NSWAS Week-by-Week

June 27 - July 3 1999

Bulletins:

	From July 6-8, The School for Peace staff will take part in a national symposium at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev: "Group Work and Group Therapy in a Multicultural Society: Encounter and Difference."
	Courses in Arabic for Hebrew speakers.
	Encounter weekends for Palestinian and Jewish families in the NSWAS hotel.
	Achva/Okhowa Summer Camp for Children.

The School for Peace

The major event of the week came on the evening of Friday, July 2. The SFP convened all of its regular facilitators for a meeting intended to summarize the year's activities, as well as to present diplomas to graduates of the recent facilitator training course.

The facilitators of the youth program arrived two hours earlier in order to discuss this particular program more deeply. Most of the youth program facilitators today are young university graduates who completed the SFP facilitator training course two or three years ago. In the meeting they discussed issues relating to their work as facilitators. Facilitation work is developmental both in relation to the facilitator and to the work itself. On a personal level, a new facilitator tends to be preoccupied with establishing her role as facilitator. Later, with increasing experience, she is able to examine more clearly questions relating to the facilitation itself, and to examine issues that arise in the group work. Some of these relate to the changing realities of the relations between the two groups in general.

At 6 PM the facilitators from the other programs joined for a plenary meeting to hear presentations prepared by the directors of the various programs. It is quite rare that the whole staff can gather together in this way and see the overall picture of their separate efforts. Indeed, Rabah Halabi, in his presentation, mentioned that one of the signs of the SFP's maturing as an institution is the great variety of programs and the fact that several projects can now run simultaneously, without the entire staff needing to be involved in all of them. Rabah was summarizing not only this year's work, but his term as director of the SFP. According to the constitution of the SFP, the directorship alternates every two years between a Jewish and a Palestinian staff member. A new director will now be elected.

Rabah spoke lucidly of recent achievements and trends. Whereas in the past the volume of activity had left little time for writing and publication, now the staff were finding it possible, without any reduction in activity, to produce articles for publication. In addition, the direction towards establishing a research center is clearly taking shape. (This will be described in the next issue of NSWAS WBW.)

Ahmad Hijazi, in his presentation, brought facts and figures from the various programs conducted this year. Besides the more than one thousand who took part in youth projects (as mentioned in WBW June 13-19), about 700 university students and adults took part in a variety of courses and activities. A complete breakdown of this figure will be presented in a future issue.

Also present at the meeting was Prof. Ariela Friedman, who chairs the SFP board of directors. Ariela is a senior faculty member at the Tel Aviv University Department of Social Psychology. She spoke of the SFP's unique place within the field of conflict group work, and the increasing recognition of its approach, namely its emphasis upon placing the intergroup conflict at the center of the workshop process, rather than focussing upon interpersonal issues.

This approach of the SFP, though increasingly recognized in academic circles and serious educational forums, is still not the norm among the many organizations that engage in Jewish-Arab dialogue work. SFP staff member Michal Zak says that she was reminded of this when she attended, together with representatives of many other organizations, a meeting this week of the new organization "PRIME" ("Peace Research Institute of the Middle East."

Also this week, SFP member Wafaa Srour attended a celebration of twenty years of work by the New Israel Fund, which provides a portion of the SFP's funding, as well as that of many other organizations that work to strengthen a culture of democracy, tolerance and equality within Israel. This gave Wafaa the opportunity to meet many other people working in similar fields.

The Primary School

End of the Year Event

On Tuesday, June 29, in one enormous coordinated effort, the Primary School celebrated its successes of the past year. Parents were invited to see displays of their children's school and art work, to hear music performances, watch films made in the video class, and see plays put on separately by children of four different age brackets. Then they gathered together at a large stage to see performances by the graduating 6^th grade classes. Pictures (as shown on the web version of NSWAS WBW) can convey the day better than any explanation, except to mention that the School also paid respects to outgoing director Anwar Daoud, after many years of service as director during which the school grew up faster than any of its students.

This year 17 (8 Jewish, 9 Arab) children graduated from the 6th grade. All will go on to good - but sadly, separate - Jewish and Arab schools in the area. These children will be replaced next year by 15 children who will rise from the kindergarten, and more than 30 others who will join them. The painful deliberation over who to accept (out of some 80 applicants) is the current onus of the school management.

Another tough issue on the agenda is the necessity to find sufficient funding for the school's burgeoning operational budget. The recent year showed that the school has grown faster than its fundraising mechanisms could safely allow. Over and above operational expenses, the school needs to purchase equipment - such as new or upgraded computers.

This week we can report on the results of the education ministry's extensive evaluation of the school, based on questionnaires, interviews and tests involving parents, pupils and teachers. The overall findings showed that there is higher than average satisfaction by all parties - especially parents. Despite this positive finding, the evaluation pinpointed a number of difficulties that need to be addressed in the coming years. Over the summer and in the next school year, the staff will be working on many levels to improve the school and develop its unique teaching methods . For example, the Jewish teachers will be taking intensive Arabic language courses (through the "Cooperation" project) during the summer months.

So if anyone wonders if a school goes into a long siesta when all the pupils have departed for their summer vacation, we can say that this is definitely not so. Cornering the principal (Boaz Kita'in) to interview was just as hard this week as when school was in session! But since the nature of the activities may not be as interesting to read or photograph, the next few issues of this report will likely place less emphasis on the school.

Visitors

Visit by Mr. Richard Goodwin

As always, we were very happy to receive in the village Mr. Richard Goodwin who, on his recent trip to Israel, visited the village and met with representatives of the various departments. The most interesting event was organized by Mr. Goodwin himself. He called for an open meeting and invited everyone present to talk on a common theme; how they saw the Community developing over the coming five years. This evoked a wide variety of interesting responses from all those present, and gave us an unexpected opportunity to consider together the future of the village. The space here is too limited to summarize the many ideas expressed, but it is interesting to trace a few axes around which the discussion revolved. One was the comparison between the community as originally conceived by Bruno Hussar and its current development. Mr. Goodwin pointed out that he and other supporters of the village had always been inspired by the personal sacrifice of the people who live here. The fact that they were willing to make such sacrifice inspired supporters and donors to make a "sacrifice" of their own. How will this spirit be maintained as the community grows and prospers? Another (related) axis was the tension between being a small community where everyone is involved, and a larger community where only a few members are involved - or where responsibility is spread more thinly - with the majority of the residents working outside. Yet another axis was the need to develop new projects and construct new buildings, versus the need to maintain the existing ones. Should the community continue to develop new projects, while the current level of work is still not on a very secure footing? Naturally all of these subjects are capable of being (and are in fact) a source of dissension. Yet what shone through the meeting was the strong sense of community that comes from having to face these difficult decisions that will affect our lives in the years to come. Perhaps the best and simplest expression was that of the newest member, who spoke last. Vered Marom said that coming to the community had seemed the most natural thing in the world for her, though many of her friends thought this to be a very strange decision. She said that whereas at first she thought just living in the village would be enough, as a statement for peace, now she had a real wish to become more involved. In conclusion, she said that she hopes she will feel as good five years from now as she feels today.

Delegations and Friends' Associations

USA

In recent WBW issues we have reported on the public speaking tour of Rayek Rizek and Nava Sonnenschein (in one instance, last Week's issue mistakenly substituted Ahmad's name in place of Rayek's). The two NSWAS delegates crisscrossed America, with engagements in places that included New York, Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore and Washington DC. New contacts were made and old friends met. A tremendous amount of work by a large number of dedicated individuals goes into organizing a speaking tour like this one, where many of the events were receptions in private homes. We can only thank everyone who gave freely of their time and money to make the tour a success.

Since most of the major events have already been reported on, we will mention here some general impressions of the tour. In comparison with his previous tour of last year, Rayek had the feeling that awareness and interest in the village and its work was greater than in the past. He thinks that the exposure given to the village as a result of the visit by Mrs. Clinton may have played a part in this. He says that people were very interested and receptive to his statements. The theme that he emphasized in many of the talks was his belief that, in the wake of the peace agreements, education will play a fundamental part in cementing the peace between the two peoples. Therefore, a great investment is required, during coming years, in educational programs that will be conducive to fostering respect and understanding between the peoples. The resolution of this conflict, says Rayek, requires a different approach to that of many other conflicts around the world, due to the necessity that the two peoples will continue to live in close proximity on a very narrow strip of land. He said there was wide acceptance and understanding of this theme among all of the audiences to which he and Nava spoke. Nava, who talked mainly of the role of the School for Peace in accomplishing this purpose, returned similarly full of enthusiasm for the tremendous amount of work that is being done throughout America for encouraging and supporting our efforts here. She had important meetings and made new contacts in many places. Particularly, she mentions the meetings with Rotary Clubs in Seattle and Palo Alto (the latter supported a recent SFP Israel-Palestine student project), engagements with Jewish organizations, and contacts made with educational institutions. At American University (Washington DC) and George Mason University in nearby Northern Virginia she met with educators already involved in conflict resolution programs, who were interested to create cooperative links with the School for Peace. Similarly, she made a promising contact with educators involved in a new program for coexistence at Brandeis University's International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life (www.brandeis.edu/ethics).

Born Today!

Welcome to a new member of the Community - a son to Lilly and Adnan Mana'a... a brother to Rami and Sami.