Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam: A Jewish-Arab School for Peace

Abstract

All students in Israel confronte with cultural difference and intergroup conflict and violence owing to the ongoing struggle between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and in the Middle East more generally. This inquiry provides an overview of the lived experiences of a number of students and facilitators who have been involved in a peace-education program sponsored by a school in a small village in Israel. Through the sharing of pedagogical experiences, as well as personal and professional stories, a new paradigm for peacemaking is created. This study is an exploration, by means of these peace-workshop encounters, into the desolate psychological landscape that Jews and Arabs must navigate, and into their emotional journey towards breaking down the barriers of fear, hate, and mistrust that have saturated their daily existence. The main goal of this study was to collect and examine data from the participants in this conflict-resolution educational endeavor through in-depth interviewing and participant observation in order to highlight the multiplicity of tensions, failed hopes, dreams, and traumas that are pivotal within the configuration of their personal and professional lives. The author explores the social and psychological complexities inherent in this educational odyssey towards peaceful coexistence, and discusses the sites of struggle and negotiation in the “border dialogues” that the students and facilitators gradually created for themselves in their search to give equal expression to their national identities. She examines the epistemologically complex implications of understanding conflict resolution as a dialogical relation, the purpose of which is to create a geography of inclusion within the context of an Israeli educational setting.