Neve Shalom: An Island of Co-Existence in a Sea of Conflict: Lessons to the Educational System

Abstract

I take the school in Neve Shalom/Wahat-el-Salam as a test case for the educational implications of one of the most central problems of life in Israel – the relationships between its Jewish and Arab Citizens. I chose this school because it is a unique institution in which Jews and Arabs study together on terms of equal dignity and representation, against the background of a society and a public education system in which there are clear majority-minority hierarchies and the groups are separated in almost everything. The challenge that this school has undertaken does not have a clear counterpart anywhere in the world. In this paper I want to describe thismexperience and analyze it by putting its main features into broader contexts and perspectives. I believe that such an analysis may sharpen and clarify some basic issues that Israel has preferred to avoid. These issues are crucial for Israel and they are relevant to many contemporary societies struggling with the tensions between the need to promote civic equality and cohesion on the one hand and the recognition of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural differences between its communities on the other.