators, residents and scholars agree that one constantly encounters mistrust, fear and anger everywhere, from Palestinian voices expressing deeply felt oppression and disappointment, and Israeli Jews communicating disillusionment and a growing wish for escapism.7 Inside Israel/Palestine the situation is locked in stalemate, between what some call the existence of privileged and second-class citizensperpetuated by state-backed discrimination against Arab citizens on the one hand and the steady fear of terrorist attacks on the other.8 Most observers, even ardent defenders of Israel as a Jewish State, acknowledge a certain degree of preferential treatment for Jewish citizens, extending into all major aspects of social and political life, including schooling, health care, housing and land use.9 The most recent manifestation of this polarized reality is the struggle known as the Second Intifada (Intifada means shaking off in Arabic), beginning in October 2000, after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offended Muslims nation-wide with his visit to the Al-Aqsa
4 5

The term Israel proper generally refers to the Israeli land not including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sonia K. Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine? Answers to Common Questions (Winnipeg, Canada: Mennonite Central Committee, 2004), 4. 6 How one refers to this area and its people is an important question, with politically explosive implications. I have chosen to refer to the area as Israel/Palestine in the hope that it will represent a certain attempt at neutrality (although it obviously reveals some bias). Clearly, this territory is hotly disputed and calling it either Israel or Palestine seems to make some presumption about who is right or wrong in the complex land-claim struggle. While I am not suggesting that Israel should not exist as a state (when referring to the state specifically I will denote it as the State of Israel), I am recognizing the many convoluted, unresolved claims to this territory that must be sorted out. Additionally, I will refer to Palestinians as either Arabs or Palestinians, depending on the context, based on the fact that this is how they consistently present themselves to outsiders. They explicitly reject the label Israeli Arab as a denial of identity. Jewish residents of Israel/Palestine term themselves Israelis or Israeli Jews. For clarity, I will use the term Israeli Jew. 7 Michal Zak, ed., School for Peace Report: 2003 (Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom: School for Peace, 2003), 4. 8 Ibid. 9 Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 5.

Mosque, which stands on the site of the ancient Jewish Temple Mount. After the visit, in which Sharon brought armed Israeli Defense Forces onto the premises of the Mosque and generally ignored Muslim custom, Palestinians took to the streets, many perceiving it as an act of complete disrespect and domination. When Israeli police killed thirteen Arab demonstrators over a span of just a few days, violence exploded across Israel/Palestine.10 Consequently, Jews have all but disappeared from Arab towns and villages, Arabs have begun avoiding contact with Jews, and an atmosphere of anxiety has taken hold.11 In reality, this recent outburst of violence is the outcome of a clash that has been building between Jews and Palestinians for decades. Sharons inflammatory visit simply ignited the latest round of violence in a conflict that can be traced to the end of the nineteenth century. Zionism, the belief that Jews should have a state of their own, emerged in late nineteenth century Europe.12 Even before modern Zionism was fully articulated, however, settlement of Palestine by Jews had begun. By the 1860s, approximately 10,000 Jews lived in the Holy Land, with eighty percent of those residing in Jerusalem, the majority of them recent immigrants.13 In 1862 Moses Hess wrote Rome and Jerusalem, declaring his Jewish nationality as tied inseparably with the Holy Land and Jerusalem. In 1878, a group of Jerusalem Jews established the first all-Jewish settlement in rural Palestine, called Petah Tikvah, which promptly collapsed due to infighting, crop failure and malaria. By 1882 it was largely defunct. 14 The sense of Jewish nationality became even more pronounced in 1889, when a Russianborn Jew, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, set out to revive Hebrew by modernizing it, outfitting it with
10

Rabah Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue: The School for Peace Approach (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 5. 11 Ibid. 12 Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 11. 13 Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998), 3. 14 Ibid., 4.

adjusted terminology, and creating a uniform system of pronunciationfor daily use.15 Establishing and legitimating a more unified Jewish language served to unite the Jewish people as a whole, creating an increasingly conducive environment for Jewish national identity to solidify. The revival of Hebrew was the most significant part of a general flowering of Jewish activity in Palestine. Still, by the end of the nineteenth century, 90 percent of all residents in Palestine were Arab, and the majority of them were Muslim.16 It was onto this stage that a Hungarian-born Jew, Theodore Herzl, entered the scene. Appalled at antisemitism in France, especially during the trial and conviction for treason of Alfred P. Dreyfuss (a conviction which was later found to be wrong), a French Jewish army officer, Herzl called on Jews to establish a state where Jews could be safe and free from antiSemitic oppression. In his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), Herzl outlined his vision for a Jewish homeland, and, in 1896 founded the World Zionist Organization to further the growing Zionist aspirations of Jews worldwide.17 Herzl bluntly asserted: Palestine is our evermemorable historic home. The very name of Palestine would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.18 While Herzls secular vision for a state was unappealing to many Orthodox Jews, the immigration of secular, socialist-leaning Jews to Palestine increased dramatically in the early twentieth century and was met with substantial hostility and restriction by the Ottoman Turkish government of Palestine. By 1914, there were over 90,000 Jewish inhabitants of the land.19 Ottoman control of Palestine evaporated after World War I, when land controlled by the defeated Axis, including the Ottoman Turks, was parceled out among the victors. Great Britain
15 16

Ibid., 8. Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 10. 17 Gilbert, Israel: A History, 10. 18 Ibid., 11. 19 Ibid., 30.

was given a mandate to administer Palestine, with the presumption that it would govern until Palestine was ready to rule itself democratically.20 Palestinians assumed that an independent state was at the end of the process, and that Britain supported this self-determination. On December 7, 1917, however, the path toward democratic self-rule for Palestine (then predominantly Arab) became tangled in the Balfour Declaration. After growing pressure to appease a strong Jewish-Zionist lobby, the British government, with this document, gave its support to the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People, thereby committing Britains resources to facilitate the achievement of this object.21 This declaration outraged Palestinians who perceived it as a lack of support by the British for Arab Palestinian self-determination. The British government argued that Arab restriction on Jewish immigration was the only reason more Jews did not live in Palestine, and therefore that Jews were not driving [the Palestinians] out of their country, but rather overcoming an age-old barrier to Jewish immigration.22 Violence and retaliation between Jewish and Arab settlements steadily increased with the official ending of World War I in 1919. This galvanized Jewish nationalism worldwide and a third wave of emigration crested, known as the Third Aliyah (aliyah means ascent in Hebrew). In the span of four years, 35,000 Jews immigrated to the Holy Land; most of them were socialists, the vanguard of what would become the collectivist movement in the new state.23 In May 1921, the Jewish armed forces, known as the Haganah, were founded in response to growing violence. Years of low-level violence persisted, and Jewish immigration numbers

20 21

Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 10. Gilbert, Israel: A History, 34. 22 Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1984), 234. 23 Gilbert, Israel: A History, 43.

climbed until, by 1946, the Jewish population in Palestine was 600,000.24 For Arabs this increase in Zionist immigration marked the slow disappearance of a dreamthe dream of an independent Palestinian state. For Jews, these rising tides of Zionist pioneers marked the realization of a dreama dream that became especially urgent in light of the shocking antiJewish sentiment manifested in the Holocaust. The vision for a Jewish State became reality in 1947, when the United Nations passed General Assembly Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan of Mandate Palestine. It gave 56 percent of the land to Jewish Israelis and 44 percent to the Palestinian Arabs.25 Palestinians rejected the partition and on May 15, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared Israeli independence, igniting the 1948 War. In the course of the fighting, 700,000 Arab Palestinians became refugees and over 400 Palestinian villages were demolished.26 By the end of the fighting, Israel controlled 22 percent more land than originally called for in the Partition Plan, covering 78 percent of Mandate Palestine.27 From 1948 to 1966 a military administration governed the areas within Israel proper where the Palestinians lived, limiting Palestinian movement and expression.28 Control was administered both by forcesuch as through the expropriation of Arab landsand also psychologicallyby constructing a collective identity in a manner different from, cut off from, that of the rest of the Palestinians [those living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or abroad].29 This was managed through control of the Palestinian educational system among other things, and it left Palestinians with an indistinct, rootless identity that elided their Palestinian selfhood.30
24

This was, however, only 33 percent of the total population, with the vast majority still Arab Muslims and Christians. See: Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 11. 25 Ibid., 12. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., 13. 28 Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 3. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid.

By the time war broke out again in 1967, the identity of Palestinians in Israel/Palestine was an identity of obedience, estranged from its own history and culture.31 During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel was attacked by a loose alliance of Arab nations including Jordan, Egypt and Syria, ostensibly fighting for Palestinians. By the time the Six-Day War ended, Israel had driven the Jordanians across the Jordan River, the Egyptians out of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrians out of the Golan Heights. After the Camp David accords of 1978, the Sinai was returned to Egypt, but the other three territories remain under Israeli control and are known as the Occupied Territories. Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories were built on confiscated Palestinian land, and have flourished since the early 1970s as a means of cementing its control of the occupied land. Today there are over 400,000 settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.32 Ironically, it was also in the early 70s that the first hints at dialogue between Jews and Arabs began. Meetings between Jewish and Arab Palestinian academics began in earnest, mostly via the Israeli Community Party. These meetings met the need of Arabs to pursue contact with Jews and stroked the liberal leftist ego of a marginal Jewish group.33 It was not until the beginning of the First Intifadaa nonviolent uprising against the Occupationon December 9, 1987, that real defined Palestinian resistance truly began. For the first time, Palestinians declared that the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by Israel was unjust, and that Palestinian statehood must be granted. This awakening of a Palestinian resistance sparked concerted efforts at dialogue as more Israel Jews began to sympathize with the growing Palestinian outcry. Out of this dialogue came the Oslo Peace Accords in September 1993. The Oslo Accords were perceived by supporters to be one of many incremental steps
31 32

Ibid. Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 19. 33 Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 7.

toward peace that would, at last, set the course toward future resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These agreements, however, never reached fruition. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, an important broker in the peace process, was assassinated on November 4, 1995 by a radical right-wing Jewish Yeshiva student upset by what he perceived to be Rabin caving to Arabs. Further implementation of the accords deteriorated as both sides wrangled over details, unable to put into practice the peace plan. Finally, when Oslo Accords interim phase expired in May 1999, Palestinians and Israeli Jews had gone from enthusiastic embrace of the Oslo accords to a mood of pessimism and despair.34 Consequently, when Ariel Sharon visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2000, accompanied by hundreds of armed Israeli soldiers and police, he provoked an intense reaction from Arab Muslims. Across the country, Arabs declared that they had had enough of the occupation, the restriction and control of their own destiny. Sharons irreverent visit to site of supreme holiness like the Al-Aqsa Mosquecould not, most Palestinians felt, be tolerated. Within hours protests sprang up in Jerusalem and elsewhere and in the first week after the visit, thirteen Palestinian protestors had been killed by Israeli Police and Defense Forces. As of 2004, this Second (much more violent than the first) Intifada, has taken the lives of 2,600 Palestinians and 700 Israelis.35

B. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: Background and Structure Into this pressing socio-political environment Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam was born. The collectivist movement in Israel has always been prominent. Beginning in 1905, the Jewish National Fund gave generous support to socialist collectivists seeking to establish communal

34 35

Weaver, What is Israel/Palestine?, 24. Ibid., 27.

farming villages known as Kibbutzim or Moshavim.36 This support (explicitly from the Israeli government and tacitly from the larger society) continues to the present day, but it has not helped the residents of Wahat al-Salam. Historically, the community has gotten little support from successive Israeli governments[and has felt] particularly marginalized by the current government of Ariel Sharon.37 The lack of government supportfor everything from paved roads to connection to the electricity gridhas made things dramatically more difficult for the village, especially in comparison to the Kibbutzim and Moshavim of Israel/Palestine. Whatever it lacked in governmental support, however, the community has made up for in ambition and pure will. Started on a barren hilltop in what is known as No Mans Land (established in 1948 as a buffer zone between Israel proper and the West Bank), almost equidistant from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Neve Shalom officially began in 1972 as an inspiration of the late Bruno Hussar. Born in Egypt in 1911, Hussars parents were both Jewish, although his own spiritual pilgrimage led him to become a Dominican monk. During a 1969 North American lecture tour, Hussar began referring to what I then called the crazy dream of Neve Shalom.38 His original vision was audacious: The dream of Neve Shalom is shared by a group of people deeply concerned about the situation. It sprang from the conviction that something must be done to change itWe had in mind a small village composed of inhabitants from different communities in the country. Jews, Christians and Muslims would live there in peace, each one faithful to his own faith and traditions, while respecting those of others. Each would find in this diversity a source of personal enrichment. The aim of the village: to be the setting for a school for peacepeople would come here from all over the country to meet those from whom they were estranged, wanting to break down the barriers of fear, mistrust, ignorance, misunderstanding, preconceived ideasall things that separate usand to build bridges of trust, respect, mutual understanding, and, if possible, friendship.39
36 37

Dov Weintraub, Moshava, Kibbutz, and Moshav (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1969), 9. Nick Perry, Arab and Jew find friendship in Oasis from Israel hostilities, The Seattle Times, 3 May 2004. 38 Bruno Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted: The Testimony of an Israeli Priest (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1989), 104. 39 Ibid., 103.

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In 1970, the Trappist monastery at Latrun helped make Hussars vision a reality by leasing the hill where the NSWAS community sits today40 for a peppercorn rent of three pence a year and a 100 year lease, renewable for forty-nine years.41 This particular hill had witnessed one of the bloodiest battles of the 1948 war, and had a history of bloodshed back to biblical times.42 However it was nationally neutral as part of No Mans Land, and Hussar liked the idea that it had never been a Jewish land or an Arab land.43 The communitys name, Oasis for Peace, is drawn from Isaiah 32:18, in the Hebrew Bible, which declares that the work of the righteous shall be peaceand my people shall live in an oasis of peace. This imagery captivated Hussar and the early NSWAS pioneers: that Wahat al-Salam might be a place of harmony and respite, physically apart from the desert of war, but temporally connected as a source of renewal and spiritual healing for the people of a land broken by conflict. In 1972, Wahat al-Salam became a place where (primarily foreign) itinerant travelers and wanderers gathered to discuss issues of peace and help develop the idea of a community founded on the principle of co-existence. These early groups also included Jews and Arabs from surrounding villages and Kibbutzim who developed friendships and danced and prayed for peace.44 Hussar describes those humble beginnings: The epic story of Neve Shaloms first years cannot be contained within the framework of this bookThere were the first meetings between Arabs and Jewsthen the life of the first pioneers on the hill, without water and without a single treeThere was no electricity and when it rained the road was impassable.
40

The Trappist monks held the deed to this land previous even to British administration, obtaining the land and founding their monastery sometime during the Ottoman reign. See: Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 41 Ibid., 104. 42 Jeannie Lynn Sowers, Living with Conflict: The Problem of Consensus in the Jewish-Palestinian Community of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Bachelor Thesis, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, 1989), 18. 43 Ibid., 18. 44 Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 105.

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The terrain, he added, was stony and covered with brambles, and had not been cultivated or inhabited since the Byzantine era.45 The main concern for Hussar, however, was the absence of those for whom Neve Shalom had been conceived: the people of the country.46 While the hilltop served as a gathering ground for concerned persons, and many local Jews and Arabs visited throughout the week, few families were willing to commit to the idea of permanent residence due to the extreme poverty and above all the lack of security for the future.47 When the first family arrived in 1976a Jewish couple from the village of Ben-ShemenHussar felt that it was a sign of affirmation from God, and that these newcomers would give a new impetus to community life.48 Within another year, Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization, visited and subsequently organized the donation of money from Germany to support the budding project. These gifts proved to be crucialthey included money to pay for Wahat al-Salams linkage to the national water supply, finances to purchase an electric generator and solar paneling, and money to pay for a new access road.49 In 1979, the NSWAS School for Peace was founded to bring Arabs and Israeli Jews together for dialogue and engagement. A bi-cultural nursery was started in 1980, and in 1981summer camps for Arab and Jewish youth to engage together in dialogue and friendships at the community. A community newsletter from August, 1981 explains, These camps were the most successful to date due to the intensive character of the programs.50 Although one founding resident commented that, There were no facilities here [and] looking back the camp was probably a somewhat nave [pursuit],51 almost two
45 46

Ibid. Ibid., 106. 47 Ibid., 107. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 108. 50 A Brief Description of the Summer Camps, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Neve Shalom/Wahat alSalam, July/August 1981), 1-3. 51 Sowers, Living with Conflict, 19.

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hundred youth and thirty teachers participated in six different camps in 1981.52 By 1982 there were seven families residing in the villagefour Jewish, two Muslim and one Christian. Seven of the eleven community children attended the communitys nursery, which was run by two parents, one Jewish and one Arab.53 In 1984 NSWAS opened a bi-lingual, bi-cultural primary school for the communitys childrenthe first of its kind in Israel/Palestine. This, and the steady development of community life and institutions, led to a sense of security that allowed villagers to move beyond primarily concerning themselves with survival. Now they could begin to consider more sophisticated issues regarding community cohesiveness and interaction. By 1988, seventy people lived in the village. Half of them were Jewish Israelis, while the other half were Arabs. Thirty were children, all attending the village primary school, kindergarten or nursery.54 Having achieved the foundational goals of Arab-Jewish parity of population and relative financial security, NSWAS moved into a new era in the 1990s. In 1990, it opened its primary school to children from villages around Wahat al-Salam, starting with children from the nearby village of Abu Ghosh. The NSWAS community is governed by a five-member council known as the Secretariat. The head of this council is officially the Secretary General but is commonly called the mayor. The secretariat deals primarily with the administrative duties of the village. Elections occur yearly for this body, and anyone on the Secretariat can be re-elected indefinitely. Currently, there are twenty-five Arab families, nineteen Jewish families, three mixed families and 202 residents, 93 of whom are children.55 Economically dependent on fundraising and the revenue
52 53

A Brief Description of the Summer Camps, 2. Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 108. 54 Ibid., 126. 55 Demographic Information Sheet on Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, created by Howard Shippin, Public Relations Department, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, January 2005, 2.

13

earned by the community guesthouse, the village places no restriction on its members working outside the villagein fact, over half work outside Neve Shalom. The three main institutions that the community maintains are the School for Peace, the Primary School and the House of Silence, a community gathering center for spiritual discipline and interfaith discussion. Wahat al-Salam has also begun a new Humanitarian Assistance Program (HAP) which utilizes the medical resources of the community (a pharmacist, several doctors and a few nurses) to coordinate and provide medical technology and aid to Palestinians cut off from adequate care due primarily to the occupation.56 In terms of population, the community is growing. Neve Shalom maintains a small screening committee which filters through potential resident applicants as part of the new membership process. The village plans to expand dramatically in the coming years, and hopes to integrate several hundred new residents gradually.57

C.

Four Paths: A Historical Analysis of the Village

Neve Shalom is a big fantasy, and thats the main value of it. It affects reality like any fantasy affects realitythat people have a small light somewhere to remind them that there is a way to do it. --Founding member of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam58

1.

Numerical Parity and the Maintenance of Practical Equality

56

Abdessalam Najjar, interview by author, 10 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, Mennonite Library and Archives (M.L.A.), North Newton, Kansas. 57 Howard Shippin, interview by author, 6 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 58 Sowers, Living with Conflict, 1.

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At the core of Bruno Hussars vision for Wahat al-Salam lay the aim to prove that it was possible to live together despite differences, in a village built on a spirit of equality and brotherly cooperation.59 All that Neve Shalom is today seems rooted in the early decision to embrace heterogeneity by implementing practical structures to assure equality amidst diversity. One of the earliest members of the community, Abdessalam Najjar, commented in 1990: From the outside, it must appear that Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is a complicated community and its functions difficult to understand. But it is precisely the intentional choice to foster side-byside living that has attracted people to live at Wahat al-Salam. This co-existence, Najjar explained, has always been rooted in a singular commitment to full equality at all levels between the two peoples.60 Practical application of this ideal meant a decision at the communitys birth to maintain a fifty-fifty balance at all times between the number of Arabs and the number of Israeli Jews living at Neve Shalom. In the larger Israeli context, the idea of a collective settlement based on the co-habitation of Arabs and Israeli Jews has remained on the fringes of the conversationand almost only in conversation, rather than in any specific action. One villager described his attempts to create a Jewish/Arab Kibbutz in the early 1980s, prior to coming to Neve Shalom. These efforts began in the late 1970s when he and other peace activists noticed that across Israel, wherever there was any conversation between Arabs and Israeli Jews, at the end of the meetings, everyone went home to their respective placesignoring the deeper issues between Arabs and Jews, such as the concept of living together.61 He and others eventually proposed an Arab/Jewish Kibbutz model, but the Israeli Jewish Kibbutz movement rejected the idea outright. Afraid of Arabs returning to land they had lived on before the 1948 War, even left-leaning socialists dismissed any real
59 60

Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 126. Abdessalam Najjar, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace), article insert, Neve Shalom/Wahat alSalam Newsletter, Number 37, May-September 1990, 1. 61 Ilan Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

15

movement towards such a kibbutz. Without governmental supportin the form of land, tax breaks and other financial assistancethe kibbutz idea stagnated, and has remained only an idea to this day.62 Eventually, the ideal of co-existence drew these activists toward Bruno Hussars experiment in of cooperative living at Wahat al-Salam. By the late 1970s, in the midst of the fledgling attempts at dialogue and cooperative side-by-side learning, it became clear that equality was essential to any success at Neve Shalom. However, while the mutual goodwill created by such interaction was important, villagers decided that the experience of equality cannot be attained through universal good feelings alone. Rather, it was decided, equality must be attained instead by the acceptance of differenceNeve Shaloms ideology thus means striving for an equality based on the recognition of diversity.63 Whereas most collectivists in Israel were looking for people like themselves to fit into a particular community, Wahat alSalam presented a radical new idea for a heterogeneous model where there was no attempt to create some sort of a uniform populationin fact, quite the opposite, the idea of a fifty-fifty population balance was the accepted parameter for existence.64 While the decision to maintain this equity was, by most accounts, a conscious one, the exact moment of its conception remains unclear. Its hard to remember how the decision was made, but it was very important to express equality [and] so it was a conscious decision for our purpose, commented Ilan Frisch, a first-generation villager.65 The original contract for the land, signed in November of 1970, more vaguely denotes that the land must be used to establish, maintain, develop and administer centers of settlement in which persons of all the religions and the peoples of Israel and of other countrieswill meet, make contact, dwell, tour, or make a
62 63

Ibid. Sowers, Living with Conflict, 33-34. 64 Howard Shippin, interview by author, 6 January 2005. 65 Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005.

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livelihood together.66 The exact process by which this was translated into an explicit commitment to a fifty-fifty balance, however, may be lost to the historical memory of the village. The decision was apparent by the late 1970s, at least in theory, but nothing was ever written down, commented one villager. In fact, he noted, it is unclear whether writing such a statement down would actually have been legal based on laws regulating the settlement of villages in Israel. It was, however, understood that it had to be fifty-fifty and that numerical equality was important.67 This was, according to many villagers, one of the first and most important decisions made by the community.68 Fundamentally, the community realized that we are not learning about others if co-existence and equality are not connected as essential.69 The theory of equality and maintaining a fifty-fifty balance took over a decade to actualize. Between 1976 and 1982, seven families came to reside in the village, but four were Israeli Jewish. This would be the closest the village would come to parity before a true fifty-fifty balance was established in the late 1980s. A November 1983 internal community report indicated that the village held nine families and ten singles, but an imbalance favoring Israeli Jewish families remained.70 The years from 1984 to 1986 were, in the words of one villager, a very important time to learn what was going on and to cauterize what we were trying to do in terms of equality.71 In general, the early 1980s were a time for singular focus on a few key tasks for the village, and achieving parity in numbers was one of these primary concerns. Still, as late as the summer of 1988, Arabs represented about 40 percent of the total population of the village, not
66

Administration of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: The Financial and Legal structure of Neve Shalom/Wahat alSalam,Public Relations Department, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, 19 January 2005, 1. 67 Howard Shippin, interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 68 Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 69 Ruth Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 70 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, internal memorandum, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, November 1983, 3. 71 Bob Mark, interview by author, 19 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

17

yet the equal representation desired to promote equality.72 Efforts to achieve parity intensified in the latter part of that year, and the village actively sought new applicants who would balance the population (applicants who were, of course, deeply committed to the concept of coexistence). The community developed a rigorous application process involving a selection committee, a one year-trial period and then final approval by the whole village at the general assembly. (Much of this process remains intact today, although the one-year trial period is no longer adhered to as strictly). At last, by the end of 1988, fifty percent of the residents were Arabsboth Muslim and Christianand the other fifty percent were Israeli Jews. This achievement marked a turning point. Existence defined by Hussars original vision had been attained. Hussar wrote in 1988, Nowthere are seventy people in the village. Half of them are Jews and half are Palestinian Arabsall are Israeli citizens, though aware that they belong to different groups. The village now shifted toward a new phase of existence: working on the primary school, the construction of a House of Prayer, and growing the increasingly visible School for Peace, so that Neve Shalom could further reach fulfillment.73 While by and large, the achievement of parity made maintaining numerical equality easier than, challenges remainedand continue to manifest themselves in the present life of the village. By the end of 1989, the village faced a financial crisis. One major source of fundraising, a grant financed by the Ford Foundation, had expired and no alternative source had been found, leaving Wahat al-Salam economically pinched. Instructors at the School for Peace were let go, but there was controversy about who was let go and why.74 The core ideal behind maintaining numerical parity, however, held strongly. The April 1990 Newsletter affirmed that
72 73

Sowers, Living with Conflict, 44. Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 127. 74 Ariela Bairey, interview by author, 20 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

18

the previous months had involved a great deal of heart-searching and re-evaluation, but, in the final analysis, it can be said that the democratic structure which has been built upupon which we base the day-to-day life in this unique community has been put to the test in a number of ways and found to be strong enough to confront difficult and controversial differences.75 Several years later more controversy arose regarding the fifty-fifty balance. Some villagers felt there was a growing power imbalance centered on the lack of lingual equality. Despite high-minded ideals to the contrary, many residents felt that Arabic and Hebrew were not equally spoken, thus creating a power imbalance in favor of Israeli Jews. A letter circulated by one community member called for a change in the numerical balance from to one-third Israeli Jew and two-thirds Arab. The idea, however, never gained much support and quietly faded as the community addressed the language imbalance through increased efforts to make Arabic and Hebrew more equal in the primary school setting.76 Additionally, many villagers came to recognize that the traditional Israeli Jewish/Arab power imbalance was addressed in Wahat alSalam, both by the fifty-fifty membership equity and also by the disproportionate representation of Arabs in administrative positions of community government. In the last twenty-five years, for example, there have been only three years in which a Jewish secretary-general (mayor) governed the community. We look at things like that when speaking about power issues, commented one villager.77 The most significant challenge to numerically balanced stability, however, has also been the most recent one. In 1993 a wealthy Jewish developer and a union of retired Israeli antiterrorist police officers sought to obtain land adjacent to Neve Shalom (land owned by the Israeli government), and applied for permits to build suburban-style villas. With powerful
75 76

The Other Side of the Coin, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 36, January-April, 1990, 1. Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 77 Mark, interview by author, 19 January 2005.

19

supporters and tentative governmental backing, this collection of potential settlers threatened the villages carefully engineered utopia maintained by fifty-fifty parity.78 Then Secretarygeneral Ahmad Hijazi remarked that for them, its a question of location, here or somewhere else. For us, its a question of survival.79 As opposed to mainstream Israeli life, the delicate numerical balance represents a chance for [Arabs] to feel safekeeping the number equal is very importantand this is precisely what the attempt at settling directly adjacent to Neve Shalom threatened.80 These developers sought to capitalize on Neve Shaloms municipal status. Full municipal status (recognition by the Ministry of Interior) had been granted only in 1986, allowing the village more specific control over its utilities and development. It was not until 1987 that the Israeli government recognized Wahat al-Salams existence by putting it on maps and bus routes. Hoping to take advantage of our [relatively] new municipal status by attaching a neighborhood of 350 houses on the adjacent land, these veterans planed to create what they called Neve Shalom B.81 The danger in this was immediately clear to villagers: We would be dwarfed and dominated by a large community of solely Jewish residents who, with no interest in anything we had tried to create, would infringe upon the identityof the village. Additionally, the new residents would become co-governors of the municipality and thus the village. They would, for example, be legally permitted to become members of the general assembly of the village, could control the budget, and take over our representation in the regional council.82 Soon after the proposal of Neve Shalom B, another group developed a plan to establish a housing project just to the north of Wahat al-Salam, to be called Naot Latrun.
78 79

This plan called

Richard Boudreaux, No Peace of Mind for Model, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1997. Ibid. 80 Shireen Najjar, interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 81 The Land Issue: NS/WAS Struggles to Assure its Future, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 48, January 1998, 6. 82 Ibid.

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for as many as 440 new homes, representing another attempt to exploit the existing municipality of Neve Shalom. Soliciting active involvement in an opposition campaign from supporters worldwide, the villagers first appealed to Israel Land Administration (ILA), asking that the community be able to buy another patch of adjacent land to the south of Neve Shalom to grow the village in an attempt to counteract the encroaching developers. The ILA, however, made such a sale dependent on Wahat al-Salams acquiescence to the Neve Shalom B plan. The village declined this option and intensified its mobilization of opposition. By the end of 1995, a concerted lobbying campaign led by the village but with the essential support of the Jewish National Fund (the agency responsible for procuring land for the State of Israel since the early 1900s, as well as protecting the environment in Israel) and the Association for the Protection of Nature (an Israeli environmental organization) convinced the Israeli Building and Planning Commission to reject the developers application for permission to build on this state-owned land.83 The battle to preserve the communitys unique balance re-ignited in 1998 when the developers again approached the government, this time asking for permission to create their new neighborhoods as independent settlements (but on the same adjacent land neighboring Wahat alSalam. This was only a slightly more appealing idea for villagers and opposition was again roused. Community members cited the likelihood that at some point in the future the Israeli government would oblige a merger of all three communities, threatening the special character of the village and its fifty-fifty balance.84 By 2002, the government even included this newly proposed settlementNaot Latrun and Neve Shalom Bin a larger plan to build fourteen
83

Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Commission Rejects Plan to Build New Settlement next to NSWAS, 5 February, 2004, http://nswas.org/print_friendly.php3?id_article=218 (accessed January 19, 2005). 84 Ibid.

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new settlements along the pre-1967 Israeli border. On February 3, 2004, the Building and Planning Commission again rejected this proposal, relieving the community for a second time.85 Understanding that such a settlement plan might eventually be approved by the Commission, NSWAS developed a plan to grow the community rapidly. One community member noted that in order to preserve the delicate numerical balance between Jews and Arabs that which maintained this as a place of equality, mutual understanding and educational work for peacethe village needed to expand. We are still not large enough, he explained, to block some of these attempts to surround our villageWhen you go to the authorities asking them to reject other developers, they say that if we dont succeed in growing larger, they will not support us.86 In order, therefore, to be taken seriously, to demonstrate growth and expansion requiring that the adjacent land remain open for Neve Shaloms expansion, the village has embarked on a plan to absorb several hundred new families.87 During the second push by the outside developers, Wahat al-Salam re-negotiated its contract with the Latrun Monastery. Under the new terms, signed December 29, 1999, the village returned fifty of its one-hundred leased acres in return for permanent possession of the other fifty and a nominal amount of money. Additionally, the monastery promised that no new development would occur on the fifty acres that the village returned to it.88 Among other conditions, one primary stipulation in the re-negotiated contract requires Neve Shalom to maintain its fifty-fifty parity.89 It thus took almost three decades for the communitys steadfast insistence on its defining, foundational idea of Arab-Jewish equality to be codified in a binding, written, legal document.
85 86

Ibid. Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 87 Howard Shippin, e-mail message to author, January 20, 2005. 88 Ibid. 89 Bob Mark and Rita Boulos, interview by author, 12 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

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2.

The Economics and Financing of Co-existence Central to the stability of any community or village is its economic viability. Neve

Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is no exception. Crucial to understanding the capabilities of the community as a source of idealistic, nonviolent change is an awareness of how the village maintains itself economically. In contrast, however, to most collective settlements in Israel/Palestinethe Moshavim and the Kibbutzim, for exampleNeve Shalom has received little financial support from the government. It therefore has been forced to make conscious economic choices in order to survive, choices which offer important insight into the identity and future of Wahat al-Salam. NSWAS existed before its economic structure, or even its source of financial support, materialized. In 1976, a Pax Christi group from Germany was struck by the contrast between the loftiness of [Neve Shaloms] aimsreconciliation and peaceand the poverty of [its] resources. This group organized a series of financial gifts from Germany that permitted the village to construct an access road, build a generator and solar roofing, and hook up to the national water supply.90 These first donations became the basis for an important financial conduit of support for Wahat al-Salam: the twelve Friends Associations. A few years later, beginning with the German Friends Association, groups of people around the world set up financial donation organizations designed to raise money abroad to support the communitys needs.91 Even in 1985, the community newsletter noted that several more groups from Pax Christi in West Germany and from the Evangelical Group of Hessen and Nassau (both supporters
90 91

Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 108. Today there are Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Friends Associations in France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Great Britain, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, the United States, Sweden and the Netherlands. See: Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Support for Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, (accessed April 3, 2005) http://nswas.org/rubrique26.html

23

of Neve Shalom from the early days), continued to strengthen ties important to the financial viability of the community.92 While Hussar called these first gifts a sign from God, the village remained unsure of its financial structure. Questions of how funding would be maintained and how such funding would be disbursed loomed large.93 Early on, it was understood that there was a struggle with money no village in Israel is established without systems of support, usually governmental agencies. Those same agencies, however, which traditionally supported collective settlements like the Kibbutzim, historically refused to help Neve Shalom.94 It soon became clear that the lack of economic support made internal self-sufficiency exceptionally difficult. Even though there is a collective effort, it was always understood that we couldnt take upon the responsibility of providing a livelihood to the residents here.95 Consequently, remarked one villager, weve always been dependent on help from the outsidewe didnt have any other means of support. Even the financial entitlements flowing from the 1986 grant of municipal status to NSWAS were too little, too latesixteen years too late. Before thenthe mail didnt even come up here, and we had to pay for electricity [through a generator] ourselves...Even after recognition, we had to pay for the widening of our dirt access road.96 Aside from its everyday needswater, sewage, electricitythe community began to build an identity around its developing educational institutionsthe School for Peace and the bilingual primary school. Early on, villagers came to see educational work as their primary focus and to understand that such work required substantial financial support.97 The main focus in our community has always been educational workbecause we wanted to do work that would
92 93

Neve Shalom Widens its Horizons, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 22, 1985, 2. Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 108. 94 Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 95 Ibid. 96 Howard Shippin, interview by author, 6 January 2005. 97 Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005.

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find a way to have an impact on the environments around us, commented one villager. Such work represented, to early members of the community, the obvious interests of the people who came here, in the 1970s and early 1980s. Additionally, many came believing that while NSWAS could never exercise political power in the interests of peace, educational work was a possible niche for a community experiment like Wahat al-Salam that wanted to affect peace.98 To this day, we are constantly reminded that education changes the situation and that we, at Neve Shalom, do not seek a political approach.99 Educational institutions, however, are expensive. Like schools everywhere, our educational institutions were not able to carry themselves and always needed support from the outside.100 One teacher at the primary school commented, I dont know of any educational institution that really generates income. Most institutions take money in to pay for their costsprivate institutions are subsidized by parents. The education that we work on is for peace, and so there never was any expectation or dream other than getting state, or outside funds. It would be impossible to ask for anything other. That means fundraising.101 In 1985, the School for Peace received a $75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, NSWAS newsletters made repeated financial pleas for support of the village s educational work. In 1999, the community received a grant of $125,000 from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, to construct of a new middle school at Wahat alSalam that would otherwise have been impossible.102 In 1991, the community newsletter reminded that fundraising is always one of the less enviable aspects of organizational work yet the most necessary to perform, but has helped NSWAS accumulate a very impressive amount

98 99

Ibid. Eitan Kremer, interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 100 Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 101 Mark, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 102 Weinberg Foundation Accepts Challenge and Donates $125,000, Baltimore Friends of the Oasis of Peace Association Newsletter, June 1999, 1.

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of donations for its educational projects.103 As the villagers had already come to realize in the late 1970s, this work you cannot make a profit out ofyou need organization and fundraising.104 It is impossible to pinpoint exactly when, these two factorsa lack of governmental support and the increasingly clear village focus on educationcoalesced, culminating in the conscious decision to make fundraising the primary means of economic stability. We never wanted to be a kibbutz, and organizationally we resemble more of a development or a collective settlement, commented one of the first members of the community.105 Another villager remarked, One thing is clear: it was a conscious decision [to be dependent on fundraising]. Maybe money can come from Israel itself someday, but for now, the community remains largely dependent on fundraising, as it has since its inception.106 As former Secretary-General Rayeck Rizek explained, because Neve Shalom is not an establishment project, it has never been supported by the state. Yet educational work meant fundraising requirements for NSWAS through which, we became used to [economic] stability based on donations.107 The reliance on fundraising, has not, however, excluded attempts at other forms of income generation. In the early 1980s, efforts began to develop some sort of village industry which could relieve the financial dependency on fundraising. A November 1983 report revealed, in fact, a strong desire to seek economic self-sufficiency and shirk the yoke of outside fundraising: For obvious, practical reasons some of the members of Neve Shalom have to earn their living outside the settlement, whilst others are employed in the branches
103

Looking Back Over the YearFundraising, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 40, SeptemberDecember, 1991, 11. 104 Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005. 105 Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 106 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 107 Rayek Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

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which are being developed with an eye to becoming economic undertakingsthe sheepfold, the beehives, the greenhouse, the almond and olive trees, and the hostel. All these activities are in the early stages of productivity. Lacking support from established institutions, the work proceeds on the basis of trial and error. The effort to create a profitable economy is a constant factor to be confronted, since it is vital to the existence of the settlement. The present size of the settlement hampers such development and it is obvious that the only way in which this vicious circle can be broken is by the infusion of sufficient funding from a realistic superstructure and the creation of new sources of income.108 The report commented that the communitys goal was to increase the [sheep] herd to 450 head and to provide them with adequate and efficient husbandry to maintain a healthy and profitable flock in the coming year. For the olive and almond groves, villagers hoped to increase both these groves to a size which will make them economically viable. Both plans were part of a larger village effort to find and to establish a small, suitable industry in the near future.109 Earlier the March, 1983 newsletter claimed that there was a lack of outside fundraising for several months, and that for the moment, [lambing] is the sole source of income for the settlement. Fortunately, it was a good lambing season and there is more meat available for salea timely boost to our finances.110 Not until 1988 did the olive trees began to provide any sort of stable yield. The community hoped that in the following year it would be able to bottle and label the olive oil attractively and to begin marketing it on a more profitable scale.111 By 1990, 250 more olive trees were planted, and tourists were finding an olive oil purchase at Neve Shalom to be a popular way in which to make small donations to Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam and to take home suitable and acceptable gifts.112 Maintained only by volunteers, the olive groves were the

108

Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, internal memorandum, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, November 1983,

1.
109 110

Ibid., 2-3. Developments, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 14, January-March, 1983, 4. 111 The Olive Trees, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 33, November, 1988-January 1989, 3. 112 The Olive Grove, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 37, May-September 1990, 5.

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most prominent and successful industry at the community as late as 1992.113 A 1993 bulletin offered potential donors the option of planting an olive tree for $25 as a means of supporting this small olive industry.114 Each effort at industry, however, eventually faced nearly insurmountable difficulties. As early as 1985, villagers claimed that our sheepfold continues to be something of a problem child, requiring more management and maintenance than it seemed worth.115 By the early 1990s, only the village hostel and olive grove remained as sources of internal industry. Over the previous several years, each potential source of self-sufficient fundingalmond groves, beehives, sheep farminghad failed to materialize into anything sustainable. It became clear that these romantic ideas were not going to work out. There was not enough energy or human resources to develop these things naturally.116 When using solely volunteer help became impractical and inadequate, difficulties arose in determining who would help maintain and harvest crops or herd sheep: While these early pioneers made many attempts at agricultural selfsufficiency, remarked former Secretary-General Rizek, first, it was not a very professional effort, second the need for large, stable sources of income became too important too quickly and third, villagers stopped taking these agricultural efforts seriously. Logistical problems developed and the promise of any long-term, economic success from these endeavors faded away, even as the village came to depend more fully on larger grants and donations.117 While low-level efforts at olive industry continued, by the mid-1990s the community had almost fully accepted its dependency on outside fundraising. In retrospect, said one community member, we were never recognized as an agricultural community, nor had enough land for it
113 114

The Olive Grove, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 43, September 1992-March 1993, 9. Plant an Olive Tree at the Oasis of Peace, American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Association Newsletter, Spring 1993, 8. 115 Development Projects, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 24, 1986, 5. 116 Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 117 Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005.

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it was not subsidized either.118 The village came to recognize that the main product of Neve Shalom is its educational work, which eventually overrode other attempts at industry. This direction was, at some deeper level, understood fairly early on as the primary path for this particular village.119 Indeed, most of the villages olive trees were lost in the new land contract signed with the Latrun Monastery in 1999, since they were planted primarily on the fifty acres returned to the Monastery. By 2000, the only source of internal income-generation was the hotel, which in recent years has barely broken even.120 The initial idealistic desire for complete self-sufficiency faded almost completely by the end of the 1990s. Even operating any sort of personal business is nearly impossible due to the relatively remote location of the village. 121 Such an investment is, to most villagers, far more risky than simply getting a job inside or outside the village. Treasurer Kamil Tibi wonders whether the financial dependency on fundraising has made it so impossibly difficult for internal industry to thrive or for anyone to successfully sustain a small business: I dont know if we can deal with other businessesif we become bigger in order to collect more taxes from more families, maybe. But now we are too small and the government does not like us.122 While all agree on the fact of fundraising dependency, some villagers speak of the lack of self-sufficiency as only temporary, noting that the village must eventually get away from this dependency and its constant reliance on the whims of outside sources of income.123 We want to see ourselves as independent economically, explained Tibi. Eventually, we hope not to need the support of the outside because it is much more stable for our community to be independent
118 119

Howard Shippin, interview by author, 6 January 2005. Howard Shippin, interview by author, 17 January 2005. 120 Howard Shippin, interview by author, 6 January 2005. 121 There remain a couple small businesses serving only the community, such as the gift and snack shop near the hotel. 122 Kamil Tibi, interview by author, 11 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 123 Ori Sonnenschein, interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

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even of donations.124 Others have come to understand this dependency as a necessary part of being an educationally-centered community that is not well-liked by the government. Personally, commented one villager, I think fundraising is a legitimate resource. It is honest and it is our right. Sure, in this community the economic situation could be improvedbut this place will always support education, its the only thing for us.125 While no serious plans to develop self-sufficiency exist, the NSWAS economic structure rooted as it is in dependencywill continue to generate internal debate about the best financial path for the village. Whether or not the pendulum swings back towards economic independence for Wahat al-Salam, the financial structure of the community, shaped as it is by the ever-present tension with the Israeli government and the villages own commitment to being an educational base, will continue to define Neve Shalom.

3.

Branching Out: Opening the Primary School to Area Villages

If we are to reach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children. -M.K. Gandhi

For the villagers of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, the bilingual, bi-national primary school based in the community is of great importance. The 2004-2005 Primary School Report described it as an island of sanity and hope in the troubled social and educational environment of the Middle East.126 The mere existence of a school based on bilingual education in which Arabs and Israeli Jews co-exist together in a learning environment is a radical project, and it has been a part of the villages basic activity for most of its history. The decision in 1990, however,

124 125

Tibi, interview by author, 11 January 2005. Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 126 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, The Primary School in 2004-2005, 12 November, 2004, http://nswas.org/article307.html (accessed January 19, 2005).

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to open the school to children in surrounding villages was a dramatic step for the community. The process by which this decision was made, as well the challenges it has created for the community mark an important turning point. The decision itself represents one of the most significant attempts thus far to make Neve Shaloms work applicable and accessible to a wider population. The basic philosophy of the school is similar to the underlying principles of co-existence in the village generally. Because the education of children represents those principles put into practice, the primary school is both one of the most important and one of the most difficult aspects of life at Wahat al-Salam.127 At the primary school, Jewish and Palestinian children can learn together on an equal basis, with a Palestinian and a Jewish teachereach speaking his/her own language at all times while conducting lessons. The school attempts to educate the children in a manner that inspires curiosity about and understanding of, both ones own identity and of other identities in ones midst.128 Each child is taught to understand their culture and also learn about the others culture, through an emphasis on co-existence, tolerance and friendship, but not assimiliation.129 This is a vastly different approach than that of most educational institutions in Israel/Palestine. All primary schools in Israel report to the Ministry of Education, but the norm is separation. Arab schools are administered separately from Jewish schoolsthis has the effect of perpetuating the division between the two populations.130 The philosophy of the Neve Shalom primary school stands in stark contrast to this norm where Israeli Jews and Arabs each learn only their own heritage and narrative.131
127 128

Michal Zak, interview by author, 10 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. Ety Edlund, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: The Communitys SchoolReport on the School, article insert, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 36, January-April, 1990, 3. 129 Grace Feuerverger, Oasis of Peace: A Community of Moral Education in Israel, Journal of Moral Education 24 (1995): 124. 130 Sharon Burde, The Oasis of Peace: More Than a School, The Fourth R, 73 (July 1996): 8-9. 131 Zak, ed., School for Peace Report: 2003, 46.

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The growth of the primary school began with the 1980 founding of a nursery for the first five babies of the village.[T]wo nursesone Palestinian and one Jewishwere responsible for the nursery, and each spoke only her own language at all times to all of the children.132 As the children grew and the village expanded the question of how to give the children of Wahat alSalam a primary education became pertinent. Without any options for a bilingual, bi-national education in Israel/Palestine, the villagers asked the Ministry of Education for help. The Ministry of Education, however, had no knowledge on the subject and warned against making such experiments at our childrens expense.133 In November 1983, laying the foundation for a Primary Schoolwhich will provide a unique educational framework became a formal goal and main priority for the fledgling community.134 By May, 1984, a newsletter explained: We reported fairly fully on this new and important project in our last newsletter and now can add that the work of construction has reached the point where it is being concentrated on the finishing stagesBut the subject bears further serious study because Neve Shalom, which prides itself on initiating new concepts in the educational field is, once again, pioneering in an impressive manner. Our primary school, which will open on September 1, will be the first such mixed Arab-Jewish school to be established in the State of IsraelWe plan to build a school which can be a model for the country as a whole; and if and when political and other conditions develop for the better, there should be an increasing interest in our methods of handling Arab and Jewish cultural and ethical values in an atmosphere of understanding. This will be no small achievement and, in itself, will justify all the efforts spent in creating Neve Shalom to date.135 On September 1, 1984 the school opened with eight school-age Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab children, all from Wahat al-Salam. The following five years were spent developing a curriculum for cross-cultural, bi-lingual education. The curriculum increasingly gave expression to the different national and cultural
132

Bruno Hussar, Abdessalam Najjar and Michal Zak, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: An Experiment in CoExistence, Echoes of Peace: Quarterly Bulletin of the Niwano Peace Foundation, 42 (July 1993): 11. 133 Ibid. 134 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, internal memorandum, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, November 1983, 4. 135 The New Neve Shalom Primary School and Kindergarten, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 19, May 1984, 2.

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identities in the schools pupils.136 The successes of those early years, in turn, led to the consideration of another possibility: opening the doors of the school to children from surrounding villages. In August 1988, an internal report on the status of the Nursery, Kindergarten and Primary School indicated that staff at the school were to begin organizing the school towards its planned second stage: that of absorbing Jewish and Arab pupils from outside the community.137 Two significant reasons motivated this new thinking at the primary school. As a practical matter, the school simply could not survive with only the small number of students in its classrooms (often less than ten for all grades). More ideologically, villagers realized that essential to the idea of spreading the ideals and practices of co-existence was the need to expose more than just its own children to such possibilities. Initially, numbers drove the need to open the primary school. In 1986, for example, of the fourteen students, seven were old enough to graduate, leaving the school in 1987 with only seven children, spanning several grades.138 One villager commented that in terms of numbers, it became very obvious that if we wanted the school to go on, we had to bring more children in.139 There simply were not enough children in the village. We couldnt, explained one teacher, wait any longer.140 Having grown up in the school during those years, one former student and now a member of the villages second generation, Ori Sonnenschein recalled, Having the school opened to the outside brought a lot of people here. It was just too small beforewe were with the same people every year.141
136 137

Hussar, Najjar and Zak, An Experiment in Co-Existence, Echoes of Peace, 11. The Educational Committee of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-SalamThe Nursery, Kindergarten and Primary School, internal memorandum, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, August, 1988, 3. 138 Mark, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 139 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 140 Mark, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 141 Ori Sonnenschein, interview by author, 18 January 2005.

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Practicality, however, was not the only major concern driving the desire to expand the school. Ideologically, remarked one of the communitys founding members, we realized that it was very important for many kidsliving in the village and outsideto grow up together, in order to accept their differences and live in peace.142 Community members realized that opening the school was important if Neve Shalom were to influence the larger society: it was a way you spread a message, an idea to other people.143 Some villagers described it in terms of sharing what the village was learning about co-existence. It was, indicated one villager, a must. For many, it wasnt right to keep [the school] just for ourselvesthe idea was to bring the message to others and the best thing we could do was to bring them to the villageour experience wasnt just for the village, it was for other people.144 As an educational model, it also made more senseespecially as part of the larger educational approach that Wahat al-Salam was pioneering.145 As such, it built a new model for the outside society that would, villagers hoped, serve as an inspiring precedent for the rest of Israel/Palestine.146 The transition was not without difficulty. In an abstract sense, developing a strong community will to open the up school was important. A first difficulty, noted one villager, was that we needed sort of a confidence that we could do it.147 More concretely, Neve Shalom had to consider the rate at which the school could open its doors. Supplying the necessary physical space for a bigger school became a crucial difficulty, and with it came the need for more funds.148 Economically, remarked one villager, it was difficult [because] it required a lot of
142 143

Anne Le Meignen, interview by author, 13 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. Ruth Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005. 144 Kremer, interview by author, 18 January 2005. 145 Nava Sonnenschein, interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 146 The Educational Committee of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-SalamThe Kindergarten and Primary School, internal memorandum, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, August, 1991, 2. 147 Howard Shippin, interview by author, 17 January 2005. 148 Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005.

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people in a small village to support the changewe wanted to bring in populations from different areas, but it was difficult technically.149 The May 1990 newsletter called the decision to open the primary school an exciting step forward for the village, but cautioned that inevitably it will have to depend on our ability to finance the program. The newsletter explained these costs: At least one extra teacher will have to be employed in the primary school, a certain amount of additional equipment will be required and the cost of transporting the children daily to and from their homes is estimated at $13,000 for the year.150 Eventually, through successful worldwide fundraising campaigns, the community was able to complete the construction of new buildings, hire a new teacher and meet its other needs before expanding. In September 1990, the community opened its primary school to area villages, inviting Arab and Israeli Jewish children to learn in an environment based on equality. The first year, twelve Palestinian children commuted from the nearby village of Abu Ghosh. In 1991, eighteen Jewish and Palestinian youth joined the school. By 1993 eighty children attended the school, with most of them representing outside villages.151 In February 1991, one of the teachers, Ety Edlund, reported that the work had been both difficult and fascinatingthe staff must deal more intensively with questions of national and cultural differences between the children. Overall, however, the progress has been encouraging. For the first time, we had a group of children who were used to a very different way of working and had never before been together.152 While numerical parity in the makeup of the village population has remained a constant and overriding concern, such carefully engineered equality has been largely impossible in the
149 150

Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005. The Kindergarten and Primary School, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 37, May-September, 1990, 3. 151 Hussar, Najjar and Zak, An Experiment in Co-Existence, Echoes of Peace, 11. 152 Ety Edlund, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-SalamReport on the Primary School and Kindergarten, internal memorandum, archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, February, 1991, 1.

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primary school. While Arab children have few options for quality schooling, Jewish children have many strong educational institutions available to them such as the primary school at Neve Shalom. Consequently, the demand for quality education like that offered at Wahat al-Salam is much higher among Arab parents than among their Jewish counterparts.153 This represents part of a larger problem facing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process identified by villagers: Arabs tend to be much more willing to seek alternative options to their present situation (in this case the largely sub par educational opportunities available for their children) than Israeli Jews by nature of the fact that Arabs are in a worse (i.e. oppressed) situation.154 Nonetheless, the school strives for equality in its curriculum, in the learning and speaking of both Arabic and Hebrew and in day-to-day learning.155 In 1992, the Ministry of Education recognized the Kindergarten, entitling it to some support and accreditation, and promised recognition for the primary school if we [found] the means to grow and to present them with a school for 100 children.156 The following year, the primary school met that goal and was recognized as a private school by the State of Israel. This recognition offered the school freedom to determine its own curriculum, as well as the ability to absorb children from anywhere in the region. The independence to develop its own curriculum is essential in order to attain the Schools unique objectives [and] the right to receive children from anywhere in the region is necessary in order to maintain an equal number of Jewish and Arab children.157 By 1996, two-thirds of the 105 students at the primary school came from a

153 154

Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005. Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 4 and 97-119. 155 For further discussion see Part II of this paper discussing application of NSWAS philosophy at the primary school. 156 Hussar, Najjar and Zak, An Experiment in Co-Existence, Echoes of Peace, 11. 157 Burde, The Oasis of Peace, The Fourth R, (July 1996): 9.

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dozen surrounding Jewish and Arab villages. By 2000, the primary school had over 250 students. The School had created a precedent which cannot be ignored.158 Recognition by the state in 1992, however, granted the school only recognized, nonofficial status, which guaranteed only limited state funding. Additionally, with over two-thirds of the schools students coming from the Mateh Yehuda region in which Neve Shalom is located, the school needed to attain extra-regional status in order to gain both more funding and full legitimation from the state. After several years of negotiations, as well as an effort on the villages part to improve relations with local authorities, in 1997 the Israeli government granted the school experimental status. Among hundreds of applications, only one other school was granted such status in 1997. This new status allowed for an increase in state financial support, but more importantly it meant that the Ministry of Education would explore and learn from the methodology of the experimentation of Wahat al-Salams bilingual, bi-national primary school. For villagers, this recognition was an encouragement that there was a growing awareness about what Neve Shalom was creating: co-existence in the learning environment for children.159 In 2000, after several more years of growth, then Minister of Education and Culture Yossi Sarid granted official, extra-regional status, placing the school on more sound economic footing, and [it] indicates that bi-national education, as practiced at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, is seen as fully legitimate by the Israeli education authorities.160 For the community, this too was cause for celebration. Difficulties, however, remain. In January 2004, the Ministry of Education unexpectedly cut off transportation support for the community, leaving the village to foot a large busing bill.
158 159

Ibid. Anwar Daoud, The Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Primary School: 1997 Annual Report by Headmaster Anwar Daoud, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, January 1998, Number 48, 16. 160 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, The NSWAS Primary School Opens the School Year for the First Time as an Official Extra-Regional School, 1 September, 2000, http://www.nswas.com/school/updates/schoolyear2000.htm (accessed January 19, 2005).

37

Throughout the country, economic crisis translated into educational cutbacks. For Neve Shalom, this meant massive debt since its transportation served a wide, extra-regional area.161 For

some members of the community, however, these budgetary problems represent the surface of a larger set of issues that the primary school faces. Some claim that the primary school is growing too fastopening itself up before it has fully developed a curriculum or a financial base to handle any influx of outside children. We are trying to develop a standard curriculum, but instead of spending money on that, we are paying for transportation for the outside kids to come and be at our school.162 The deeper question remains one of integration. Since the early 1990s, the most difficult aspect has always been how the school integrates children from a different context. Children who were not born in the villageIsraeli Jewish children who have no exposure to Arabic and Arab children with no exposure to Hebrewoften join the school in the third, fourth or fifth grade. Children need to start here from the kindergarten on up, commented one villager, so that they can learn the languages from the beginning.163 With most of the children coming from outside families, some parents of children in the village have begun to feel as if the curriculum is beholden to outside parents who do not understand the interests of the village or its unique and delicate balance between Israeli Jews and Arabs.164 As the economic crisis forces the school to consider more cuts, voices calling for a re-examination of the primary school are becoming a louder, though still small minority. It is my opinion, explained one community parent, that we should save the school for our own children for many years until we establish a base for the school; until we know exactly what to do and how to reach out and to integrate on our own
161

Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, The Primary School in 2004-2005, 12 November, 2004, http://nswas.org/article307.html (accessed January 19, 2005). 162 Rita Boulos, interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 163 Ibid. 164 Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005.

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terms.165 While no one seems to question the communitys commitment to exposing the larger society to its ideas, the disagreement focuses instead on how the primary school can maintain its stability while still affecting the region around it. Overall optimism seems predominant in relation to the school, even during difficult economic times. Villagers still believe that the primary school is one of their most important projects.166 Indeed, the opening of the primary school continues to represent one of the main motivations for the villages existence: to affect change in the region through education. That priority, highlighted by the 1990 decision to open up the school, was articulated by teacher Ety Edlund in 1993. She wrote in the community newsletter, Those who attend from outside the village no longer feel so at odds with their friends at home. They welcomed the peace accords with great happiness, and by their writing, drawing and discussing, even the younger children seemed to understand the significant of the agreement.167 For villagers, such results will likely remain a source of great inspiration and satisfaction as they continue to develop the primary school.

4.

Tom Kitain and a Community in Crisis In its history, Neve Shalom has faced numerous challenges, to both its existence and its

identity. The death of a native, Jewish son, Tom Kitain, however, created perhaps the most divisive, painful crisis that the community has ever experienced. His death became more than the painful, protracted source of grief that any death creates. Because he died serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, the helicopter accident which took Tom Kitains life represented much
165 166

Boulos, interview by author, 18 January 2005. Le Meignen, interview by author, 13 January 2005. 167 Ety Edlund and Anwar Daoud, Statements of Principals, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 44, April-October, 1993, 4.

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more to villagersboth Arab Palestinians and Israeli Jews. It provoked discussion, deep disagreement and a divisive conflict over national identity and military service, as well as the manner in which NSWAS handles conflict. For many people at Neve Shalom the conflict arising from how Kitains death was handled remains an open wound. While outside scholars and reporters tend to assign a religion as the main sore point in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, most Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians define the clash as one between two national groups, in which religion, land and politics are used as tools to promote the larger, nationalist goals of both peoples.168 Quite often, one villager commented, we forget that this is not a religious conflictalthough religion is used to perpetuate nationalist tension.169 Consequently, the focus at Wahat al-Salam has always been less about dialogue between religions and more about dialogue between two national groups. The sharper edge of this reality is that issues of nationalist importance in the Middle East become flashpoints for conflict. Such flashpoints include the differing characterizations of the 1948 warIsraeli Jews tend to see it as their Independence Day, while Palestinians refer to it as The Catastrophe,or events celebrating nationalist heroes like Yassir Arafat for Palestinians and David Ben-Gurion for Israeli Jews.170 Previous to the death of Tom Kitain, the NSWAS community has rarely discussed one potentially divisive topic: national military service. This turned out to be an explosive flashpoint for Wahat al-Salam. For young Israeli men, service in the Israeli Defense Forces is mandatory upon the completion of high school. Since no such equivalent exists for young Arab men, especially those living outside of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, the issue of serving ones nation in combat was a topic that most at Neve Shalom had not confronted directly. Tom
168 169

Zak, interview by author, 10 January 2005. Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 170 Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005.

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Kitains mother explained, As a Jew, I did not understand how deeply difficult this question of army service really wasfor Israeli Jews it was simply something you did at a certain age.171 His father agreed: The crisis that was created occurred in part because before, we didnt talk about many things, like service in combat units, in the army.172 Most community members, in fact, were in denial and did not carry on any public dialogue about how to approach the topic with either Palestinian or Israeli Jewish children, or among themselves.173 In retrospect, according to villagers, the stage was set for conflict on the issueespecially because of its ties to the issue of nationalist conflict. It was so difficult, remarked one community member, because [military service] just wasnt discussed enough among us.174 Tom Kitain was the oldest son of Daniella and Boaz Kitain, who arrived in the village when Tom Kitain was nine years old. He grew up in the village, attended its primary school and developed and maintained, by all accounts, strong connections with many villagers.175 When he completed high school he began his mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and took the unprecedented step (for village children) of serving in a combat unit. For his family, it was difficult to see happen, and his mother, Daniella Kitain, explained, I wasnt happy but it wasnt my place to stop a grown boy, and besides, in Israel this is what boys do, they join the military.176 Just five months before his service term expired Tom Kitain was serving with a

helicopter division in Northern Israel along the Lebanese border. His unit was involved in the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Southern Lebanon. Helicopters, he told his parents, are much safer than cars, so thats what we travel in.177 On the night of February 4, 1997, two
171 172

Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. Ibid. 173 Ibid. 174 Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 175 Tom Kitain, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, January 1998, Number 48, 2. 176 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 177 Ibid.

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helicopters carrying seventy-three soldiers, including Tom Kitain, were patrolling together. They were flying in no lights mode, and were flying side-by-side. The military considered this the safest mode of transportation, presuming that if one helicopter flew past a given point, the Israeli enemythe militant Islamic group Hizbullahwould be alerted, and would thus be given time to fire on the second helicopter. As the helicopters crossed the Lebanese border, however, confusion broke out and the two began flying in circles trying to avoid each other. Unfortunately, they were unable to properly see each others location and collided in what would be considered the worst military accident in Israeli history. All seventy-three soldiers aboard, including Tom Kitain, were killed.178 For Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Tom Kitains death marked only the beginning of what those who were boyhood friends of Tom Kitain recall as a surreal time.179 When Tom Kitains parents asked the community to put up a memorial marker at the basketball court saying: Tom Kitain: a child of peace killed in war, the community exploded.180 For many Arab members, conflicting emotions gripped them from the moment they heard of Tom Kitains death. On one hand, Tom Kitain was a child of the villagefriend, in fact, to many of the Arab children and parents. On the other he was a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, an armed body which, in other parts of Israel/Palestine, was carrying out the work of an occupation that Palestinians see as bloody, oppressive and completely at odds with the mission of the village. His combat unit was or would have soon been involved in military action against Arabs in Lebanon, some of whom might even be considered by some Arab villages as our brothers and sisters.181 When I heard about this crash, remembered one of the now-grown Arab children who was friends with Tom Kitain, I did not know who was involved, but I knew
178 179

Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. Ori Sonnenschein, 18 interview by author, January 2005. 180 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 181 Boulos, interview by author, 18 January 2005.

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that soldiers were killed and that they were on a military mission. I dont think, she explained, that they were doing good things for Arabs.182 When it became clear that one of the villages own was involved, I tried to ignore that he was a soldier. But it was hard to decide: was he a soldier or my neighbor? Soldiers kill Arabs, but I am so sad that Tom Kitain is dead. It was very difficult.183 Consequently, the issue of a memorial for Tom Kitain proved much more controversial than expected. The family felt its request was reasonable, because of the human aspect Tom Kitain was a son of this community.184 Some Arab villagers, however, felt that such a memorial was tantamount to acceptingif not celebratingTom Kitains death as a soldier in the Israeli armed forces. Many Palestinian Arab members of the community found it very hard to think of their community as one with a memorial to an Israeli soldier. The family was, however, in a state where we needed all the support we could get. 185 As the divide grew and it became clear that a memorial would not be erected without a brutal debate, a painful feeling settled over the village.186 By the end of 1997 there was still no memorial and divisions were growing. Central to the debate was how to separate national politics from ones personal affinity for a boy who had grown up in the community. Villagers could not separate between our personal and political issues, and for the family this felt insensitive.187 In their darkest moments, the family wondered whether our faith in the concept of Neve Shalom was broken, because they felt that they were denied the support any community ought to offer in such awful circumstances. Yet the dilemma Tom Kitains death created in the minds of Palestinians, many of whom had grown up
182 183

Shireen Najjar, interview by author, 17 January 2005. Ibid. 184 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 185 Ibid. 186 Nava Sonnenschein, interview by author, 17 January 2005. 187 Ruth Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005.

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experiencing great trauma at the hands of Israeli troops, remained one of the hardest things weve ever dealt with.188 After months of contentious discussion, then-mayor Rayeck Rizeck, an Arab Christian himself, brought the decision of whether to have a memorial for Tom Kitain before the entire community at the General Assembly, hoping for some democratic outcome. Facilitators and mediators were brought in to open dialogue, and reduce polarization among community members.189 Finally, in December 1999, almost three years after Tom Kitains death, a majority of the community members voted in favor of the memorial. It was a bittersweet resolution. The community remained as fractured as ever, largely though not exclusively on Arab/Israeli Jewish lines. After so many months of struggle, the vote seemed almost hollow and a certain bitterness remained, even for the Kitain family. Despite the positive outcome, remarked Tom Kitains father Boaz Kitain, the hostility and internal opposition stayed on after the decision.190 Additionally, the vote was still a compromise: the plaque was smaller than had been originally requested, and to this day, the marker at the basketball court is the only sign in the entire village written solely in Hebrew. Tension, while fully present after the December 1999 vote, became far more low-key for several months. In May 2000, however, the conflict re-surfaced in full force. A tenuous harmony was disturbed when Boaz Kitain was invited by the Israeli Knesset (parliament) to light a torch as part of the annual Independence Day celebration.191 For Kitain, this was both a way to remember his son and a way to honor the work of Neve Shalom. The theme of the torchlighting was Different and Equal, and Kitain felt that the Knesset had chosen people who

188 189

Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 190 Ibid. 191 Laurie Copans, In Israel, Little is so Divisive as a Celebration, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10 May 2000.

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represented this theme, especially in peace work, such as that which occurs at Wahat al-Salam.192 Additionally, he explained, he was chosen because of his personal connection to the death arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Other villagers opposed to the memorial for Tom Kitain, became outspoken in their opposition to Boaz representing Neve Shalom at an Independence Day ceremony. One Arab resident, Anwar Daoud, commented that, this doesnt express the co-existence that there was supposed to be here, for peace and brotherhood.193 To many Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Independence Day remains a tragic datethe day when they lost their land and country. For a member of their village to participate in a ceremony celebrating that day proved to be even more difficult to accept than the memorial for Tom Kitain.194 Many Arabs were incensed when Boaz decided to take the invitation; although he pointed out that he had consulted first with both the headmaster of the school and the mayor of the village.195 Throughout the conflictboth over the memorial and over Boaz attendance at the torch lightingtwo primary discussions evolved. At one level, Tom Kitains death and the subsequent controversy over how to honor his life without necessarily endorsing his military service was prominent. It gave the community the chance to talk about the issue of serving in the army, a discussion which many villagers felt was long overdue.196 Second, it forced the community to confront itself, and to see firsthand how villagers communicated during a crisis. By all accounts, the conflict was handled less than adequately and villagers communicated far more poorly than they would have preferred. When Boaz accepted the invitation to light a torch for Independence Day, for example, the primary school, where he was principal at the time,
192 193

Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. Copans, In Israel,The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10 May 2000. 194 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005. 195 Ibid. 196 Ruth Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005.

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suffered because some staff and community members asked that he step down. They felt that he no longer represented the interests of the community and therefore could not serve as principal.197 Accusations were flung back and forth and tensions built up, infecting more and more aspects of community life. When the Israeli press caught wind of these tensions, articles appeared reporting that the differences were a tragedy and that this crisis showed that there was trouble in paradise.198 Villagers were quotedby some accounts mis-quotedin a manner that highlighted the division, emphasizing the failings of the community and not its successes.199 Rayeck Rizeck, in a letter to the Jerusalem Post criticizing its reporting, wrote, There was a mixture of agreement and disagreement on both sides. As with all arguments in the village, the subject became one for general discussion, and our recourse to dialogue and compromise can be the example we offer to the world.200 Nonetheless, these various examples illustrate the factitious, polarized climate in which the village found itself for several years. These years, explained one villager, Were very sad, but maybe meaningful because of what we had to deal with.201 For the community, the struggle over how to deal with Tom Kitains death is a continuing conflict, an ignored but sore wound. Boaz Kitain is a leader in the Association of Bereaved Families for Peace and Reconciliation and he travels around Israel/Palestine arguing for peace as one who experienced firsthand the price of war.202 Closure, however, remains elusive. Many villagers see a need for more discussion on the issue, though most are skeptical about whether that will ever happen. The issue, said one, is not closed. It needs to be re-

197 198

Copans, In Israel,The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10 May 2000. Rayek Rizek, On Healing Wounds, Jerusalem Post Magazine, 26 March 1999. 199 Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 200 Rizek, On Healing Wounds, Jerusalem Post Magazine, 26 March 1999. 201 Kremer, interview by author, 18 January 2005. 202 Daniella and Boaz Kitain, interview by author, 19 January 2005.

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opened and re-discussed, but for most people this may be too hard.203 As a community, we are tired from these events, remarked another villager. Nonetheless, the ability to maintain the community even during the rockiest of years is, for others, a sign of the strength of the communityand of the continued opportunity for dialogue and growth surrounding this and other conflicts. Founding member Anne Le Meignen pointed out, Of course we have problems! This is proof that we are living. Boaz Kitain echoed the call for continued reconciliation several years ago in a memorial service marking the anniversary of his sons death: Maybe one day we can have one Memorial Day for all those who were killed on this land, Jews and Arabs. Then, he explained, we will remember that the most sanctified thing of all is human life.204 D. Further Discussion The history of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is dynamicthe community continues to change and its story remains in flux. We have traced four important points in the villages history, beginning with two foundational decisions. Onethe decision to maintain a fifty-fifty balance between Arab and Israeli Jewish residentsdefined the nature and make-up of the community. The otherthe choice to focus the communitys efforts on education, with its concomitant funding requirementsdefined the priorities and economic structure of the village. Two more events stand out as defining experiences for the village. In 1990, the community opened the doors of its primary school to a wider swath of Israeli-Palestinian population, seeking to include non-village children in the communitys experiment with co-existence. More recently, in 1997, Neve Shalom grappled with the death of Tom Kitain, native son and soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces.

203 204

Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. Copans, In Israel,The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 10 May 2000.

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While each of these points represent only a snapshot of the communitys history, each helps reveal a fuller picture of life at Wahat al-Salam. First, these events show the priorities of the village. A small community like Neve Shalom must have some specific intention, some reason for existence that justifies its continued existence.205 The priorities of this community have been overwhelmingly focused upon education, emphasizing that equality can exist side-byside with diversity. Wahat al-Salams ideals have thus centered on and been defined by this particular educational emphasis. Principled educational projectsfor example, the primary schoolcontinue to be central to the identity of the village, requiring large amounts of the communitys resources and energy. For Neve Shalom, this leads one toward a larger understanding of how villagers views of themselves and of their community have evolved over time. While they seem to see themselves as members of particular national groups, as well as peacemakers seeking to understand these differences and embrace themby creating coexistence through a concerted educational effort. Above all, however, villagers seem themselves as educators modeling and teaching about the possibilities of co-existence. Second, the practical difficulties of living at Neve Shalom also become apparent. Key questions surfaced throughout our discussionquestions of money, infrastructure, staff and logistics. As the community expands, these practical difficulties will continue to be important in the evolution of Wahat al-Salam. More broadly, the difficulties that the community has faced logistically are similar to the hurdles any such intentional community might face. For example, Neve Shalom has gotten very little support from the surrounding society. Other intentional communities, depending on their context, might face a similar lack of governmental and societal assistance, especially if such communities are viewed as particularly radical. Intentional communities are frequently designed redress social inequalities and injustices by reducing their
205

Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005.

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scale.206 Historically, as in the case of Wahat al-Salam, such an attempt places the community at odds with many societal and governmental policies and assumptions, creating tension and a potential lack of support from these sources for said community effort. There exists, therefore, both pressure on the community to be independent of the larger society by being different or economically, socially and ideologically separate but, at the same time, there exists also the difficulty in standing alone, apart from this larger society. The logistical problems that Wahat al-Salam has faced, in large part, stem from this tension between independence and dependence on Israeli society. Creating a village like Neve Shalom, therefore, ultimately requires a careful understanding of the contextual difficulties that such a community will likely face as it attempts to stand on its own. Additionally, the history of this community shows that the typical problems in any society, problems of finding a balance between freedom and control, mobility and permanence, variety and uniformity, inclusion and exclusion are unavoidable, even (perhaps especially) in a small, intentional villagesuch as the tensions surrounding how to maintain parity, how to manage the communitys finances or how to process the death of Tom Kitain.207 This is not necessarily discouraging; in fact, it is a realization of the reality in which all human societies exist. The idealized version of communal life, writes Rosabeth Kanter in her book Commitment and Community, must be meshed with the reality of the work to be done in a community, involving difficult problems of social organization.208 This fact is something villagers at Neve Shalom seem comfortable witha humble realism combined with their concerted idealismand it is a lesson that those who seek to create such experiments in communal living must heed. In essence, this historical analysis reveals that while developing
206 207

Sowers, Living with Conflict, 1. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Communes: Creating and Managing the Collective Life (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1973), 212. 208 Ibid., 64.

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similar ideological goals and maintaining such a vision is important, the second component of thatthe practical, day-to-day enactment of these goals is equally essential, and sometimes more difficult. Finally, handling conflict at NSWAS remains central to the overall functioning of any such community. Tom Kitains death focuses this concern specifically on the issue of national identitya powerfully important issue for this village in particular, but for other communal (or otherwise) efforts at peace. Particularly for Neve Shalom, a community committed to working through destructive nationalistic self-identification, Kitains death became a focal point revealing how difficult it is to truly transcend the grip of nationalism. Benedict Anderson calls nationalism the force which binds us together in imagined communitiesnationalism therefore invents nations where they do not exist.209 Nationalism unites people in vastly different geographical and contextual realities under the vague concept of nationality. Defining the nation is therefore quite arbitrary and historically ambiguous. Deciding who constitutes an imagined communitya nationhas historically been used to determine who has access to certain rights and privileges. This quest to define national identity is the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise action through which that people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.210 Being a member of the nation, therefore, has always carried immense social, economic and political value for citizens. Nationalism inspires its intense fervor and bloodthirsty devotion precisely because being a part of such an imagined community is so defining for ones identity. It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destinyto give the individual some transcendent source of self-identification.211
209 210

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verson Publishing, 1991), 6. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, African-American Womens History and the Metalanguage of Race, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17 (Winter 1992), 270. 211 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 12.

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The educational efforts of Neve Shalom seek to re-frame conflicting national identities by promoting diversity (difference manifested by variations in religion, social background and nationality, for example) through a mutual understanding of equality between peoples. The bloodiness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself illustrates the destructive force of nationalist conflict. The difficulties in seeking to bring these two competing national identities into dialogue and co-existence were revealed in the rupture Tom Kitains death created in the community. Highlighting the degree to which nationalist conflict on the outside impacts the micro-society of Neve Shalom, Kitains death verified a problem villagers frequently cite: the inability to fully escape the macro-level, nationalist clash. This problem is especially ambiguous for villagers struggling to determine how young, Israeli Jewish men raised in a village of peace ought to respond to mandatory military service. Tom Kitains death thrust onto the village a differenceTom Kitains desire to partake in military (and therefore national) servicethat no amount of equality, for some community members (especially Arab Palestinians), could easily overcome. Anderson characterizes military service as the ultimate form of national allegiance the willingness to die for some imagined community. Theologian Walter Wink describes nationalism as a religious phenomenon: only a transcendent cause can induce young men to risk their lives voluntarily in the absence of any conceivable self interest.212 Because Kitain was serving in the national defense forces, and because he was clearly serving the national interests of one nation-state over another, his death further inflamed nationalist tensions already latent in the inherent structure of NSWASa community directly built by two peoples of distinct national identity. Ultimately, this conflict revealed either a certain gray area where further community processing is needed or the limitations of any community set within a nationalist-

212

Wink, Engaging the Powers, 94.

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induced conflict. For Neve Shalom to move forward toward healing it will have to face more directly the complex question of national identity in terms of military service. Wahat al-Salam often presents itself less as a specific model and more as a laboratory for experimentation about how to co-exist amidst conflict.213 As such, its history will continue to offer interesting questionsboth for this specific village and for other such experiments. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is itself a difficult, protracted clash, and Neve Shalom stands as a unique source of hope for a different kind of existence in Israel/Palestine. In the greater vision for peace in the Holy Land historians must continue to understand the village in its context, embracing the inspiring, but complex and difficult reality that this Oasis of Peace will continue to grapple with.

Part II: The Philosophy

Neve Shalomis dedicated to the idea that Jews and Arabs can live together in peace, without having to sacrifice either identity or dignity. It is a daring experiment in a country where mutual hatred, suspicion and fear create a chasm between Arabs and Jews. -Los Angeles Times, October 1984214

A.

National Identities in Dialogue

213 214

Abdessalam Najjar, interview by author, 10 January 2005. What the Press is Saying about Neve Shalom, American Friends of Neve Shalom Association Newsletter, January 1985, 2.

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From the beginning, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a struggle between two national movements, the Zionist and the Palestinian, over the same bit of land.215 Any attempt at interfaith dialogue seeking peace between religious groups in Israel/Palestine that does not base its effort in this fact will ignore the proverbial elephant in the room, and likely face insurmountable difficulties. This nationalist conflict manifests itself in two primary ways. First, a protracted external conflict between two nationalist bodiesthe State of Israel and the various Palestinian liberation organizationshas been fought in the name of land, religion and selfdetermination. Second, an internal, more personal struggle has been waged in the daily lives of individuals on both sides of the conflict struggling to define their identitiesas Jews, Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis, Druze, or some combination of these or some other identity. It is this second aspect of the conflict that Neve Shalom concerns itself with in the maintenance of a philosophy centered on a dialogue between two national identities. Scholars once assumed that as the world grew increasingly more interconnected by global capitalism and commerce, the importance of national identity would fade away. In fact, argue the facilitators of the School for Peace at Wahat al-Salam, we have been witnessing just the opposite: a resurgence of national, ethnic, and religious identities that appears to be gaining momentum.216 Worldwide, liberation movements increasingly manifest themselves in national or ethnic terms, rather than on some overarching ideology. In turn, the resurgence of nationalist fervor in the twenty-first century calls theologians, scholars and activists interested in peace to question the roots of this drive, at least insofar as it continues to provoke bloodshed and destruction internationally. We are, in essence, called to ask what are the conditions under which we organize into the groups we have organized ourselves into? This task, then, focuses

215 216

Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 2. Ibid., 1.

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on the identities we have created for ourselves, and how an honest dialogue with those identities we are in conflict with can be maintained but at the same time allow for peaceful co-existence and further discussion.217 This is the pertinent question fundamental to the philosophy of coexistence and inter-ethnic, inter-faith dialogue at Neve Shalom. Because nationality has become a barrier which is rarely crossed, the community centers itself on exploring that sticking point in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.218 From the outset, Bruno Hussar believed the village must maintain a philosophy in which our aim is to help to prepare a new generation of Jewish and Arab citizens, mature and reasonable, capable of freeing themselves from myths and political manipulation from outside, solving their problems in a spirit of dialogue and making peace.219 Essentially, he believed that through a respectful openness to the other person, something that must be both taught and practiced at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, each one preserves his identity.220 Today, most of the villagers would identify very little in the community as a particular, unifying ideology.221 Despite this, underlying all that the villagers do, the basic philosophy of the community remains singular: the important thing, wrote Bruno Hussar just a few years prior to his death, is not to try to resolve conflicts but to learn how to live with conflicts. It therefore becomes possible, he explained, to live together in brotherly love even if we disagree on many points, because we know that we all pursue the same goal, that of peaceful co-existence, rooted in a commitment to both equality and difference.222 We are not, agreed one long-time member, trying to be the same.223

217 218

Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005. Sowers, Living with Conflict, 14. 219 Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 108. 220 Ibid., 126. 221 Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005. 222 Hussar, Najjar and Zak, An Experiment in Co-Existence, Echoes of Peace, 10. 223 Perry, Arab and Jew find friendship, The Seattle Times, 3 May 2004, B1.

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In more academic terms, the facilitators at the School for Peace explain this underlying philosophy as a means to develop an awareness, among community members, School for Peace participants and the greater populations of Israel/Palestine, about the conflict and their role in it, as well as to enable them to explore and evolve their identity through interaction with the other.224 This philosophy, in fact, is difficult to maintain, because it encourages those who engage it to open wounds, to speak from their hearts, and to explore new directions without disregarding reality, without turning our backs to the past, and without trying to erase our differences.225 For the villagers of Neve Shalom, this philosophy is practically applied in the both the educational approach of the community and in the daily life of the village.

B.

A Certain Kind of Contact

Jesse: So the village could have an effect on the rest of the world? Noam: Oh yes! A lot of people talk about peace, but we live it here. 226

Despite inhabiting a geographically small region, Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians manage to avoid significant contact. Like blacks and white in the United States, Arabs and Jews in Israel live together without really meeting, other than the instrumental kind of meeting which typically involves an Arab worker with a Jewish boss.227 Even mixed cities like Lod, Ramla or Jerusalem, more accurately resemble urban areas reminiscent of the segregated South in the United States. Israeli Jewish and Arab residents live together, but on separate, unequal terms. Both groups lead separate lives, grow up in separate neighborhoods and experience separate educational systems. The two peoples have virtually no contact with one another outside official frameworks like government offices or places of employment, which
224 225

Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 49. Hussar, Najjar and Zak, An Experiment in Co-Existence, Echoes of Peace, 12. 226 Noam Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A. 227 Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 6.

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are hardly balanced encounters. For Israeli Jews, the utter lack of contact is even more stark since Jews rarely need to come, and rarely do come, into contact with Arabs in ordinary daily life. Indeed, these mixed cities show no more aptitude for egalitarian, non-prejudiced coexistence than the rest of Israel/Palestine.228 Merely having contact with the other, therefore, is not sufficient to overcome prejudice. One villager explained that in order to overcome prejudice and move forward toward equality, it is not a question of time, but rather it has more to do with the quality or nature of the contact.229 Sociologist James Jones posits that despite the belief that by bringing people together without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin, we could destroy stereotypes and develop friendly attitudes, such positive effects of contact were not automatic.230 Instead, Jones argues, inter-group attempts to reduce prejudice must be premised on equal status and the intent of working toward common goals.231 Facilitators at the School for Peace quickly learned this fact. They determined that cordial contact, as contact (eating hummus together), may provide a good feeling for the moment but solves nothing, and instead, may do more to preserve and entrench stereotypes and deeper animosity.232 Bruno Hussar, it seems, also understood that some level of intentionality,

of determination to go beyond typical Israeli-Palestinian contact was and is a necessary prerequisite to peace. The intentionality of Wahat al-Salam therefore creates an atmosphere in which community members are brought into each others lives in an intimate way and constant contact with the other as ones neighbor, teacher or administrator cannot be avoided. Villagers strive to embody the need for more meaningful contact based on equal relations in day-to-day
228 229

Ibid., 7. Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005. 230 James M. Jones, Prejudice and Racism (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1997), 324. 231 Ibid., 325. 232 Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 8.

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life. The village in general, wrote researcher Grace Feuerverger, encourages a sense of community promoting certain values about equality and identity.233 Essential to this model for peaceful co-existence is this commitment to equality-based, intentional contact in a community setting. Daily contact at Neve Shalom, however, is not necessarily couched in terms of religion, although an inter-faith experience exists. Current Secretary-General Abdessalam Najjar remarked, Religions are private here and one will not find Muslims, Christians and Jews talking about their faith regularly and rigorously. Interfaith, however, is living with your associates of a different religion.234 While Bruno Hussars original dream envisioned a more religiously vibrant community, the inter-faith experience at Wahat al-Salam has evolved toward a more encompassing inter-ethnic experience rooted in the firm belief that two national identities are in dialogue, as opposed to only religious identities. The first idea of Neve Shalom, wrote Hussar, was religious in character...in fact, Neve Shalom has become a non-religious undertaking, dedicated to bringing together the Jews and Arabs in Israel.235 This shift occurred largely because those attracted to the idea of living in the village were predominantly secularlyminded, though some have had strong cultural or more personal ties to their respective religious backgrounds.236 Hussar recalls being vigorously attacked by a group of young fundamentalists. They asked him, how can you, a Catholic priestlive among Jews, Muslims and atheists without trying to convince them of the truth of the Christian faith?237 Hussars response reflects the underlying attitude reaching across religious boundaries toward an interfaith solution to the conflict:
233 234

Feuerverger, Oasis of Peace, Journal of Moral Education (1995): 113. Abdessalam Najjar, interview by author, 10 January 2005. 235 Hussar, When the Cloud Lifted, 109. 236 Ibid. 237 Ibid.

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These men and women, the families who live on this hillcant bear being in a country where two peoples never stop fighting. They feel they must do something to help them come together in peace. Dont you think that one day, even if its after their death, Jesus will appear to them and say, I was hungry for reconciliation and peace and you gave me to eat? How do you know that these workers for peace are not the children of God[and] it is this attitude of faith that makes me sure Neve Shalom is doing Gods work.238 Just as the daily contact serves to overcome the superficial, incidental interaction of Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs in mainstream Israel/Palestine, it also creates a constantthough indirect inter-faith experience. Against this backdrop, the contact at Wahat al-Salam begins to redress the social inequalities and prejudices of Israeli-Palestinian society. The nature of the village, based in intentional living, promotes an environment in which many seemingly small, daily interactions become much more important than they might in mainstream Israeli-Palestinian villages. This is both what makes the village special and so difficult to live in. Living at Neve Shalom, however, means that you almost dont have any choice[because] the conflict between the two peoples is a chapter of our life here that you cant ignoreit comes from everywhere.239 Living in a community of this sort means that almost every aspect of life is touched by cultural, ethnic, religious or national differences in how things are thought about, discussed and carried out. Transportation, decoration, publicity, political and social life, community landscaping everything mayand likely hascome into the spotlight as a source of inter-religious or intercultural tension that must be worked through. Even which name is written firstWahat alSalam or Neve Shalomon signs is a source of discussion. This creates a uniqueness about the life of this communitybut we dont live to eliminate the sides, but to help the sides express themselves.240
238 239

Ibid., 110. Kremer, interview by author, 18 January 2005. 240 Ibid.

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This interaction is fundamentally rooted in equality and a directedness toward a common goal, confirming the necessary theoretical design for any successful anti-prejudicial contact as outlined by James Jones previously. One villager explained, We are a small community and we are meeting each other oftenwe have to be with each other.241 Being with each other, in fact, means much more than eating hummus together or waving as one passes on the street. A teacher at the primary school remarked, You are prejudiced as long as you just hear about something or someone but are not forced to interact with them. But, she explained, when you see him faceto-face, see him and listen to his voice, see what he is wearing and what he looks likeyou get into each others house, it is different. Most importantly, you are not hearing about each other, you are hearing each other.242 To many villagers, this is the practical application of the communitys theory calling for equality and difference as a means to peace and overcoming prejudice. Whereas outside the other is an enemyand minimal daily contact permits one to continue thinking in this mannerinside the village, the other becomes ones partner for peace, uniting both people in a common goal. Such contact, therefore, is essential to overcoming stereotypes, creating equality and enhancing the possibilities of co-existence.

C. Three Pillars: The Philosophical and Practical Dimensions of an Inter-ethnic, Inter-Faith Community 1. The First Pillar: The Exploring Identity, Encountering The Other The most direct educational application of this philosophy lies in the efforts of the School for Peace. Since its inception in the early 1980s, it has stood at the core of the community, an institution which has brought in thousands of participants from across Israel/Palestine, seeking to

241 242

Tibi, interview by author, 11 January 2005. Raida Hatib, interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A.

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offer them an education in co-existence, equality and difference. The 2003 Annual Report optimistically noted, More than a thousand people took part in our programs in 2003, demonstrating the will of civil society and brave individuals on each side who are committed to maintaining contact with the other, even in times of severe conflict.243 Demand for this type of education is increasing. Due to the difficulty of gaining entrance into Israel proper, only 99 of the 880 Palestinian participants in School for Peace programs came from the Occupied Territories.244 One group, however, of Palestinian students traveled in on back roads from the West Bank without entry permits into Israel, therefore placing themselves at great personal risk.245 Internationally renowned for its particular approach, the School for Peace has developed a model which they call an encounter, facilitating dialogue between or among groups of Arabs and Israeli Jewish adults and children. The encounter brings together an intimate, intentional group of people seeking dialogue. Some last several days, while others take place only for an afternoon. While most encounters take place at Neve Shalom in the School for Peace facilities, the School also increasingly facilitates encounters at major universities in Israel/Palestine, to both professors and students. The encounter, however, has evolved over the course of the communitys history. While at one point the encounter resembled something similar to interpersonal mediation, with an emphasis on the relationships between the particular participants, it has since been crafted more as the creation of a microcosm of society.246 Currently, the encounter seeks for its participants to represent the sides of the conflictIsraeli Jews representing Israeli society and Palestinians representing Arab Palestinian society. Instead of
243 244

Zak, ed., School for Peace Report: 2003, 4. Ibid., 9. 245 Ibid., 38. 246 Haviva Bar and David Bargal, The School for Peace at Neve Shalom1985 Description and Assessment of a Longitudinal Intervention Among Trainees and Staff, submitted to The Ford Foundation, (Jerusalem: The Israel Institute of Applied Social Research, February 1987), 30.

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seeking to create friendship and goodwill between participants (though that is certainly desired), this approach emphasizes the re-creation of the dynamics of mainstream Israeli-Palestinian society, with the hope that such a re-creation will offer a forum for understanding the power imbalance of Israeli-Palestinian society. In turn, it is hoped, this will create a situation in which identities come into dialogue, allowing for the possibility that some work towards the possibility of co-existence will occur. School for Peace facilitator, Rabah Halabi, explained: After considerable trial and error, we created an approach to this work that sees the encounter as one between two national identities; the goal is to examine and construct ones own identity through the encounter with the other. The utopian alternative would have been to build bridges beyond nationality and aspire to a universal human society; this approach, alas, does not work in realityhence in the existing reality, our aspiration is to unravel and then reconstruct participants identities because only an encounter between confident identities can lead to a genuine meeting of equals and permit the option of building a more humane and just society.247 These face-to-face encounters generally involve a certain evolutionif successful toward a new understanding about the relationship between the two national groups and the possibility for change. In the first stage, participants are asked to recognize their differences. In many cases, participants begin by speaking about their lives, at first hesitantly. Soon, Palestinians tells stories of discrimination, curfew, harassment, bulldozed houses, and lost loved ones. Israeli Jews tell stories of terror, suicide bombers, and a deep, pervasive fear of 61ntiSemitism.248 Second, eventually these differences become apparent, highlighted and focused uponoften painfully. Often a sense of competition develops, with both sides laying out their stories of fear and anger, each side jockeying to show whose culture [is] more humane and progressive, or what it means to defend oneself, often through lengthy discussions about the meaning of suicide bombings and occupation.249 Third, if this painful, cathartic experience does
247 248

Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 8. Zak, ed., School for Peace Report: 2003, 32. 249 Ibid.

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not de-stabilize further dialogue, an appreciation for them is developeda stasis, in which dialogue acquiesces into acceptance. Both sides, at this point, eventually [manage] to listen and to acknowledge and take responsibility. The most difficult step, for example, is often taken when Israeli Jews admit the position of power they have in the larger society.250 Finally, coming full circle, the encounter hopes to end with some understanding of the fears of both sides and the inherent differences between the two groupsan understanding, which, ideally, is premised on an acceptance of equality. Indeed, only when the Arab group becomes strong, shaking off the sediment of inferiority feelings and uprooting the internalized oppression, can it also help the Jewish group to free itself from being the oppressor.251 This, then, is the beginning of coexistence. The process of encounter does not always reach this desired final stage. Many Israeli Jews, for example, are uncomfortable with the shift in power, often at a deep, barely conscious level. For some, it feels as if they are asked to apologize for their identitya difficulty rooted in the essential question that the encounter is asking of participants, that being, what is the root of ones identity, and how is it constructed? For those tied deeply to the existing structures of Israeli society and the contact between Israeli Jews and Palestinians that those structures create, acknowledging this power imbalance is too much.252 For some Palestinian participants, it is impossible to let go of ones anger at the Israeli other, whom they have come to see as an enemy permanently. The difficulty for participants in the encounter is aptly summarized by the words of one villager, who remarked that through it, you are losing your enemy and making him your partner.253

250 251

Ibid. Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 8. 252 Nava Sonnenschein, interview by author, 17 January 2005. 253 Shireen Najjar, interview by author, 17 January 2005.

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There are, however, many powerful examples of genuine encounters which vigorously engage deep prejudices and grievances. The testimonies of those who have completed the program offer a clear picture of this process of release, appreciation and acceptance of both equality and difference. One Arab participant explained: I couldnt believe how cavalier some of the Jewish participants were with regard to the terrible treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. It just made me feel sick. I have relatives who were badly injured in certain fights. I do see Israelis, therefore, as aggressors. I cant help it. But I never thought of the mass murders of their people in Eastern Europe. They are more traumatized than I ever imagined. We have to learn about each others pain and acknowledge it. Its the first time Ive ever considered that.254 A Jewish youth participant described an equally powerful experience: Those four days I spent at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam changed my entire outlook regarding Arabs. I never thought I could live with them in peace, happily, and that we could be friends. Every day I hear through the media and on the street that there was another terrorist attack, that another bus exploded, and it made me hate the Arabs more and more. I didnt know that they arent all like that. That not all of them are murderers and terrorists. I discovered that they also have children, boys my age who live to have a good time, listen to music, play football and basketballexactly the same things I like doingI dont know how I could live and study under the conditions they live and study underDuring these four days I discovered new people, a new culture, a new world, and I really hope they can improve their lives in Israel and that they wont curse usthe Jews every day of their lives.255 Many Jewish participants recall a similarly difficult and painful confrontation with their position of power, and both groups consistently report grappling with their newfound sense of understanding about the pains and fears of the other. How can I trust people who want to destroy me and my people? I am terrified of Arab terrorists, explained one Jewish participant. But [after an encounter], he explained, Im willing to listen and see what they have to sayI know now that not every Arab wants to blow up innocent people, and its true that the situation in

254

Joseph Montville, Neve Shalom: A Model of Arab-Israeli Co-existence, The Middle East Quarterly, 5 (December 1998): 3. 255 Ibid.

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the West Bank is desperate.256 One 35 year old Jewish mother described her experience after an encounter: The meeting was painful for me because it confronted me with the results of my actions and power as an Israeli. Even if I understand the logic behind these actions, I was embarrassed to learn how destructive they are to both sides.257 Ultimately, coming to know the other is often a process of coming to know oneself more fullybut first one must become aware of how ones identity is constructed, and in what ways it is predicated on hatred for the other, before this deconstructed identity can be rebuilt with new possibilities for co-existence at its core. Ongoing contact between the two peoples sharpened identities, brought people a high level of awareness, and sometimes caused tension, but, overall, stabilized their identities.258 Painfully, but genuinely, the encounter work therefore represents a defining, practical application of the underlying philosophy at Wahat al-Salam: equality within difference.

2.

The Second Pillar: Primary Education for Peace Fostering equality within difference by directly applying the philosophy of the village

continues as the village educates the next generation of Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians. The primary school at Neve Shalom promotes inter-faith, inter-ethnic relations at a young age, but also brings parents and educators into the experience. Both Hebrew and Arabic are, at least in theory, equally prevalent in the primary school setting. Students are exposed to teachers who speak both Arabic and Hebrew. Classroom activities emphasize the historical and cultural narratives of both sides in the conflict. Similar to those around the village, signs and instructions
256 257

Ibid. Zak, ed., School for Peace Report: 2003, 33. 258 Halabi, ed., Israeli and Palestinian Identities in Dialogue, 7.

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in the primary school are in both Hebrew and Arabic. Israeli Jews learn to speak and write Arabic and Palestinian Arabs learn those skills in Hebrew. This has a profound impact on all involved. Children leave the school, explained one parent, with an understanding of openmindedness as a tool, which they can apply to a variety of confrontations with difference in many aspects of life.259 Learning about each others religious holidays and narratives is also an important aspect of this primary school interaction. While children and parents are encouraged to strengthen the particular religious identity or cultural heritage that they feel tied to, this is not promoted out of hostility toward other such identities. Rather, a certain sensitivity is developed. In 1998, for example, Hillary Clinton, on a tour of the Middle East, stopped at the Neve Shalom primary school to witness a winter celebration which included the lighting of Hanukkah menorahs, the decoration of a Christmas tree and the kindling of a Ramadan lantern. Overwhelmed by the sense of inter-faith learning, she said Gods work is our own, and certainly the work of building peace and building trust is among the most important work we have to do. Thank you, she told the children and their teachers, for doing Gods work, the everyday work of peace.260 Researcher Grace Feuerverger observed a similar experience at the primary schools annual Christmas party. To her, this event exemplifies the moral enterprise in which these people are engaged on a daily basis, both personally and professionally.261 At the party she recalled noticing an Arab woman sitting beside a Jewish woman, both with two small children in their labs. They began discussing their lives in very everyday termsabout their children and the kindergarten. This is what peace is all about, Feuerverger remembered.262 As children acted
259 260

Ruth Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005. Aryeh Dean Cohen, Hillary Gets View of The Everyday Work of Peace, The Jerusalem Post, 14 December 1998. 261 Grace Feuerverger, Oasis of Dreams: Teaching and Learning Peace in a Jewish-Palestinian Village in Israel (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001), 36. 262 Ibid.

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out the Christmas story to the narration of the story in both Hebrew and Arabic, she recalled thinking, here was the Christmas message as it had been originally meant: good will to all humanity!263 Most importantly, the school challenges children and educators to move beyond simplistic, superficial attitudes toward peacemaking that seek only to subvert difference as a way to put aside differences and live peacefully. As teachers at the school emphasize, peacemaking does not require one to enjoy the other, only to co-exist in peace and harmony respect and equality, in fact, become more important even than mutual friendship.264 One story, illustrated by one long-time teacher at the school demonstrates this clearly. She describes an incident in which two boys in her classone an Israeli Jew and the other a Palestinian Arab were constantly at odds with each other, even resorting to racist insults and confrontations on the playground. The teacher separated the two children, seating them at opposite ends of the classroom. It was to no avail. Their squabbling continued, across the room, disrupting the class even more. Finally, she placed them at the same work table, next to each other. They were furiousand they both convinced their parents to call in requesting that the seating arrangement be adjusted to split these two up. The teacher did not budge. During one class period, she asked the class to work with a partner to create a drawing together, in which both children would work together to decide on format, layout, color scheme and subject matter. She paired the two misbehaving children together. At the end of the demonstration, each pair presented their drawing. The two aforementioned children displayed a drawing different than all the others: it had a line drawn down the middle, exactly halfway through the page, and on each side a completely different drawingone by each childwas illustrated. The teacher asked the

263 264

Ibid., 38. Ety Edlund, interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, tape recording, M.L.A

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children if this drawing fulfilled the requirements of the assignment. Most students said it did not, but the teacher instead challenged this notion, arguing that in fact, the drawing was absolutely satisfactory because it met the parameters. It was a drawing in which both children had agreed peacefully on a format and had respected each others side of the drawing, affording each other the mutual respect necessary to create their own pictures. It was a lesson in the underlying notion that peace depends on something much deeper than merely liking the other. Rather, the inter-ethnic contact that the school fosters seems premised on the same foundations that James Jones argued for: equality and an effort towards a common goal.

3.

The Third Pillar: A Center for Pluralistic, Spiritual Understanding A final avenue for interfaith dialogue is the growing presence of the Pluralistic Spiritual

Center. In 1983 the community established a corner of silence as a place where those of all religions who would be welcome to use as a spiritual retreat.265 In 1986, the village began the construction of a House of Silence, a dome-shaped location for people to find space for meditation in silence. The House of Silence was inspired by a loose translation of Psalm 65 For You silence is praiseand is today a place that the community hopes will inspire members to pursue both communal and individual spiritual practice.266 Silence, explains a village information sheet, has the quality of being a universal language, which everyone can rediscover and understand, despite differences of place, race, religion or opinion.267 In 2004,
265 266

A Corner of Quiet, American Friends of Neve Shalom Association Newsletter, March 1984, 1. There is a bit of a discrepancy here. Bruno Hussars autobiography and various community handouts about the House of Silence quote Psalm 65, verse 2 as saying For You silence is praise. Hussar cites this as the inspiration for the given name of this spiritual center, the House of Silence. In the New Revised Standard Version and Revised Standard Version of the Bible which I consulted, the translation was quite different. The R.S.V., for example, quoted it as, O thou who hearest our prayer! To thee shall all flesh come. While I am not sure where Hussars interpretation came from, perhaps it was based on a translation of the verse in which prayer referred to silent vows, since some translations (such as the New English Bible) quote the verse as, Thou hearest prayers, vows shall be paid to thee. 267 The Bruno Hussar Center for Spiritual Pluralism, (village handout, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, 2005), 1.

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construction for the Spiritual Center began, commencing the construction of what villagers hope will be a community center for interfaith dialogue and study. It will house several areas designed to allow worship by Muslims, Christians, Jews or others, as well as a small library of study resources. Together, these projects, as well as the activities associated with them, comprise the Pluralistic Spiritual Center. Since its establishment, the Pluralistic Spiritual Center has tried to contribute to the community by creating opportunities for the members to meet in various frameworks.268 Multi-faceted in its approach, these meetings have aimed to strengthen the ties between us, improve communication and deepen interpersonal understanding.269 The Spiritual Center focuses the communitys interfaith experience in two specific ways. First, it encourages theological discussion crossing religious boundaries, emphasizing faith that seeks understanding. The center holds meetings where we study the scriptures of the religions of the country, in order to discover and unite on their common message of justice, brotherly love, and peace.270 Over the past two decades, classes have been held focusing on Bible or Koranic study and teaching scripture for peace education.271 In 2004, the center hosted a conference focusing on Religion, Social Identity and Education among Arabs and Jews in Israel, and drew approximately 100 participants from around Israel/Palestine.272 Through study and dialogue about the unique and common aspects of each faith tradition, community members and participants hope to encourage a deeper awareness of each others identity and faith. Additionally, they seek an understanding

268

Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Doumia Sakinah Update, 4 June 2004, http://nswas.org/article232.html (accessed February 7, 2005). 269 Ibid. 270 Hussar, Najjar and Zak, An Experiment in Co-Existence, Echoes of Peace, 10. 271 The Primary School, The Kindergarten and the Nursery, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, MayAugust, 1992, 6. 272 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Doumia Sakinah Update, 4 June 2004, http://nswas.org/article232.html (accessed February 7, 2005).

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of the common elements within each tradition promoting nonviolence and justice, and how those aspects might be understood in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian context.273 Beyond theological dialogue, the Spiritual Center promotes contact designed to provide culturally rooted interfaith experiences. Such interaction is rooted in the core idea of developing the community as a community, by bringing it together through common celebration and other exposure to the culture and tradition of other religious groups in the village.274 An October 1990 newsletter recalled a community celebration for the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of two village children. The newsletter noted that, particularly significant was the fact that people of many faiths and traditions were joined on this day; to celebrateit was a proclamation of faith by Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam and its enlarged family.275 More recently, for example, the Spiritual Center has sponsored seminars and workshops on bridging across boundaries during times of conflictcrucial to any sort of interfaith dialogueas well as dialogue sessions regarding the effects of the Holocaust on Jewish psyche and spiritualityalso an important topic for Muslims, Christians and Jews to discuss in an the search for understanding the deep spiritual needs of the Jewish people following a history filled with persecution.276 While villagers are frank about the need for more community development and interaction, the Pluralistic Spiritual Center and its activities remain an important aspect of interfaith contact.277 By bringing villagers into contact through interfaith study, celebration and dialogue based on equal terms, prejudice is slowly overcome and co-existence becomes a more firm reality.
273 274

Ibid. Dorit Shippin, interview by author, 12 January 2005. 275 A Community CelebrationOctober 6, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 38, 6. 276 Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Memory and Peace, August 2003, http://nswas.org/article131.html (accessed February 7, 2005) and, Dorit Shippin and Dyana Shalufi-Rizek, Memory and Recognition, September 2003, http://nswas.org/print_friendly.php3?id_article=136 (accessed February 7, 2005). 277 Abdessalam Najjar, interview by author, 10 January 2005.

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D. Judeo-Christian Theological Implications

"There came our messengers to Abraham with glad tidings. They said, "Peace!" He answered, "Peace!" and hastened to entertain them with a roasted calf. " -The Quran, Book 11( Hud), verse 69 Enter ye here in peace and security." -The Quran, Book 15 (Stone Land), verse 46

From a Judeo-Christian perspective, there are several theological implications to the philosophical framework through which Wahat al-Salam creates interfaith dialogue and contact, at the School for Peace, the Primary School and the Spiritual Center. Jim Wallis, speaking at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, declared that all great social movements in history have a spiritual foundation.278 Likewise, any broader peace movement in Israel/Palestine will require a deeper commitment to a theological and spiritual shift centered on an alternative vision for Holy Land. Understanding the philosophyand the very existenceof Wahat al-Salam in theological terms is essential in learning how we apply the work of this community to the conflict. Neve Shalom therefore offers us a model from which we can think about (1) being the change we seek in the world; (2) creating hope rooted in both practicality and idealism; and (3) seeking a meeting between truth, justice and peace. In the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 32:18 promises, My people will abide in an oasis of peace, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.279 The language of Isaiah emphasizes the existence of a place apart from the powerful, fallen structures around itan oasis in a desert.
278

Jim Wallis, Peacemaking in Hard Times (lecture, Bethel College, North Newton, KS, February 18, 2005). For full recording, see M.L.A. Peace Lecture Series Collection. 279 All passages from the Hebrew Bible and New Testament come from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) and The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Edition (New York: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1971).

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Deriving its name from this text, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam seeks to be that oasis in a desert of conflict. Beyond solely discussion and dialogue, this community seeks to be the change it hopes for by living its core beliefs and testing them in practice every day. The community, therefore, is proof of a deeper commitment to implementing the ideals of peace in everyday life.280 The power of this witness is tremendous. Beginning with the Abrahamic covenant, from the Hebrew Bible through the New Testament, God calls on the people of biblical Israel to separate from the existing system of dominationrooted in empire, greed, idolatry and violenceand seek out an existence demonstrating a new way to be in the world premised on love, justice and righteousness. The language through Isaiah 32 is explicit about this call. Isaiah 32:16-17 proclaim: Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever. Emphasizing the new way in the wilderness, righteousness, trust and peace are bound together in an alternative way of being. Villagers view their community the same way. The power of being as a source of witness was summarized by one villager who commented that we are actually doingWe are a symbol that Jews and Arabs are able to live together, even though the culture and institutions all around tell them and the world otherwise.281 In the New Testament, language focusing on the power of being versus saying is also significant. Grounded in the Divine, claim New Testament authors, we become what we seek rather than just preaching righteously about the change we hope for. Ephesians 2:15 argues that through God, we are one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, thereby creating, in verse 19, a new household of God. The idea of being a light unto the world

280 281

Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005.

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comes out even more vividly in the language of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus describes a new, transformative way of being centered on nonviolent love and a rejection, again, of the oppressive, dominant system all around. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus commands his followers to be a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. Rather than be a lamp hidden under a bushel, he calls followers to exist in such a way that their light is on a stand so that it gives light to all in the house. Neve Shalom embodies this profound theological position by being a nonviolent communitya village on a hillrepresenting an alternative to the present social reality dominated by violence and injustice.282 A second implication of Wahat al-Salam lies in its role as a hope-bringer for a society in need of hope. Proverbs 29:18 reminds that Without a vision, the people perish. Hope is the fire that ignites our will to live, even in times of great danger or despair, and even in the face of a seemingly dismal future. Yet hope-bringing is a difficult task. Too often, people are willing to embrace false or misleading sources of hopesuch as belief in empire, military might, or some simplistic solution to the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr. John Paul Lederach argues that hope is connected to dreaming and that these combine to create faith. Such faith, however, is not tied to a single messianic hope. Rather it is tied to a humble, yet assured, hope that many realities are possible. Lederach describes biblical dreamers like Noah and his Ark, or Moses and his Exodus as imbued with the ability to live according to a vision of unseen and unknown realities. Their hope, argues Lederach, did not predict the future according to the present.283 It was not deterministic or static, like messianic hopeit accepted not a predictive vision, but an unseen, unknown vision.

282 283

Rizek, interview by author, 12 January 2005. John Paul Lederach, Journey Toward Reconciliation (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1999), 195.

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Although Neve Shalom villagers are frequently interviewed by the media, they remain skeptical of news coverage because it tends to distort their mission and turn their village into some utopian dream. Villagers do not speak in terms of seeking perfect, utopian harmony. Instead, they speak of seeking to create a laboratory for discussing, learning and creating hope and peace through co-existence.284 Theirs is a humble, but powerfully hopeful dream. In the daily struggle for fair and equal co-existence, there is both enduring tension and constant peacemaking. Life is messy and filled with conflict, joy, and a faith in their hopeful discovery about how to live together in peace. How can such a strong sense of hope remain in a village that promises little in the way of utopian certainty and much in the way of messy conflict? The answer lies in the principled way that Wahat al-Salaam villagers have chosen to fill their role as hope-bringers, touting not a utopia but an alternative vision rooted in the practical realities of life lived amidst conflict. They do not promise present peace, yet the very existence of their village represents the hopeful promise of a peaceful future. Neve Shalom is not a perfect model; it is, however, a model that does not distort hope through unrealistic utopian claims. Villagers do not wish to be idolized; they wish to inspire real hope and generate real energy in real people to work for a better future. This, then, is what it means to be an ethical hope-bringer in a world too often brought to the verge of utter despair: generating radical hope rooted in the uncertainties of human reality, but ultimately faithful to the ideal of an altered and improved future (though not a perfect one). We must reject the use of messianic hope even though it offers us more personal control through its manipulation of fears and visions of utopia. Instead, as John Paul Lederach challenges, ethical hope-bringers must stay so close to the ground that we feel the very soils moisture bubbling up from peoples daily life, pains and realities, while at the same time staying so
284

Mark, interview by author, 7 January 2005.

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close to our dreams of what could be that we can feel and hear the seeds pregnant with life as they break forth from below the surface.285 Theologically, embodying their beliefs and creating humble hope combine with a third facet present in Neve Shaloms existence: the ability to bind truth, justice and peace together. Psalm 85:10 envisions such an encounter: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; justice and peace will kiss each other. Few things are as important to villagers as maintaining a genuine, honest dialogue in which the pretenses and assumptions of the dominant paradigm are stripped downboth through the educational efforts of the School for Peace and the Primary School, and through day-to-day contact and interfaith discussion. Truth-tellingincluding opening up the wounds of occupation and terrorismare essential to the mission of the community.286 In a biblical context, truth and justice must accompany any peacemaking initiative. Without justice, moving forward from pain is impossible, making peace a distant hope. Without truth, justice is unlikely. And without a faithful commitment to peace, justice becomes violent and retributive. All three must walk hand in hand, embodying a commitment to equality and difference, dialogue and interfaith contact. Neve Shalom, therefore, reveals a model for theological analysis by being an alternative vision, by creating humble, but radical hope and by joining truth, peace, and justice. Theologically, these three commitments must be applied to any peacemaking attempt. Only then will both groups be able to create the vision of peace laid forth in Micah 4:4: They shall sit every one under their vine and under their fig tree, and none shall make them afraid.

Part III: Conclusions

285 286

Lederach, Journey Toward Reconciliation, 197. Frisch, interview by author, 19 January 2005.

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Integrating the story of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam with an analysis of the philosophy reveals the true tapestry of this unique community. The history of the village can be traced through four pivotal decisions and events: (1) the initial choice to maintain a fifty-fifty balance between Arab and Israeli Jewish residents; (2) the early decision to focus on education, thus becoming dependent financially on outside donations; (3) the 1990 move to open the doors of the primary school to children outside the village; and (4) the 1997 death of village native Tom Kitain and the ensuing conflict. These key points in village history offer a glimpse into the priorities, practical difficulties and conflicts of living in thisor any similarintentional community. The underlying philosophy of the village rests on three significant pillars of application: first, in the School for Peace encounter approach second, in primary education and third in the day-to-day contact and interfaith study promoted by the Pluralistic Spiritual Center. Both the story and philosophical heart of Wahat al-Salam are woven with strands of change and conflict, inspiration and idealism. Neve Shaloms commitment to equality within diversity is manifested in its staunch determination to maintain an equal balance between Arab and Israeli Jewish residents, as well as in the practical application of its philosophy through education. Both in their decision to open the Primary School to children living outside Wahat alSalam and in their continued efforts to create the kind of contact that reaches across boundaries to reduce prejudice and promote co-existence, villagers have further affirmed this commitment. Despite practical, financial and logistical difficulties, the community perseveres, struggling to maintain its oasis amidst conflict, its hope amidst despair and its desire for truth, justice and peace despite the misunderstandings and injustices of war. The integration of both history and theology in this analysis of Neve Shalom offers a unique possibility to explore the multi-faceted and complex dimensions of a community in flux.

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Questions raised are not separated by the walls of one discipline or another. The challenge is to answer these questionsabout peace and community, hope and historyin an equally integrated manner, thereby providing a fuller understanding of the complex reality of peacemaking at Wahat al-Salam, and throughout Israel/Palestine. Realizing this complexity, and the interwoven importance of equality and difference, hope and justice, truth and peace, will in turn reveal the enormity of the questions Neve Shaloms existence asks us to grapple with.

Appendix A: Timeline The following is an incomplete but comprehensive timeline spanning the history of the community through January 2005. It was created with the help of Howard Shippin, Rita Bolous, Abdessalam Najjar, Eitan Kremer, Ilan Frisch, Ruth Shuster, Nava Sonnenschein, Kent Etlund and Bob Mark. 1970Bruno Hussar signs contract with Latrun Monastery 1972First residents, including Bruno Hussar and Anne LeMeignen take up residence on a hilltop on the newly leased land, calling it Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace in both Hebrew and Arabic respectively) 1976The first family begins living at Wahat al-Salam

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1977First outside donations, led by the efforts of German Pax Christi group, give economic support to the fledgling community287 1979The School for Peace is established, pioneering a unique educational approach centered on the encounter between Arabs and Israeli Jews 1980The village nursery is founded 1980-1981Summer camps held at Neve Shalom in an effort to bring together Israel Jews and Arabs 1983Doumia, established as a corner of quiet where people of all faiths could meditate, pray or worship 1984The Primary School is established, though open at this stage only to children residing in the village 1984The village hosts its first Open Day celebration, inviting artists and musicians from around the countryboth Israeli Jews and Arab Palestiniansto perform in a day-long festival promoting peace and the possibilities of co-existence 1985-1986Facilitators at the School for Peace take their philosophy of encounter, and put it into practice in Northern Ireland, attempting to begin building bridges between hostile parties in that conflict 1986Full municipal status is granted to the municipality of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, granting it access to the electrical grid and a place on the Mateh Yehuda regional council governing municipalities in the area 1987The community access road is paved for the first time with finances raised from friends associations 1987The community hosts a second and thus far final Open Day, reaching an attendance of 20,000 people from around Israel/Palestine288 1987Israeli government recognizes the community officially, placing it on maps and bus routes 1988Construction finishes on the House of Silence, marking a spot for pluralistic worship and prayer in silence for people of all religious and spiritual backgrounds 1988Parity in numbers reached, marking the first time that Wahat al-Salam is officially populated by an evenly split populationhalf Israeli Jew and half Arab
287

The first Friends Associationsgroups who do fundraising and promotion for the communitywere established in the early 1980s, beginning with the German Friends Association. See also: Kremer, interview by author, 18 January 2005. 288 For further information on both celebrations of Open Day, see: Kremer, interview by author, 18 January 2005.

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1989Due to financial difficulties, the School for Peace is briefly paralyzed, though it regains its footing within a year, with an almost entirely new faculty 1990The Primary School is opened to area villages, allowing children from these neighboring places to attend289 1990-1991The School for Peace offers programs for adults for the first time, as well as programs at major Israeli and Palestinian Universities 1992Community Kindergarten recognized by the Israeli Ministry of Education, allowing it some financial support and academic accreditation 1992Neve Shalom opens a community guesthouse, replacing the youth hostel it had maintained from the early 1980s290 1993-1995Wahat al-Salam successfully wards off attempts by developers to build a Neve Shalom B community adjacent to the village, which would have likely enveloped and destroyed the carefully created balance that villagers sought to maintain 1996Village founding father Bruno Hussar dies at the age of 85 1996-1997Facilitators at the School for Peace take the encounter philosophy to the GreekCypriot conflict, attempting to begin building bridges among warring parties there 1997The Neve Shalom Primary School is granted official experimental status, allowing for increased financial support from the state and making the school a source of exploration and learning for educators from around the country 1997Community son Tom Kitain is killed in a helicopter crash while serving in the Israeli Defense Forces 1998-2002Villagers stave off a second attempt by developers to include the Neve Shalom B plan as part of Israeli government settlement plans for the region 1998-1999Neve Shalom is connected to the regional water/sewage system; previously the community had relied on a self-sufficient, internal water/sewage system 1999A compromise of sorts is reached on the issue of how to remember Tom Kitain, and a plaque is placed above the basketball court in memorial; it remains the only sign in the village written only in Hebrew

289

There are currently 228 students enrolled at the primary school from a variety of surrounding villages and communities. See also: Howard Shippin, e-mail message to author, January 20, 2005. 290 Officials at the guesthouse estimate that they receive 12,000 visitors a year on average, and that they have hosted over 250,000 visitors since the founding of the village. See: Ruth Shuster, interview by author, 18 January 2005.

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2000The Israeli Ministry of Education grants the Wahat al-Salam Primary School official extra-regional status, granting the school more financial support and further legitimation by the State of Israel 2000Boaz Kitain, father of the late Tom Kitain, is invited to light a torch at the annual celebration of Independence held at the Israeli Knesset 2001Neve Shalom establishes the Humanitarian Assistance Program (H.A.P.) in an effort to participate in medical aid and outreach in the occupied territories, targeting especially Palestinians unable to obtain proper medical care due to the highly restrictive occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces 2003The community opens its Junior High School 2003Construction is completed on a Sports Hall, which includes basketball and gym facilities for the village 2004Construction begins on the expanded facilities of the Pluralistic Spiritual Center (P.S.C.) 2004The village access road is expanded to a two-lane road, and re-paved 2004-2005Neve Shalom begins a series of discussion and community mediations in an attempt to begin processing the expected dramatic growth in size of the community projected for the coming years as part of the village expansion plan Appendix B: A Map of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, circa January 2005

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Hatib, Raida. Interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Kitain, Daniella and Boaz. Interview by author, 19 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat alSalam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Kremer, Eitan. Interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Le Meignen, Anne. Interview by author, 13 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Mark, Bob and Boulos, Rita. Interview by author, 12 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat alSalam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Mark, Bob. Interview by author, 19 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Najjar, Abdessalam. Interview by author, 10 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Najjar, Shireen. Interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Rizek, Rayek. Interview by author, 12 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Schwartz, Chris. Interview by author, 9 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Shippin, Howard. Interview by author, 6 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Shippin, Howard. Interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Shippin, Dorit. Interview by author, 12 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Shuster, Ruth. Interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Shuster, Noam. Interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A.

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Sonnenschein, Ori. Interview by author, 18 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Sonnenschein, Nava. Interview by author, 17 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Tibi, Kamil. Interview by author, 11 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Zak, Michal. Interview by author, 10 January 2005, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Tape recording. M.L.A. Documents: A Brief Description of the Summer Camps. Archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. (Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, July/August 1981). A Community CelebrationOctober 6. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 38. Administration of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: The Financial and Legal structure of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. Public Relations Department, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, 19 January 2005. Daoud, Anwar. The Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Primary School: 1997 Annual Report by Headmaster Anwar Daoud. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, January 1998, Number 48. Developments. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 14, January-March, 1983. Development Projects. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 24, 1986. Edlund, Ety and Daoud, Anwar. Statements of Principals, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 44, April-October, 1993. Edlund, Ety. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: The Communitys SchoolReport on the School. Article insert. Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam Newsletter, Number 36, January-April, 1990.
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Shalom/Wahat al-SalamReport on the Primary School and Kindergarten. Internal memorandum. Archives, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, February, 1991.

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