‘Oasis of peace’ in wartime

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1:10On a hilltop overlooking the greenery of the Ailon Valley, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, lies a small community, a unique experiment in peaceful coexistence of Jews and Palestinians that's been going for more than 40 years. It's called Wahat al-Salam in Arabic, Neve Shalom in Hebrew, Oasis of Peace in English. Many see it as a rare working alternative to an age-old conflict. We felt like we have a big dream that two people are living on this piece of land and so we have to find a good way to live together. When I speak in public, they ask me if the peace is possible. I came from a place that is ongoing evidence that this is possible.

2:02I'm Mike Lanshin and I first visited the community back in 1981. My mother's cousin was one of its early members. At that time, there was just a handful of people living in makeshift houses on the scrubland. Now there are some 300 residents, roughly equal numbers of Jews and Palestinians living side by side. For this edition of Heart and Soul from the BBC World Service documentary, I've been reconnecting with some of the residents to find out how they've coped with the spiralling violence beyond their gates and to ask what the future looks like for them. It doesn't matter what happens in the country and in the world.

2:43All hell could break loose, you know. The only place where I feel where I belong the most and my home is the village. It's always going to be my sanctuary. I think there is a threat that we won't go deep enough and we won't have an impact on the outside community. This is Oasis of Peace in Wartime.

3:06Let there be no more wars or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. In the spirit of the Nobel Prize tradition, we gave to each other the most momentous pledge, no more war. Noble words from Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, and from Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, signatories of the historic Camp David Accords between their two nations in 1978. Noble and ambitious. As the two historic enemies were making peace, the first families of Jews and Palestinians were arriving at Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom, not just to talk about peace, but to live it.

4:01There was a hut, wooden hut, with a kitchen and a few other huts. It was a bare hill with weeds. That's it. Nava Zonenshine, who's now in her 70s, and her husband Kobe were among the first arrivals. They'd been living in Haifa, a mixed Israeli and Arab town in northern Israel. We came in February 79. We were the second family and I was seven months pregnant and they brought for us a caravan. So did it grow quite quickly? Was it easy to attract new people? In the beginning it was more difficult because the conditions were very basic. But after a few years, always we had a much bigger waiting list than we could accept from both sides, Jews and Palestinians.

5:01And presumably you came, I mean, you've told me this before when we've spoken, you came because you had a determined dream about where you wanted to live and where you wanted to bring your children are, presumably. When I came to Neve Shalom, I wanted my kids to grow up as Arab and Jewish little kids, but I also wanted to have an impact on the rest of the country. And I started the School for Peace. First, I gathered about 20 people to train them as facilitators. and then we started to do youth encounters to work with teenagers, to meet teenagers from the other side, Jews and Palestinians, a class from a Jewish school and a class from an Arab school.

5:53The vision was to create a working model of coexistence and, as Nava says, become a meeting place for Jews and Palestinians, especially young people, where dialogue is promoted, where each side can learn about the other. The School for Peace which Nava founded has hosted thousands of activists, academics, civil servants as well as politicians in its courses. Samah Salahim is a Palestinian whose family was displaced in 1948 in the Nakba or the catastrophe as the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel is known by Palestinians. Samah first visited Wahat al-Salam Neveshalom with her husband, who was working as one of Nava's peace facilitators.

6:41Everywhere in the shared space between the river and the sea you will find Jewish people and Palestinian people. The problem is the interaction, the encounter, the meeting. It's full of hate and I decided that it's not going to happen to my unborn children. I decided that we can't go with this denial forever. I prefer to deal with it a peaceful way. So I choose the Wahd Salam Nabi Shalom model. On that first visit, Samah says, she was bowled over seeing the children learning side by side. I saw 20 Arab kids and Jewish kids with two teachers and with all the naive symbols of peace and, you know, like doves and olive trees and rainbows and with all the languages like Arabic, Hebrew and English and everybody seemed to me very happy.

7:36I said, OK, this is good enough for my five years old. You don't need more than that. You don't need all the conflict and the history of the Nakba and Zain. This is good. Samah and her husband moved to the village, though her own parents weren't that happy and she was also pregnant with her second child. The couple's children went on to attend the community school. 25 years later, Samah is now co-director for educational institutions. There are now 150 children attending the mixed school. Many of them come from outside the community.

8:19The last time I visited Wahat al-Salam Neveshalom was back in 2018, during the first term of US President Donald Trump. His administration had just moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, a controversial decision that led to widespread protests. Around 50 Palestinians were reported killed in clashes with the Israeli military at the Gaza border. Watching the little children playing together, I remember being struck by the optimism and determination of those I spoke to in the hilltop village.

8:56But what of events of the last two years meant for the community? The Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7th, 2023, in which about 1 ,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage. And the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which, according to the territory's health ministry, has killed more than 71 ,500 people. How have these terrible events affected the people of Wahat al-Salam, Neve Shalom? Maybe just start, if you could just introduce yourself. Yeah, of course. I'm Ramez. My name is Ramez Manna. I'm 26 years old. I live in Tel Aviv right now, but originally my entire life I've been from Neve Shalom.

9:41I've lived there with my family since I was born. And I still consider myself from there. You know, basically half of my week is in Tel Aviv and half of it is in Nava Shalom. Ramaz's parents are Palestinian. His mother is Orthodox Christian, his father Muslim. Like Nava and her husband, they were inspired to move to the community as one of the earlier rivals. I grew up in a Palestinian home, but I had many, many Jewish friends and many Jewish Israeli friends. And my family also had Jewish Israeli friends. So we know about the conflict and everything that's going on. But in terms of the everyday life, we didn't know we're that special.

10:21We thought we were normal. You know, it's a very strong bubble. It surrounds you so much. Along the years, it pops a little bit. You suddenly see the real world and reality and people outside of the village. And you understand how Palestinian is perceived and how Jewish is perceived outside of the village. The bubble first burst for Ramez when he started going to a Jewish school outside the community. where he faced racist jibes and physical violence. Another moment was when he was trying to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv and was told he wasn't welcome. But the attacks of October 7th and the subsequent Gaza military assault by Israel were the biggest wake-up call.

11:03There's no way around it. This is the most significant event that has happened in this country and for the village as well, at least in my lifetime. I would say it kind of drew a line in the village, a few lines, I would say. This was a moment where, yes, as much as we lived together throughout the years, and we still live together, of course, but this is a moment where it's very, very, very hard to make the same compromises you've made throughout the years. This is a moment where you take back those compromises, and it's hard not to stick with your own. Some people have said to me that the Gaza war on October 7th is one of the most difficult things that the village has had to deal with.

11:44Yeah, true. How have you seen that in your own personal decisions? Look, the only place I wanted to be is with my friends here because it felt like they're the only one that would understand and we had a lot of heated arguments at the time because there was a lot of pain from both sides. This is Adam Ben Shabbat, who's Jewish. He and Ramez grew up together in Wahat al-Salam, Nevi Shalom. And yeah, the day that it happened, at night we gathered all together, all the friends, and we talked about it. And a few days later, I went to the reserve forces in the north with my brother. So I went back to the military.

12:29After October 7th, Adam, like other Israeli Jews, was temporarily drafted back into the military, though not sent to Gaza, but to the northern border with Lebanon. It was difficult, but I felt like we had the obligation to do it. And it was really scary because we didn't know what's going to happen because they took us by surprise this war. But yeah, there was a lot of pain for us. It was also the fear that what will happen to the other side after this. So it was difficult to see both sides and to represent both sides at the time. The subject of military service in the Israel Defence Forces has reared its head again and again for the young men and women in the community.

13:11It is, after all, obligatory for almost all Israeli Jews. Ramiz still remembers how he felt when Adam, his best friend, was first drafted when he was 19 years old. It was very tough to deal with in the beginning. I didn't know what to tell him exactly. I didn't know how to deal with it, you know. When we grew up in this coexistence and knowing that we made the identity sacrifices or the political sacrifices to live together, you kind of feel hurt and you feel betrayed when one of the people goes and does something that is so against everything that the village stands for. It's literally everything we stand against, you know.

13:50Did you talk to Adam about it? Yeah. Did you tell him these things? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. We feel free to speak about these things in Neva Shalom. It comes naturally and easily to us more than it does for other people. Well, Ramez talks about how he felt disapproving of it. Did you feel the disapproval of your Palestinian friends? Yeah, of course. Look, we really talked about it for years. It was always, always a really big matter. And yeah, of course, I felt the disapproval. Also one friend, really close friend. And we lost contact for like six months because I went to the military. Do you think that Wahad Salam, Neves Shalom, as a community, has dealt with the issue or has given you the tools to deal with it sufficiently?

14:40I don't think that we got the tools. Every generation had to go through it. So at the end of the day, we cannot deal with everything together. But yeah, it's always the conversation. It was since before me and after me, you know. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service with me, Mike Lanshin.

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16:36In this edition of Heart and Soul, we're looking at the challenges faced by a small mixed community of Israeli Jews and Palestinians. the oasis of peace, and how they've dealt with the violence that continues to engulf their region. Immediately after the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel, the Jews and Palestinians of Wahat al-Salam Nevisalom sent each other frantic messages and met in person with family and friends from their own communities. Eleven days after the attacks, the community held a general assembly of everyone. Long-term residents Nava and Samach were both there. It was without agenda just to talk, so we recruited a group of facilitators from the School for Peace from outside the community because we wanted everybody to speak.

17:26And did everybody come from the village? Not everybody. There were about 60 people. It's not that there were big arguments, but you never know how difficult it is for the other side, you know. only when you talk and listen and listen and say your pain. And so we shared, we shared. And we hear the stories of Jewish people who lost their friends and were killed in October 7. And my personal loss of Vivian Silver as a peace activist, so we understand that she was killed at her home and they find the remains. and I was in her funeral and at the same time I called my friends in Gaza to see what's happened to them and I lost a lot.

18:17So being a Palestinian peace activist during the war, surrounded by Jewish people who shared the same values, it was something that kept me going. We feel angry, we feel helpless. you can get into depression because this is not the country you want. And in some months I felt like that. But then later I said to myself, it's better when you do than you sit depressed and do nothing. And was it very intense in the, I mean, has it been very intense in the village itself? Of course, and it's normal. I think what's different is how we handle the tension. So we talked. One of the dialogues, we invited experts of the history of Gaza to understand what's happening.

19:07Another meeting was dedicated to what we can do, you know, how we can maintain our well-being, our sanity, actually. And the village, Samar, do you think these last two years has changed the village? Well, I don't know about the village, you know. We didn't do a survey, but everybody's involved and everybody stay there and everybody want to be involved. Maybe we change the dialogue or the intensivity of, you know, speaking and we need like to facilitate everything and to put everything on the table, you know, and to debate about everything. In that terms, we change. You know, if you choose, want to choose where to be during the war in Israel, I will choose Wahdussalam Nifash Shalom.

19:54You know, it's not perfect, but it's better than other places. You know, I have Jewish colleagues, I have Palestinian colleagues, and we share something. Though he was living in Tel Aviv, Rames was working from his parents' home in Wahat al-Salam Nevis Shalom, when news came of the attacks of October 7th. People in the village, they wanted to have meetings and talk about everything that's happening, and people did. I, of course, attended some of those. And you clearly see that both sides in the beginning were very, very, very, very hurt. People kind of lost their trust, I would say. Lost their trust in the idea of coexistence?

20:34I would say no. I would say they lost some of the trust in each other, I think. Would you include yourself in that? I wouldn't include myself, actually. I got to see this thing from very different points of view. when I was in Tel Aviv. So I lived completely inside the Israeli community, completely inside the whole going to the shelter at night. And then I would go back to the village where I would experience a whole different side of this war. And engaging in conversations with different people in the village made me understand more that I didn't see it the way everybody did. I take one side in every war always.

21:12I always take the side of life. That's how I call it. I take the side of life and peace.

21:23There's no denying the beautiful, almost idyllic natural setting of this community, with birds fluttering around the trees, colourful trails of plants and flowers in each garden, and houses with stone porches facing out across the green expanse of the Ayalon Valley. But people also tell me that the sound of planes going to and from Gaza would wake them in the night. It might be an oasis of peace, but as we've been hearing, it's not cut off from the rest of the country and its conflicts. Adam, the young Jewish resident, has a favourite place in the village. It's a sort of refuge for him. He recorded a voice note about it.

22:07So right now I'm here at this table. I see Flesh, one of the horses. He's brown. He was born here. His mother is also here. We've built the whole place, so it's... And he's looking at me. And it's just one of the places I like the most. And I think a lot of people come here to watch the horses and get joy out of it. Adam, who's a budding filmmaker, says that after October 7th, He wanted to do something to help the community come back together, to understand each other better and heal some of the pain. He came up with an idea.

22:56There are a lot of people who disappear from the village. They haven't disappeared completely. They live here, but no one sees them anymore. So I did a small podcast in my home, And I did short interviews, one-on-one conversation, Palestinians and Israelis from the village. No one hears from them on WhatsApp. They have stopped showing up at gathering and committee meetings. And I wanted people to listen to it in their way to work or when they're doing a little walk. And then you can just listen to one person and create a relationship with them. I think for now it's really important to have a real community and not just to live door to door.

23:45Nava, who for many years was director of the School for Peace in Wahat al-Salam, Nevis Shalom, continues her mission of bringing Jewish and Palestinian students together to talk. And also, more significantly, she's been bringing together opposition politicians, Arab Israelis and Jews. She sees hope in these encounters. We had 23 politicians, half of them Jewish, half of them Palestinians, some of them very high level in their party. So maybe they would be in the next parliament discussing this issue of examining ways of cooperation. Four meetings at Neves Shalom. And it was an amazing process.

24:33and I want to continue and to do more of those because I think this is the key. You sit in a room once in two weeks for four times with your opponents, they become human beings like yourself and you learn how to communicate. But in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, not everyone supports what this community represents. Over the years, it's faced strong criticism, accused by some of being naive, of backing a lost cause, of normalising the occupation or placing too much faith in the other side. So how have Samah and Nava dealt with these accusations? I disagree. I think we don't have a privilege to give up, to feel despair, to leave the country.

25:27the country is important for us our parents came in 39 escaping from the Nazis I cannot go away we have to share equally this land I really believe the Palestinians are our partners either if there will be two state solution or a federation but this is a country for both of us and we have to be committed to this. Is there a danger that the next generation will either sort of retreat within to the community and you'll become isolated or will lose faith in that as well? I don't think that we have the privilege to lose faith. You know, for peace activists, like you have to believe in what you do.

26:18Your generation perhaps not, Samar, but the next generation? so this is what I told always like young people if we leave this thing and you go to Germany for example or to London or to the states is the conflict leaving you no you know when I speak in public they ask me if is a piece of possible I like you can't convince me that piece of possible I came from a place that is ongoing living evidence that this is possible. So if you want to learn how to do it, I can help. But don't ask me if it's possible. It's not a good point to start a debate. And I always win the debate.

27:13So what lies ahead for the next generation of Jews and Palestinians in this peace community? Look, as Israeli Jews, we don't have to be here to have this really hard life. If I live just five minutes outside of Neve Shalom, I can be part of the norm. and if I live here, I'm not a part of the Israeli norm and what is accepted in the village and for my friends. It's challenging to live in the village. It's a challenging existence. Yeah, it's really privileged to say challenging, but yeah, challenging in a certain way. And what about the future? I mean, do you want your children, if you have children, to grow up in the village?

28:01I will have children, and if they will live anywhere in Israel, they will live in Neve Shalom Wahat Salam. And will Neve Shalom Wahat Salam still be there for them to do that? Are you confident of that? Yes. There is no doubt about it. Ramesh, the young Palestinian, says that he's thinking of going abroad for a while. But when he returns, he says, like Adam, he can't imagine living anywhere else. Eventually, it doesn't matter what happens in the country and in the world. all hell could break loose. You know, the only place where I belong the most and my home is the village. It's always going to be my sanctuary.