‘We have to keep talking’: a warts and all documentary of Israel’s Arab-Jewish village
A Jewish and a Palestinian from Wahat al-Salam–Neve Shalom visit London to talk about crisis points for the mixed community where they live and the importance of dialogue
“We feel like we’re in the same boat together. And it’s something that makes you stronger.” Maayan Schwartz is sitting alongside Shireen Najjar and talking about life in the Arab-Jewish village of Wahat al-Salam–Neve Shalom in central Israel. While the boat of his metaphor has navigated rough seas in the past and is again in choppy waters, careful maintaining of the needs of its hybrid construction enables it to continue its special voyage.
Maayan is Jewish and Shireen is Palestinian. Both grew up in the village, created in 1978 and known in English as Oasis of Peace, and both left as young adults and have returned there with their partners to raise their children. Maayan has made a warts-and-all documentary about its history. He and Shireen were at a cinema in Soho, central London, this month to present it to the British Friends of the village. After the screening a long-standing supporter said his illusions had been shattered: up until now his impression had been of a place of harmonious co-existence.
As the film, Children of Peace, made in 2022, shows, every difficult moment in Israel’s history – from the Lebanon war, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the intifadas and the 2021 Gaza conflict – has created a particular challenge for the mixed community. Even though the villagers have grown up together, knowing and speaking of their differences, the unfolding of political events and personal journeys have their own complications. As children they learnt Hebrew and Arabic alongside each other, using bilingual textbooks for all their lessons, albeit on Yom HaAtzmaut/Nakba Day the class would split and each child would go with his or her own people to learn about their narrative.
But despite the bonds and the closeness they have with their Jewish neighbours, when some Arab villagers see the Jews from their community joining the IDF they have a sense of hurt: to them, the army will always be the oppressor. They are criticised by Arabs outside the village for living with “the people who took our land”, or are the object of suspicion because their Hebrew is so good. For their part, Jews in Neve Shalom speak of being insulted as ‘Arafat’ or ‘Hamasnik’. In 2020 the village was the target of an arson attack by outsiders, with ‘Death to the Arabs’ graffitied in Hebrew on to a building.
Hard times are the test for the peace village, says Shireen; and the way to deal with difficulties is not to run away but to engage in dialogue. The hardest time of all has been 7 October and the war in Gaza.
In conversation with Maayan and Shireen following the screening, Justin Cohen, news editor of Jewish News, asked first how the village was responding to the Hamas attacks and their aftermath. “Everything was so complicated” in the two weeks after 7 October, Maayan said. “People like to think of Neve Shalom as a bubble, not connected to the reality in Israel and Palestine. But it’s the other way round. Everything that is happening, we are the ones who [experience] it the strongest, the fastest, because it is our life.”
There were expectations and disappointments from each side, he says. “But the strongest thing was we decided to meet.” The community got together to talk to, and argue with, each other. “Even when it wasn’t perfect, still we decided to continue doing it,” Maayan says.
“Neve Shalom understood that you can’t make everyone agree about everything.” People outside the village might see that as a failure, but choosing dialogue is the key, he adds.
Shireen, 44, the first Arab girl to have been born in the village, talks of her conscious choice, a “privileged” one as she calls it, to return to the village, which has 80 families at the moment and has a big waiting list. “I’ve raised my kids to renounce violence,” she says. “My partners are the Israelis.”
The documentary may have shattered a few illusions but it also supported the idea that having a dialogue with and understanding another group of people is powerful; that even in the most difficult of circumstances if both sides are willing they can still keep talking.
• Maayan Schwartz and Shireen Najjar can be seen in a conversation, titled There is No Other Way, about the documentary, the village and the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians
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