October 23, 2002	Wednesday	Sha’aban 16,1423

NEVE SHALOM/WAHAT AL-SALAM (Israel): A kindergarten class sings happily in Hebrew and Arabic while other Jewish and Arab schoolchildren sway up and down outside on a seesaw.

Despite the past two years of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, enrolment is booming at the elementary school of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a Jewish-Arab community of some 40 families situated between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The original white plaster schoolhouse is no longer big enough for all the classrooms and two mobile homes have been set up nearby for the overflow.

But the community, established in 1972 on land leased from a the adjacent Latrun Monastery in a bid to prove coexistence was possible, is not weathering the raging conflict unscathed.

“Everything happening outside affects our lives inside,” said Abdessalem Najjar, a founding member of the community who now serves as its spokesman and secretary. “If there is despair outside, there is despair here.”

And as suspicion and mistrust rises with casualties in the Palestinian uprising for statehood, support for the Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam experiment has dwindled.

At the community’s separate School for Peace, set up in 1979 for outreach work, facilitators have almost abandoned holding encounter groups with Arab and Jewish teenagers.

Israeli-Palestinian meetings must be held abroad because of Israeli-imposed travel restrictions on Palestinians.

“In difficult situations like today it is quite impossible to make this connection, especially with youngsters,” Najjar said.

BRIGHT SPOT: But the kindergarten and primary school, 90 percent of whose Arab-Jewish pupils are bussed in from nearby communities, continue to function. And the lessons they teach may be more important than ever.

“The children are learning to be aware of their own identity and also getting a chance to know the ‘other’,” Najjar said. “That ‘other’ will be sitting with them at the same table and they will know his emotions, his fear and his anxiety.”

The curriculum is bi-national and multi-cultural. Israeli Arab teachers speak to the children in Arabic; the Jewish teachers speak to them in Hebrew.

The kindergarten has two teachers, one Jewish, one Arab. The school is run by co-principals, one an Israeli Jew from Jerusalem, the other an Israeli Arab from the Galilee village of Tamra. But the duality isn’t perfect.

When Santa Claus visits the kindergarten at Christmas and hands out gifts, everyone is happy. But when the Israeli Jews celebrate Independence Day, what is known to the Palestinians as Al Naqba, or Catastrophe, classes divide for separate activities.

“There are some things that can’t be done together,” acknowledged Howard Shippin, a spokesman for the community.

Still, the school does its best.

One year, in an event to mark the end of the 1948 Middle East war, Neve Shalom invited speakers from the nearby Israeli Kibbutz Nachshon and the Palestinian West Bank village of Beit Sira to talk about what is known as the Tractor War.

More than 40 years ago, Beit Sira and Kibbutz Nachshon both slowly encroached on the fertile fields that were then no-man’s land until they met in the middle and a skirmish broke out that led to a battle.

“It isn’t an event you read about so much in history books but it happened right here,” said Shippin. “We invited both sides to speak to show the kids there are two versions of history.”

COMMUNICATION: Co-principal Maya Karni said the policy is to keep politics out of the classroom and deal with the conflict through discussion of the suffering of both sides.

The emphasis is on keeping the channels of communication open. The message seems to be getting through, despite the violence the children are exposed to daily.

“I feel angry at the suicide bombers and the army that go against the Palestinians,” said Nadine, an 11-year-old Arab Israeli who lives in Neve Shalom.

A Jewish classmate, Noam, from Mevasseret Zion near Jerusalem, agreed. “Sharon and Arafat should start to talk and stop being one against the other...they don’t want to have peace, I don’t know why.

“I think we can live together,” he said, noting that when Jewish children in Mevasseret curse each other by saying “you Arab”, “it really hurts.”

After completing primary school, the Jews and Arabs move on to separate educational systems but Neve Shalom hopes they will take some of what they learned with them, creating a little more tolerance on the way to true coexistence.

SWORDS INTO PLOUG-HSHARES: The true dream is even bigger — to change the course of history in the valley where Neve Shalom was established on church-owned land some 30 years ago.

If the dream comes true, then the Ayalon Valley, which served a battlefield for the Maccabees, Romans, Crusaders, British and then the Jews and Arabs, will become better known as an “oasis of peace”, the English translation of the community’s name.

“The founder of this place, Bruno Hassar, said this was a gift from God,” Najjar said. “We got this piece of land in a place that from the beginning of history was a bloody place.” —Reuters