Neve Shalom, dreaming about a different Israel

NEVE SHALOM (ISRAEL) – A few months ago, a huge fire destroyed the entire area around Neve Shalom.The flames raged for days, burning hundreds of trees and acres of vineyards, and even reaching the houses of this village on a hill halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The fact that it’is still here, intact, amid burnt trees and dry meadows, is a perfect metaphor for this place: stubborn and resilient, off the beaten track but at the same time at the center of everything. Neverland: but it exists and has been living, resisting, and growing for fifty years.

Neve Shalom is proof that another Israel exists. In spite of everything. “We are small, not very strong and very poor: but we are not people who give up,” says Samah Salaime, spokesperson for the community, with irony. Founded 55 years ago by Dominican friar Bruno Hussar on land belonging to the monastery of Latrun, Wahat al Salam – Neve Shalom (literally, in Arabic and Hebrew, the village of peace) is a community of Palestinians and Jews living together in equality and respect.

The word ‘community’ may be an understatement. Neve Shalom is a proper village, like thousands here in Israel: with an entrance gate, a school for children, a playground, spaces for art and prayer, and even a hotel. Except that all this is based on the 50-50 principle: fifty percent of the inhabitants are Israeli Jews, the other fifty are Israeli Arabs. In the school, kids study two languages and the history of both peoples. In the House of Prayer, there is room for all religions, even atheists. For several months now, there has been a mourning tent where residents of both peoples can share stories of those they have lost in this war, on both sides of the border. It is, in fact, Neverland: but at a certain point in Israel's history—thirty years ago, before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist put an end to the peace process—it could have existed. Today, however, it is a bubble within an increasingly blind and violent country.

For some time now, what has been happening in Neve Shalom – the School for Peace, an institution that over the years has trained 70,000 people on the theme of coexistence, and home to some of the main players in the dialogue front – can be considered exceptional: but in today's Israel, it is more accurate to describe it as ‘crazy’ or ‘heroic’.You choose.

Eyes wide shut

The focus almost exclusively on Gaza does not help to understand how much, in recent months,the space for dialogue or for difference (let alone for dissent) in Israel has shrunk. Since October 7, many experiments in dialogue or coexistence that had been going on for years have collapsed or changed their nature: from Magnificat, the music school of the Custody of the Holy Land abandoned by some professors intolerant of the climate of mutual respect imposed by the Franciscans, to the Roma Club Jerusalem Academy, a soccer school that boasted having Arab children among its young talents but which today is a one-way street. Even the Educational Bookshop, the best bookshop in Jerusalem, in the Eastern part of the city – which, according to the United Nations, Israel has been illegally occupying since 1967 – has been targeted. The owners have been arrested twice on charges of ‘inciting violence’ for displaying books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the Knesset, the Parliament, there is now open talk of “annexing” the West Bank, and those who express dissenting views, such asArab-Israeli MP Ayman Odeh, are under investigation.

Of course, in recent weeks, the number of organizations and individuals who have come out against the Gaza offensive has grown, but we must not be fooled. The majority of people taking to the streets are calling for an end to a war in which soldiers are dying day after day and for the return of the hostages, not a definitive solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, let alone a plan for coexistence.

To be generous, the portion of the population that thinks this way does not exceed 20 percent, and since it failed to achieve anything or almost anything when it was the majority, it is naive to think that it can succeed today. This is another reason why it is easy for the Israeli media to ignore this reality: because it is the voice of a minority. Journalists from all over the world have come here, but no Israelis.

Tears and rage

In Neve Shalom, they know all of this very well. Yet, instead of giving up, they are relaunching. "They call us the Dinosaur of Peace because we are one of the oldest realities in this field: we are not an experiment or an initiative. We have been here for fifty years. We have families who take their children to school every day, most of them from outside the village, and children who grew up here and now, as adults, are returning to raise their families here. We are here to say that it is possible to live differently, that this country does not have to be based on Jewish supremacy."

Salaime, who comes from an Arab family in Haifa, recalls the skepticism with which his friends greeted his decision to move to these hills 25 years ago. And his mother's fear, who after October 7 asked him to leave the village. He does not hide the fact that that day was traumatic here too. A few evenings after the Hamas massacre, the community gathered: there were tears and there was anger, a lot of anger. After an initial moment together, Arabs and Jews gathered in their own groups to talk freely, and then came back together again. Salaime was worried about her friends in Gaza, about what might happen to them. She did not yet know that her friend Vivien Silver, one of the most prominent voices of the peace movement in Israel, had also been killed in Bee'ri, one of the kibbutzim hardest hit by the attack. Fragments of the woman's bones were found weeks later in the rubble of her charred house.She remembers two things about those hours: “The tears of a Jewish woman abandoned by her progressive friends because, despite the massacre, she had chosen to stay here, alongside Israeli Arabs like me: she needed a hug, and I gave it to her.” And the words of Eitan, one of the founders of the village: "He told us: 'It's just another war. We'll get through it.We survived the Six-Day War, the first and second Intifadas, Lebanon: we'll get through this too, we'll continue to grow.'"

And so it was: none of the 200 families in the village left, all the children were present when the school reopened two weeks after the Hamas massacre. Including those—the majority—who came from 19 villages in the area. The waiting list to come and live here has continued to grow. “It's endless,” says Salaime, “but we don't have room for everyone. And we don't want to take in people who only want to come because it's a beautiful place: those who arrive must bein line with our ideas.”

And tomorrow…

Of course, there have been tensions: breaking friendships that had lasted for years was in particular the choice of some Jewish residents to serve in the IDF, the Israeli armed forces, to support them or to carry weapons. “It wasn't easy for many residents to accept. We discussed Israel's right to defend itself and the role of the army.” But the differences have softened over time: some of the voices that have long denounced the crimes of the IDF have come from Neve Shalom. There are those who, after their first days in the army, refused to return, and those who asked to be moved away from the fighting. Ideal? No. “But what we do here is work to bring about change in our own small way, day after day.”

Meanwhile, the big picture is a complete unknown: in the shadow of Gaza, the government has shifted its agenda further and further to the right, violence in the West Bank keeps on rising, and polls show that, despite everything, if elections were held today Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies would still have a lot to say about the future of this country. “Our problem,” concludes Salaime as we tour the school where classes have just ended with a party to mark the end of the school year, "is that we don't have a plan. And when I say ‘we’, I mean those who disagree with both those who shout ‘From the river to the sea’ and those who advocate Jewish supremacy. Two states for two peoples? One state with equal rights? Let's talk about it. The extreme right has a plan, annexation: we don't.”

A few months ago in Jerusalem, a conference brought together the various souls of the so-called ”peace front." Groups such as Rabbis for Human Rights, A Land for All, B'Tselem—just to name a few—have seen many new members join in recent months, especially young people. For some, it was just a show, but for Salaime, it was a moment of hope. “What we need is a political proposal. We believe that ours could be a model to export. There is no need to build new villages; it would not even be possible today. But this country is made up of mixed realities: universities,hospitals, offices. Perhaps onlythe ultra-Orthodox communities are composed solely of Jews.”These words linger in the mind as we leave the village. On the road to Jerusalem, there is the usual sea of flags with the Star of David. And it is impossible not to ask oneself: is the path Israelis taking really the only wayforward?

As it run on Il Venerdì di Repubblica on august the 8^th 2025