Jewish, Arab visitors tell of peaceful Israeli
home
By Daniel
Massey
January
17, 2002
Rami Mannaa is a Palestinian Israeli who grew up going to bar
mitzvahs. Ori Sonnenschein is a Jewish Israeli who celebrates
Ramadan each year. The 17-year-old boys are neighbors in a village
called Neve-Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam, or “Oasis of Peace,” that stands
midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Mannaa has lived in
Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam, as the village is called in both Hebrew
and Arabic, since he was 4, while Sonnenschein was born there.
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times since its founding in
the 1970s by a Dominican priest, the village is the only place in
Israel where Jews and Arabs voluntarily live side by side.
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the 25 Jewish and 25
Palestinian families that call the village home demonstrate that the
two groups can live together as equals in peace, Mannaa and
Sonnenschein said.
“The village is of a unique kind,” said
Mannaa, when the pair visited the Muslim Al-Iman School along the
Van Wyck Expressway in Jamaica Jan. 8. “Palestinians and Jews live
together sharing everyday life by choice, in harmony.”
The
village boasts its own award-winning primary school, the only
bilingual school officially recognized in Israel, and an
internationally acclaimed School for Peace, which has conducted
conflict mediation workshops for more than 25,000 Palestinians and
Jews.
Both Mannaa and Sonnenschein attended the village’s
primary school.
“Growing up in Neve Shalom has given me
opportunities 98 percent of the country did not have,” Sonnenschein
said, “the most important one being meeting and interacting with
Arabs on a daily basis.”
Students from the Al-Iman School
were delighted to hear that Arabs attend Passover seders each year
at the Sonnenschein house and that Jews join Mannaa’s family to
celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
After the two
teenagers ate lunch with the school’s upper grades, they gave a
brief presentation and then participated in a lively 90-minute
question-and-answer session during which they were peppered with
questions from a curious student body fascinated by their tale of
peaceful co-existence.
“Are there any conflicts in the
village, and if so, how are they solved?” one student asked. “Is
there a way to apply your methods to the outside world?”
Mannaa recalled that a memorial to honor a Jewish resident
killed in a military helicopter crash caused tensions in the village
to boil over. The soldier died on his way to Lebanon, where an
offensive against Arabs had been launched.
Al-Iman students
wanted to know if Sonnenschein planned to join the army and how he
felt about the possibility of having to fire on Palestinian friends.
Sonnenschein, who is about to begin his mandatory military
service, said the issue of Jewish residents joining the army had
created conflict in the village. He said he was happy that he has a
medical exemption that will keep him from combat duty and away from
potentially having to fight against people with whom he grew up.
“If I would have to go to combat, I wouldn’t know how to
deal with it,” he said.
His friend Mannaa is getting ready
to go to college since military service is only mandatory for Jewish
Israelis.
No matter what the conflict, Mannaa and
Sonnenschein said, dialogue, not violence, is the method of
resolution employed by residents of Neve Shalom/Wahat
Al-Salam.
Referring to the case of the soldier killed on his
way to Lebanon, Mannaa said “we talked and had a vote and decided to
do the memorial.”
Al Imam students were impressed by what
they heard.
“It’s nice to know there are people who don’t
always take war as a primary decision,” said Eraj Zaidi, a
10th-grader.
Samara Mukhtar, a 12th grader, said she was
inspired to find there were alternatives to the destruction seen
every day on the news.
“It gives people hope that there is a
way to solve problems without violence, that peace is a
possibility,” she said.
Reach reporter Daniel Massey
by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
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