I attended a conference early in the summer where a panel participant explained that Israelis and Palestinians have tried to be married, but no amount of counseling could make it work. Now civil divorce is the only solution. Granted the participant was discussing the West Bank and Israel proper rather than the internal dynamics of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis. But two months later I still find his particular reasoning troubling, and here’s why.
The mailboxes of the families of Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam, a Jewish/Palestinian village, are written in both Arabic and Hebrew
Half way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is Neve Shalom/Whata-al-Salam, a small community of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis who live, learn, and pray together on a small hillside plot of land. The village began as an experimental binational project, and within its borders, Jews and Palestinians attend school together, swim together, eat together, and live as neighbors and community members. Peace education and religious pluralism are large components of the village, as is instilling in Jewish and Palestinian Israeli youth the values of living side-by-side. Driving through the small village roads, one can see the intermingling of European and Arab architecture, deliberately created to celebrate and allow for contrast.
While the national peace process is perhaps more discouraging than ever, and when the word “coexistence” saturates so many political agendas that it’s almost lots its meaning, the residents of Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam provide a genuine example of what an egalitarian society could be. Whether one believes in a one or two-state solution, or in transforming conflict from without or within, there are lessons in Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam.
A hillside view of Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam
Of course, the small community project, approved by the Ministry of the Interior in 1989, is not immune to the problems of the larger political context, nor does the village counter complex questions about citizenship in Israel. As community members note, the breakdown of the larger peace process has caused subtle tension among inhabitants, as has the departure of Jewish youth from the village to serve in the military, perhaps at the peril of other Palestinians. Similarly, the binational egalitarianism of the village does not erase institutional discrimination against Palestinian Israeli citizens within larger Israeli society.
But if we look at the village not as a counterweight to structural injustices, for no village could play this role, and instead as a blueprint for future equality and mutual understanding, Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam is a desperately needed oasis of optimism. Perhaps within the context of the world’s most intractable conflict, we should give more credit to the importance of symbolism. If one hillside symbol is a catalyst for small scale hope, then we should keep going on tours and reading the paper, and grant writers in start-up NGOs across Israel and Palestine should keep writing.
An Arab house in Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam
In the news there is daily fodder for pessimists. The majority of Israelis and Palestinians I’ve spoken with this summer say they have lost hope. I’ve fought this internal sense of doom the whole summer. It is in view of this always imminent wave of pessimism that experimental and entrepreneurial projects like Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam, however unrepresentative they may be of broader society, are so crucial. In a time of increasing private enterprise, perhaps Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam is a sort of charter school experiment for a society whose Jewish and Palestinian kids didn’t seem to be moving any closer towards equality and understanding. Like any charter entrerprise, if more outsiders see the value, it will replicate. So why not?
A hillside home in Neve Shalom/Wahat-al-Salam
