David Hitchcock

In a rather surprising reversal of roles, a former American diplomat was in Israel this week, appealing to local business leaders for money.

David Hitchcock, who served as Public Affairs Counselor at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv between 1977 and 1981, has been trying to drum up support and funding for the Neve Shalom "peace village," where Jews and Arabs live and educate their children together.

Hitchcock, now retired at 73, is on the board of directors of the American Friends of Neve Shalom, and spends much of his time fundraising on a voluntary basis. He has maintained an interest in the village since 1978, when he first visited the compound of four or five houses near Latrun, which later become Neve Shalom, or Wahat Al-Salam in Arabic, which means literally "Oasis of Peace."

The village fascinated him because it represents "an effort, if a small one, to find a way for people who only have stereotypes of each other to get a better sense of what the other is really about."

Neve Shalom contains a bilingual, bicultural elementary school for Jewish and Arab children who live in the village and its surroundings areas, and a "School for Peace," which runs encounters for Jews and Arabs, mainly youth, facilitated by professionals.

Hitchcock, who served in the American Foreign Service for 35 years, mainly in East Asia, describes spending time in the village as the "most interesting `foreign affairs' experience I have ever had."

The idea of approaching Israeli business leaders, he says, stemmed from his meetings with heads of corporations and family foundations in America, who, after hearing about Neve Shalom, would frequently ask: "What do Israelis do about this?"

"The more I heard this," says Hitchcock, "the more I wondered about the state of business in Israel, especially when high-tech has come such a long way." From his base in Washington, D.C., he began to search via the Internet for individuals who he though might be willing to support the village, both financially or indirectly, through their contacts. He set up six meetings in advance of his trip to Israel this week, including with Dov Lautman, chairman of Delta Galil Industries, and Raya Strauss Ben-Dror, co-owner of the Strauss-Elite group.

While aware that his approach "may be unusual," Hitchcock describes the responses he has received as "quite favorable."

He has been accompanied in his meetings by an Israeli-Arab resident of the village, Daoud Boulos, and by executive director of the American Friends of Neve Shalom, Deanna Armbruster. Neve Shalom residents waited for him to arrive, rather than to approach the business leaders directly because, says Hitchcock, "it is easier for someone who was in the [American] embassy here to call top Israeli business executives than for someone from the village who has never lived in Tel Aviv."

"But I can only do so much," he continues. "I can open the door and try to interest [the business leaders] to help the village at a time when they need help and when their work is getting a lot of attention, because it is in such contrast with all the grim news around us."

In addition to the American Friends of Neve Shalom, which raises close to $1 million a year, mostly for the village's educational facilities, the International Friends of Neve Shalom also raises some $500,000 a year, largely from Europe. According to Hitchcock, until now the village has not approached Israeli business leaders "in a methodical way."

Hitchcock hopes that local Palestinian business leaders will also be contacted in the future. "It's logical that we should do so," he says, adding that the board of directors of the American friends group includes an equal number of Jews and Arabs, plus two outsiders, including himself.

Like many NGOs, the American Friends of Neve Shalom have found fundraising more difficult following the September 11 terror attacks in the United States. Executive director Armbruster says the intifada has also had an impact, leaving some donors "more determined" to be involved in Neve Shalom, while others have "held off on funding." She predicts that funds raised by the American Friends, which come mostly from the Jewish community and apolitical groups, will be 20 percent lower than those donated last year.

Many of the tensions in Neve Shalom surrounding the election of the village general-secretary a couple of years ago (Ha'aretz Magazine, July 28, 2000) have subsided, Armbruster reports. But the intifada is taking its toll: "Some people have the impression that Neve Shalom is like a bubble or an island and doesn't feel connected to problems in the country. That's absolutely not true. They're affected every day, like every other Israeli. It is tense. There is strain and stress to deal with."