A consideration on peace in the Middle East by President of Gariwo Foundation Gabriele Nissim starting from the reading of the book “Respirare il futuro. La speranza possibile del villaggio di Neve Shalom Wahat-al Salam” by Giulia Ceccutti.
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It is high time to dramatically change the way we approach the situation in the Middle East. Instead of one-sidedly supporting the warriors of the two sides and listing the horrors and motives of each other, we need to focus on the possible ways of conciliation between Palestinians and Israelis. If we do not work towards a path of peace, non-violence and dialogue, we will go from one new war to another, to new generalised hatred that will still bring much bloodshed.
This is why Giulia Ceccutti’s book, “Respirare il futuro” (as dialogue), which recounts the experiences and stories of some of the protagonists of the village of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam, the only one in the world where Israelis and Palestinians live together in equality, can be of great help. Ceccutti’s book enables us to grasp not only all the elements of the educational process that made the coexistence between the two groups possible, but also the way in which the villagers shared the pain of the war, first on 7th October and then later with the Israeli army’s massacres in Gaza.
Perhaps the highest example of such sharing, above and beyond relevant affiliations, was the tent of common mourning for the Israeli and Palestinian dead, an unprecedented experience in the world that we, as Gariwo Foundation, would like to replicate in Milan Garden of the Righteous. When in Israel a Palestinian could not speak publicly of his/her grief for the victims of Gaza and in the occupied territories remembering Israeli victims of 7th October was considered as an act of treason, the villagers decided to recount the suffering endured by their families, in a tent for a whole day. Thus the terrible pain that could have divided the community of Neve Shalom forever, made them reflect on the common fate of suffering. Telling uncensored stories about evil suffered thus brought the villagers closer and once again rekindled hope for a path of peace.
If that common and shared mourning were one day politically reprocessed, an examination of conscience may also be opened on the murderous and absurd policies of Hamas and the Israeli right wing. The use of terror, pogroms and rape in a conflict are not liberation and resistance, just as the systematic destruction of Gaza, which from massacre to massacre borders on genocide, is not self-defence. Talking about common grief together means rejecting the use of violence between the two groups and instead seeking ways of communication and dialogue, even if a way of agreement cannot be found.
As Ariela Bairey Ben Ishay, a Jewish teacher working in the School for Peace argues, senseless and gratuitous violence probably erupted because there was no political venue outside the village where Israeli and Palestinian leaders could meet and negotiate. “When we go down the road of negotiations, we need to commit to staying until the end, until solutions are found. We must not make excuses every time, resort to sentences like: you see, there is no one to talk to on the other side, or repeat that we cannot solve the issue by talking to Hamas. We have to act as we would do in a good couple relationship: face the problem until a solution is found. It is too easy to walk away and leave the discussion”.
The interruption of political dialogue over the last twenty years has had a devastating effect in that it has killed off hope for a possible peace solution and thus has gradually led to the crazy idea that the liberation of one national group could only be possible if the other was destroyed. Instead, in the village, as Palestinian Raida Aiashe Khatib remarks, “when we see a moment of tension, we decide to use dialogue. We divide into groups, because we must not keep things inside”. Continuing to talk to each other is the way to curb aggression and one’s resentment in the face of the hardest situations that the villagers see in the outside world and unfortunately cannot change.
However, social media, such as Instagram and Facebook, have not helped dialogue, because a few catchphrases, which we may have often written as well, can generate misunderstandings and contrasts. When one writes a sentence without addressing it to an interlocutor’s face, one unintentionally creates enmity and not understanding. And it has often occurred that an opinion on the web was instrumentalised by others and, in a conflict situation, such as that of Israel and Palestine, led to insecurity and provided a pretext for accusations against the speaker. A villager could thus be branded a traitor to his/her own people, or a terrorist.
The experiment of the Israeli-Palestinian community arose from the insight of Father Bruno Hussar, whom great French Jewish sociologist Edgar Morin would place in the category of modern neo-Marrians who, starting from the tragic Jewish fate, were able to experience the richness of multiple identities. “Let me introduce myself: I am a Catholic priest, I am Jewish. An Israeli citizen, I was born in Egypt, where I lived eighteen years. I have brought with me four identities: I am truly Christian and a priest, truly Jewish, truly Israeli, and I also feel, if not really Egyptian, at least very close to Arabs, whom I know and love”.
Hussar sensed that Jews who become Zionists to go and live in Israel cannot remain just Jews in an Arab and Palestinian world, they must be able to develop a new dimension that encompasses different identities. And the same must apply to the Palestinian who, on the same land, enters into a relationship with a Jew. Something common must arise from the relationship. There is not only self-interest and national interest, there is the inter-being that binds us to others and leads us to care for them, as Vito Mancuso writes about the human condition.
This is the great miracle of the village experience born in 1969. Indeed, not only did it build a plural and communitarian experience between the two national groups that knew and shared each other’s culture and history, it also laid the foundations for a new common identity that overcame their relevant affiliations. Starting from the great value of plurality and equality, the village pushed its inhabitants to feel like builders of a common future. “I used to think that we needed to have two mayors running the village,” says Palestinian Raida, “but then I realised that the nationality of the one running the administration no longer mattered, what did were only his/her skills and the way he/she represented everyone”.
For a profound sense of belonging to be built, which went beyond the ethnic-national one, Bruno Hussar wanted a pluralist spiritual centre to be set up in the village that would allow everyone to feel the same human condition. This is the House of Silence, Dumia Sakina, which was initially intended to be triangular to represent the meeting of the three religions (Christian, Jewish and Muslim), but then, faced with the objection of an atheist boy, Hussar decided that it would have a circular structure, where everyone could choose their own point of reference beyond religions. However, as Bob Mark, one of the oldest members of the village remarks, what truly mattered was that everyone was nonetheless stimulated to seek a common direction in that dome. “Personally, I understand the adjective “spiritual” in the broadest sense of the term: not being a person of God, nor a religious person, but being a person”.
The village does not have a majority and a minority ethnic group, as is the case in Israel, not only in terms of numbers and power, it does reproduce in its own small way the equality of the two peoples who live instead “trapped from the river to the sea”, as Palestinian Samah Salaime remarks, with an expression of great intelligence that frees this geographical description from the fanatical use of the two sides. Thus the number of Israeli Jews and Palestinians must always be equal in the village.
The most important institution, which has become the village greatest boast over the years, is the bilingual and binational primary school, where from an early age children are directed not only to studying Hebrew and Arabic, but also to sharing religious and national festive differences. As Neama Abu Delo explains, the school, which is also open to children living outside the village, compensates for one of the most obvious contradictions in Israeli and Palestinian society. The lack of knowledge of the two languages and their respective cultures and religions, without which it is impossible to build cultural bridges of communication between the two peoples. Teaching Arabic is a complex issue in Israel, in that Jewish children are not interested in it. In the school, however, not only are the two languages taught, parents are also encouraged to use the two languages at home as well. Children then celebrate all religious holidays together, such as Hanukkah, Christmas, Ramadan and Pesach.
However, remembering national holidays is more complex. While the school remembers Yom Hashoah, the day of the victims of the Holocaust, together, the day of Israel’s national independence creates division, as the celebrations for the birth of the state are experienced by Palestinians as the memory of the Nakba, which led to the more or less forced exodus of 600,000 Arabs. Thus the school discusses the two events, at a difficult time like today, where the Israeli government considers the memory of the Nakba to be subversive and would like to repress it.
Creating a common horizon in education is therefore a great challenge for the village teachers. What the endless war has changed in the perception of its inhabitants, however, is that the villagers are now aware that the village cannot only be a happy island, it must become a cultural vehicle for the transformation of the country, before it is too late.
For this reason, two educational institutions are crucial that can open up new horizons in the population. On the one hand, the Garden of Universal Righteous (Garden of Rescuers), which for the first time in Israel’s history, thanks to Prof. Yair Auron, has broken the dogma according to which the Righteous are only those who helped Jews in the Holocaust. Thus alongside Righteous for the Armenians, for the victims of the Mediterranean, we remember Jews who helped Palestinians, such as Orthodox Bella Freund who saved young Palestinian Adnan al-Afandi (a young man who had stabbed two Jewish teenagers during clashes in Jerusalem) from being lynched, and Palestinian families who saved numerous Jews during Hebron massacre in August 1929.
“Since August 2023, we have been collecting stories of Jewish and Palestinian Righteous linked to the attacks of 7th October. We have already selected more than 40 of them”, says Samah Salaime, who directs all educational paths. They are wonderful stories of very simple people: a bus driver, a guy who worked at a gas station and hid Jewish children in the restroom, a Jewish waitress who saved a Palestinian worker”. And now Israelis must be found who refused to fight or who denounced the massacres in Gaza and stubbornly defied the authorities to seek dialogue. And then the important School for Peace is not only used by the village to talk with facilitators about open issues of sharing, it has the task of training activists who can stimulate dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians in society.
“Unfortunately, the law prevents us from creating new sharing villages like ours, because a State Act of 2018 practically states that land can only be owned by Jews. Therefore, our task is to work for dialogue in the seven mixed towns scattered across the country. In all these contexts, Arabs and Jews already live and work together, but they do not know how to talk to each other, they do not really want to build relations. This is why we must not build more “Peace Oases”, we should teach people to live in peace. We are called to train new Israeli and Palestinian leaders who can hold each other’s views together”.
Those who, like me, have been following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years are often overcome with despair, because it seems that all horrors are always going to be repeated, and we have to see again and again the same polemics and confrontations with the fanatics on both sides always repeating the same absurd arguments. Sometimes I wish I did not see them, thinking of how futile all efforts are. Instead, in the book, Raida Aiashe Kathib tells the beautiful tale of the four candles.
The first that spoke was the candle of peace. “My light”, it told the other three, “is now pointless, I must extinguish it and leave”. The candle of faith said the same thing: “Nobody believes in me any longer, nor respects me. It is all useless”. And the candle of love also decided to extinguish its light. “Nobody loves each other anymore. No one wants me anymore. What is the meaning of my life and my light? I am uselessly wearing out. I must leave as quickly as possible”. So the three candles went out. Suddenly a child came into the room, began to cry and said: “Why did you go out? Please stay lit. What will I do without your light?”. Then spoke the fourth candle, the candle of hope. “Do not cry child, do not lose faith. As long as I am there to illuminate, there is hope: take light from my light and light the other three candles and thus you will keep peace, faith and love. Do not lose me”.
What is hope then? It is the concept of natality mentioned by Hannah Arendt. New generations can change the course of events regardless of mistakes made by previous ones. Those who are born today have the opportunity to do so. But new actions of human beings can also lead to something unforeseen. There is something nobody ever talks about. Eight million Israelis and seven million Palestinians have nowhere else to live: they are forced to share the same land. That is why there will be someone who will eventually choose the most realistic and just path.