Would you let your child go to school with the enemy?

Sunday Express December 9 2001

(Full text of the article, exactly as it appeared in the newspaper. Please note that no attempt is made here to correct the various factual mistakes that appear in the article, or to correct the impressions of the writer, whose opinions and interpretation of our statements should not be taken in every case to be representative of the people or community of NSWAS)

It’s a community of Arabs and Jews —but the strain is finally beginning to show at the Oasis of Peace

By Michael Freedland

At the very time that buses were being blown up and suicide bombers were killing ‘youngsters drinking coffee, a group of families in Israel this week were still trying to live what was once called the Noble Experiment — a village with as many Arabs as Jewish residents. These people conduct all their business in Arabic as well as Hebrew, their school has children from the two peoples side by side, and they even celebrate each other’s holidays.

They named the village the Oasis of Peace — in Hebrew, Neve Shalom; in Arabic, Wahat al-Salam. Next year, the Oasis will be 30 years old and, despite all the doubts, it has a waiting list of people wanting to set up home there.

They want to come because it seems like the ideal society — in Israel, with both groups having equal rights. Yet, ever since an Israeli soldier with a home at the village was killed in a helicopter crash almost five years ago, the Oasis of Peace has had its moments of despair The Jews wanted a memorial; the Arabs thought it was an affront. Now, after yet more bombings and yet more retaliation, there is an air of gloom around the place once more.

I first heard the words "the Noble Experiment" when I went to Neve Shalom 10 years ago. The speaker was Bruno Hussar, the Dominican monk whose idea it all was. Hussar was born in Egypt, son of Hungarian Jews, who converted to Catholicism in his 20s.

The term was once applied to Prohibition in America, which failed – and Neve Shalom is plainly struggling. The constant violence between the two peoples inevitably strains relations there. While I was there last week, Prime Minister Arid Sharon was flying overhead in his helicopter with President Bush’s envoy, General Anthony Zinni. Just a few minutes later, a bomb killed two people waiting for a bus in the northern Israeli town of Afulla, shortly followed by the mass suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa, and Israel’s deadly response. Yet in Neve Shalom I watched an Israeli boy called Adam and an Arab named Mustapha happily chasing each other around as I spoke to Anwar Daoud, familiarly known as Neve Shalom’s "Mayor", whose wife and three children live with him in a rather magnificent house in the sprawling hills of this village overlooking Jerusalem one way and Tel Aviv the other.

He told me: "Every day we have to ask ourselves why we are here. In the mornings we ask the question, but by the afternoon we have the answers. It is the best education that I can give my kids in this country. This is the only place where Arabs and Jews can sit down and discuss issues on the same level."

Neve Shalom really does seem like an oasis. There is a kibbutz two miles away in one direction and a "moshav" village co-operative the same distance in another. But Neve Shalom is high on a hill, close to where Israeli defenders in the 1948 war of independence constructed their "Burma Road" —the makeshift passageway linking Jerusalem with the north of the country, clandestinely constructed so that supplies could pass through during a ceasefire.

It was a good place to build a village that was of Israel without being part of its normal fabric. The air is wonderfully clear which means that on most days you can see the sea skimming the shores of Tel Aviv 20 miles away.

You reach Neve Shalom by a winding road from the highway, close to the monastery of Letrun, which originally leased the land to the village for a peppercorn rent. There is a hotel for guests visiting relatives and friends, and a school with plenty of open spaces in which the children can play or take lessons when the weather is right —and it usually is, cooler than the rest of the country in high summer, not too cold in winter.

The hills on which it is built are rocky with a smattering of grass, but not enough grass on which to graze the sheep that Father Bruno originally hoped would be the village’s main source of income. Now about a third of those who live in Neve Shalom work there — running the offices and schools, or in charge of maintenance. The others work mainly in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem — among them academics, architects and men and women working in Israel’s high- tech industries. It is not a place for poor people. You need a car to get in and out, and parents have to find £600 a year in fees for the private primary school.

Howard Shippin, who is in charge of the village’s publications and website, told me that this was a "time of gloom" at Neve Shalom. "But it is a long-term thing. Unless this spreads to an intifada affecting the Arabs who live in Israel proper, I don’t see it is going to make any difference to what we do here.

Jews are still speaking to Arabs, but then we both believe the only solution to the problem is to talk, not shoot. We all think that the suicide bombers were despicable but that the Israeli response will get us nowhere."

Anwar Daoud put it like this:

"There is a bad atmosphere here when a bomb is exploded or Israeli soldiers go into Palestine towns. We don’t want to accuse each other, but we don know what to do. As a Palestinian, I think every move opposing occupation can be justified, but for myself I am totally opposed to killing innocent people."

Forty families live in Neve Shalom — 20 Arab, 20 Jewish. They have now bought some extra land so they can take in some of the 100 people on the waiting list to join. Before anyone can come to live at Neve Shalom, they have to be approved by a committee made up equally of Jews and Arabs.

Each villager has an equal plot of land, large enough for the five bedroom houses which they build to their own design in this rather beautiful rocky setting. The architecture used to be typically Israeli — functional, single-storey with gardens containing a regulation orange tree. But in recent years the Arab residents have adopted their own style, with balconies and balustrades. "It brings us closer to the Middle East," explained Ahmad Hijizi, the Arab manager of the School for Peace, where Israeli Jews and Arabs —particularly high students —from outside come to study the problems of "people in conflict".

The idea seems to work. The British National Lottery has given the school £247,000 as part of its international funding work. "It is a very challenging time," said the organiser, 43-year- old Michal Zak, a Jewish mother of three. "The past two years have been very stormy. A lot of things have come to the surface."

I asked Anwar Daoud if Arabs outside Neve Shalom who support terrorism considered him a traitor. "I am sure that they do. They don’t accept me at all. They are against coexistence. I am the enemy of them before I am a friend of the Jews, because I am against their way of thinking."

It doesn’t take long to light fuses. On Israel independence day, some of the Jewish members fly flags. The Arabs observe the same occasion, but as Nakba or "the Day of the Catastrophe". And they do so on different dates —the Israelis according to the Hebrew calendar, the Arabs using the secular one.

As Howard Shippin told me: "This is now not so much an oasis of peace as a place where the differences are expressed."

Those differences frequently come to the surface when Jewish boys join the Army and come home in uniform. As Anwar Daoud said: "I have never been comfortable to see boys coming here in uniform, which we used to do, but in the last year I think they are more sensitive and they haven’t done so."

I wondered if Daoud who is officially known as the secretary general of Neve Shalom, considered himself an Israeli or a Palestinian. "I am a Palestinian of Israeli nationality" So did that mean a conflict fur him? "Of course there a conflict. My nationality is the enemy of my state. So I am the enemy of myself."

Howard Shippin’s wife Dorit is Jewish, but he is not. He comes from Leeds and settled in Israel after first going to the country to teach yoga. The eldest of their three children, Yonatan, was about to go into the army when we met. "All his friends went into the army so it was almost automatic," Shippin explained. Yonatan told me that living in the village has given him an insight into Arab-Jewish relations. "I have Arab friends living outside and they are always surprised that I speak Arabic."

Indeed, Arabic is compulsory for Jewish children at the primary school at Neve Shalom — just as Hebrew is for the Arabic youngsters. There are 270 children, roughly half-Jewish and half-Arab.

The school is the pride and joy of the village. There I met Bob Mark, a 44-year-old teacher born in Pennsylvania who has been at Neve Shalom since 1986. He has a unique way of teaching English that the children of both Jewish and Arab stock plainly like.

While I was there, he was explaining the strange world of the auction house to his class. "We are living the search to try to have an understanding that is beyond conflict," he told me. "I suppose we are living in a bubble."

Ety Edlund started the school 17 years ago. "Unfortunately, the reality of outside penetrates our village, too," he said. "But the fact that we have our school, this is our justification."

Sometimes, though, they need to remind themselves about that justification. Said Michal Zak: "For a few years, there was a liberal approach, an agreement that individuals could, if they wished, take a day off on national holidays, national memorial days or for the strikes that the Arabs declared. But recently there has been a demand that the different institutions in the village should be closed on Land Day [the Arabs’ protest day]. It was not easy even for me to accept this next step."

Language remains a difficulty, too, with everyone speaking Hebrew, but comparatively few Jews knowing Arabic. Now a proposal is being considered that anyone who wants to live in Neve Shalom must pass a test in both languages. But, as Eti Edlund told me, the most difficult problems were the emotional ones.

"One of our children had joined the army and was killed in a helicopter crash five years ago. The plane was on its way to Lebanon. His family wanted to have a memorial corner honouring him in the village — and there was a split in the community. Some of the Arabs and even Jews didn’t want it because they said he should not have been in the army and willing to attack Lebanon, but we believed we had to remember that this was a child of our village. Actually, there is now a memorial corner to this boy, but it is not from the heart of the village. I think we failed here to deal with this tragedy. We put ideology before feelings. From my point of view, this was the turning point of the village. That is when it started to be very; very difficult."

Few turn to religion for a way out. Dorit Shippin is in charge of "The House of Silence", a domed building that is, so far, the nearest Neve Shalom has to a synagogue or mosque. "The original idea was that there would be a triangular building, one corner for Jews, one for Moslems and one for Christians. But one of our members asked, ‘Where is the corner for the atheists?’ So it is open to people of all faiths or with no faith. Next year, we hope to have a building for all religions. Bruno always said that although we were not religious, we were doing God’s work."

Father Bruno dreamed of the idea of Neve Shalom because he thought that it held out an example for the rest of the troubled country — which is one reason why the Israeli government is not among its most enthusiastic supporters.

The villagers, on the whole, want a two-state solution — a Palestine alongside Israel — but there are others who see it as the benchmark for the whole country, which means that it could be seen as challenging the Zionist dream of a Jewish nation. So Jerusalem provides little funding for the primary school — 40 per cent of the teachers’ salaries has to be found by the village itself —although the local municipality does lay on water, sewerage, electricity and phone connections.

But most of the funding comes from "friends" all over the world, the vast majority of whom in Britain are Jews, although there is a Palestinian-born judge, Eugene Cotran, as a trustee and there is a Lebanese among its patrons. They work to help provide the salaries and equipment for the school.

Villagers pay a joining fee when they come to Neve Shalom, but no more in local taxes than people living in any other part of the country.

Howard Shippin knows that everyone has different reasons for wanting to go to Neve Shalom, and when they get there, few want to leave. "In 20 years, perhaps only four or five people have moved away. For the first time, we have a house for sale and that will probably go to one of the families on our waiting list. There are some who come for idealistic reasons. Some just because it is such a lovely place."

• British Friends of Neve Shalom, tel. 0208 952 4717.

On the same newspaper’s "Opinion" page:

Beacon of hope for peace

THE village is known in Hebrew as Neve Shalom; in Arabic, as Wahat al-Salam. Translated into English, it means Oasis of Peace and, remarkably, this Israeli village lying on a scrubby hillside within commuting distance of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is home to 40 families — 20 Arabic and 20 Jewish. The village has survived despite the almost unbearable tensions between Jew and Arab, a remarkable demonstration that, where there is the will, the two communities can live together in harmony.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that harmony is constant. Villagers admit the recent violence between Israel and Palestine has caused strain between Jew and Arab even in the Oasis of Peace. Nevertheless, Neve Shalom, or Wahat al-Salam, remains a beacon of hope for all Jews and Arabs who crave peace above war. Perhaps Messrs Arafat and Sharon should pay it a visit.