By Laura J. Brown
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- In the heart of Israel, there is a village where Jews and Palestinians coexist peacefully, where schoolchildren learn both Arabic and Hebrew, where everybody works and shops and prays as equals.

Its name means "Oasis of Peace" in Hebrew and in Arabic, and anyone familiar with the Middle East knows that Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam is something of an anomaly, something few people dare to dream is possible. And yet it is.

As living testaments to the idea that Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians can live side-by-side, village residents Ahmad Hijazi and Nava Sonnenschein spoke at the Middle East Institute in Washington March 1. During a week of intense fighting, they spoke on the difficult work of reconciliation and offered a ray of hope for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to end.

Founded in 1972 by a Dominican monk from Egypt named Brother Bruno Hussar, Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam is a co-operative village owned and governed by Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The village maintains a balance between the two groups and offers peace education to the young and old, both within the community and beyond.

The philosophy behind the village is that the conflict in the Middle East is an ethnic, not a religious, conflict. Inside the state of Israel, there are roughly one million Palestinians as well as the Jewish majority; both groups are citizens of Israel.

Hijazi and Sonnenschein are directors of the village's School for Peace, which hosts workshops for Jews and Palestinians from throughout Israel and territories administered by the Palestinian Authority. Hijazi and Sonnenschein's children attend the village primary school, receiving a bilingual education in Hebrew and Arabic and learning both the Jewish and Arab historical perspectives.

The School for Peace has graduated more than 30,000 participants from its various outreach programs in conflict management, which last from three days to a year. For each of its programs, the school admits an equal number of Jews and Palestinians. Through a program for ages 16 to 18, the school helps Jewish and Palestinian teens overcome mistrust, prejudice and fear of each other by facilitating intensive dialogue among them.

"You have to let the group behave as naturally as possible in order to let the deeper feelings come out," Sonnenschein said. "Sooner or later, if you don't disturb the natural dialogue, it will become a microcosm of the larger society."

Certain stages occur again and again in the school's sessions, Sonnenschein said. She explained that most groups progress through five stages, from polite and restrained encounters to increasing levels of intense dialogue and re-examination of long-held beliefs and identities. The hope of Sonnenschein and the other directors is that by the end of the sessions, the participants become part of the critical mass necessary to promote awareness and peace.

"In the final stage, they can no longer say, 'I don't know about that' because now they do. It's a deeper level of awareness that stays with them," Sonnenschein said.

The primary school, which now has 300 students enrolled from the kindergarten level to grade six, also encourages an understanding of both the Jewish and the Palestinian perspectives. Both Arabic and Hebrew alphabets decorate the classroom walls, and holidays address the historical and cultural significance of both ethnic groups.

"We find ways to teach both narratives, and we give children opportunities to share and discuss what they feel. Sometimes the children are very creative, much more than adults," said Hijazi.

Both Hijazi and Sonnenschein say the flare-ups in violence between Israelis and Palestinians since the fall of 2000 have put additional pressures on the village. While parents and other residents in the village remain committed to the village's philosophy of co-existence, recruiting outside the village has become more difficult, they said. Graduates of the program who are now living and working outside of the village have also reported that their commitment to peace is tested more vigorously now.

"In recent months since October 2000, it's harder than ever to keep some hope going, when there aren't many people holding the flag of hope, the flag of cooperation, challenge and change," Hijazi said. Nevertheless, he remarked that the work of the village is "like ant's work - you cannot see results immediately."

"If we didn't see changes, we probably wouldn't continue as we have, but we see changes in people. Those changes don't erase after a year," Sonnenschein said. "If we didn't do something, we would be much worse."

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)