NSWAS Week-by-Week

May 9 - 15

Bulletins:

Rabah Halabi and Nava Sonnenschein will represent the School for Peace at an international conference, "Forging Regional Cooperation in the Mediterranean Basin" in Arles, France, May 27-28 99. Rabah will preside there over a roundtable on dialogue between conflict groups. Dr. A Friedman, from the staff of the Tel Aviv Univ. joint course, will also attend with Nava and Rabah.

The Community

Visit of Reuma Weizman, wife of the President of Israel

On Wednesday, May 12 Reuma Weizman, Israel's First Lady, spent more than two hours touring Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam on her first visit to the Community. She was accompanied by her sister, and long-term friend of the village, Mrs. Rut Dayan. In a relaxed atmosphere, so unlike the climate of tension that characterized the tumultuous week that preceded the elections, Mrs. Weizman listened attentively as village members explained their work, their intentions, and their dreams.

The visit began in the hall of the White Dove Restaurant (which is currently out of service). There, members of every branch of the Community, with others who were able to join, met with Mrs. Weizman. Our mayor, Rayek Rizek spoke some words of welcome, followed by other NSWAS members who related the history of the village and explained their present work. Following this meeting, Mrs. Weizman, walked to the Primary School, where all the school children greeted her with songs and dance. She was welcomed to the school by Principal Anwar Daoud and Educational Director Boaz Kita'in. The children, who showed transparent happiness over the visit, presented her with a small gift and posed with her for photographs. Afterwards, Mrs. Weizman entered the kindergarten, where the young children obediently continued to work at various projects at their tables, while Mrs. Weizman came to sit and chat with them. She then visited the Golder-Goodwin Language Center where she received a detailed explanation and demonstration of the Center's working methods.

The final stop was the School for Peace, where Nava Sonnenschein and four other members of the staff explained the work of the School for Peace. The session continued for longer than expected due to Mrs. Weizman's expressive interest and many questions.

Before departing, Mrs. Weizman wrote in our visitors' book the following words: "Thank you for your endearing reception and your invitation to visit. I once heard a saying, "A friend is a gift a person gives to himself." With you, this is a way of life - to turn enemies into true friends. With much respect, and good wishes for success, Reuma Weizman."

A visit by an international group of mayors

Another important visit took place just two days later. On Friday, May 14 we received a group of some fifty mayors from around the world. Many came with their spouses or other municipal representatives. The Mayors visited in the framework of the 19^th Jerusalem Conference of Mayors. They hailed from many well-known cities around the world. At the White Dove, they heard an overview of the village and its educational work from Rayek Rizek, who was assisted by Daoud Boulos of the NSWAS Public Relations Office and Bob Mark of the Primary School. They asked many questions and made interesting remarks. Following the meeting, the Mayors split up into smaller groups and were escorted around the village.

NSWAS is happy to witness, over recent months, awakened interest by Israel's Foreign Ministry and other departments of the government, who show greater willingness to bring important groups from overseas. This is to their credit, since NSWAS representatives candidly present our work as taking place in a national context of blatant inequality and profound problems in the relations between Israel's Jewish and Arab citizens.

The Hague Appeal for Peace

Invited by "The Hague Appeal for Peace," NSWAS sent Abdessalam Najjar to represent the Community at a weeklong conference for peace and non-governmental organizations held in the Netherlands. Some 8,000 persons were in attendance, together with important dignitaries such as UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, H.M. Queen Noor of Jordan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others. In these days of new and dangerous ethnic and national conflicts, the Middle East was not the principal focus of the Conference, but was described as a conflict on the road to resolution. Yet the interest in NSWAS was intense. Its name was invoked again and again by many speakers. Interest was also great in the NSWAS booth in the exhibition hall. Abdessalam's scheduled presentation - which came at the very end of the conference - was attended by a respectable showing, who listened attentively and asked many questions. Abdessalam returned home greatly encouraged by the Conference, in the contacts he had made, and in the hope that it will lead to cooperation with many newfound friends who work for similar causes around the world. Sincere thanks are due to Frans Schreuder of the Dutch Friends of NSWAS, for his important and dedicated work in hosting and assisting Abdessalam during the visit.

Meeting for new families at the seasonal opening of the swimming pool

Saturday, May 15, was the date set for an important event - at least to the members of the village - the opening of the swimming pool for the summer season. The Absorption Committee took advantage of the occasion to invite all of those families who had been accepted for residence in NSWAS. Current village members therefore had the opportunity to meet future residents. The happy occasion was well attended by both parties.

Today, NSWAS has about 32 families. The most recent addition was Vered and Yuval Zak, who came with their twin babies - Inbar and Meron. There are another 16 families who have passed through all the stages in the absorption process, except the most important stage - which is actually coming to live here! Out of these families, five are now building their houses. Others are in the planning stage. The village is enjoying something of a construction boom, since another four families already resident in the village are also building their permanent homes. All of the available lots under the current master plan have been taken. Further expansion will therefore only be possible under the yet-to-be approved new master plan.

Also on Saturday, Orit Kita'in's bat mizva - congratulations!

The Primary School

Acquaintance with pupils from a Palestinian Authority school

On Friday, May 14 two interesting events took place. The fifth and sixth grades took part in an environmental field trip to the aviary zoo near the Knesset, together with sixth grade students from the "Lottery School," a private school in Beit Sahour, which is a village in the Palestinian Autonomy near Bethlehem. This is the third such meeting between our students and the Palestinian group. Previously, our students had visited the Beit Sahour school, and their students had reciprocated with a visit to NSWAS. Friday's meeting - which lasted from 8:30 to 1:00 PM - was a day of fun and common interest for all. The children saw films and took part in joint projects.

Meeting for prospective pupils

Also on Friday, the school held a meeting for prospective pupils and their parents. The day included a tour of the educational facilities, as well as uninational and binational activities for the parents and children, together with the first grade teachers.

So far, some 80 pupils from the area have applied to join the school (at the first grade level) and the kindergarten next year, with similar numbers of Jewish and Arab children. Unfortunately, due to lack of space, we will be able to accommodate only half of these, with about 20 in the kindergarten, and twenty at the first grade level. The situation where we have a much greater number of applicants than we can contend with, is new, and attests to the growing success of the school. We hope that in coming years, upon the completion of the planned extension to the school, we will be in a position to accommodate a larger student body.

The School for Peace

A history lesson

The School for Peace is well known for its success with encounters between Arab and Jewish high school youth. But what happens when one of the sides, for technical reasons, cannot come, and the other side, also for technical reasons, cannot cancel the workshop? This happened last week, and we were confronted with the necessity to stage a uninational workshop for Jewish high school students. With little time to plan, the SFP staff considered how best to conduct a workshop that would confront the students with some of the complexities that emerge in the binational encounter. The SFP staff decided to use resources at hand. NSWAS is very close to an area in which, during the 1967 war, three Arab villages were destroyed. With memories still fresh of their debacle at nearby Latrun, some twenty years earlier, the Israeli military conducted this largely unprovoked action for strategic reasons. They wished to widen the vital Jerusalem corridor. Several thousand Palestinians were expelled from the three villages, and all of the houses destroyed. Some of the inhabitants joined relatives in nearby villages however the majority found themselves exiled.

In order to tell the story to the students, we were assisted by two teachers from the Jewish school. One was able to explain the considerations upon which the campaign was based. The other - as a young soldier in 1967 - had taken part in the actual destruction of houses in the village of Yalu. A third reporter, our friend Zakaria - from the Palestinian village of Beit Sira - had witnessed the aftermath of the destruction as a nine-year-old child.

The Jewish schoolteacher, who had taken part in the campaign, described how he had been assigned to ensure that the houses were empty prior to demolition. He vividly described this activity, which had severely troubled his conscience at the time, and been a source of troubled sleep and inner conflict ever since. He told how, in one house, he had found an elderly couple, and described the difficulty in having to force them to abandon their property (though they could barely walk). The Palestinian reporter, Zakaria, told how, as a child he had entered the village of Yalu to scavenge for food, and seen bodies crushed under the rubble of the exploded houses. Though the Jewish teacher denied this possibility, it is quite conceivable that some of the residents, fearful of the invading army, had remained hidden, not heeding, or not comprehending, the warnings of the soldiers.

The Jewish group's reaction to the experience was complex. During the tour and the explanation, they complained of boredom, saying that the whole exercise was irrelevant to them. However, back at the SFP, in a workshop setting, it was clear that they had been deeply shocked by all that they had heard, and that their "boredom" had rather been a defense mechanism. The experience challenged their self-image, based on what had been presented to them in school as the morality of the Jewish Israeli position. It was now quite clear to them that the decision to destroy villages merely for strategic reasons, was ethically unsound. In the discussion, they debated whether the soldier would have been justified in refusing an order, and whether events such as this should be publicized.

The question remains as to the motivation of the SFP staff in exposing the young Jewish group to this harsh experience. Eitan Bronstein, the SFP facilitator interviewed for this piece, said that the intention had been to recreate some of the dynamics that actually occur in a binational workshop. There, the Jewish pupils inevitably hear difficult stories brought by the Arab participants. They feel similarly challenged, and this raises their awareness to the complexity of the relations between the two peoples. They learn the necessity of evaluating the facts of the situation in a critical way, and of the necessity of reexamining the myths upon which their national psyche is based. (For further explanation of these processes please see the School for Peace web article series at http://nswas.com/sfp). Though the uninational workshop successfully achieved these objectives, it remains impossible, without actually meeting the other side, to achieve others that are equally important. Furthermore, the emotion - the joy, the sadness and the challenge - of meeting the other side face to face, were naturally absent from this uninational meeting.

The National Elections

NSWAS - perhaps the most "political" village in Israel, remains politically impartial from a Community standpoint. The village is not a member of any political party or movement. This would violate the idea upon which it was founded, and create an apparent bias in its educational work. Notwithstanding these qualifications, members of the village are often intensely involved in political work on an individual level. NSWAS mayor Rayek Rizek says, "I feel that the election results show that the majority of Israelis now believe that territorial compromise is necessary for peace. This can only lead me to feel more optimistic over the chances for restoring the peace process to its track."

In conclusion, we congratulate Mr. Barak on his victory, and fervently hope that he and his coalition will further the development of our nation into a place of equality and justice for all of its citizens, which is at peace with its neighbors.