Script Neve Shalom

[VO]

00:12:12 It's a conflict that seems endless and hopeless.

00:12:15 Yet one small village has become a beacon of hope.

00:12:17 An 'Oasis of Peace' where Jews and Palestinians choose to live together.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:12:38 This is a very strong one that we need to... it’s a shelter that we have to build it in the home by the loo because we need to sit in if there is an alarm or a war.

00:13:01 It’s hard to explain what you feel it’s not as... even as a human being when you live and you see all the people who died

00:13:16 This is a war, actually, the war is sitting here, here, here, everywhere even in my house.


00:13:23 [OPENING CREDITS AS ASTONS]
SASKIA ADRIAENS- Reporter, Harry van de Westelaken- Camera, Adri Roodenburg- Editor

[VO]
00:13:22 It is quiet now in Israel.

00:13:24 But the question is: for how long.

00:13:27 to 00:15:28 Last summer the seemingly endless conflict flared up again.

00:13:28 to 00:15:34 People were dying every day .

00:13:34 As bombs killed civilians and destroyed homes in the Gaza Strip,

00:13:38 the world held its breath.

00:13:39 Once again.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]

00:13:41 I almost want to hate the Jews for doing this to us because, and then you feel bad that you are living in a place so quiet, so peaceful, and yet where everything around you is not right.


[VO]
00:13:58 Less than an hour's drive from the Gaza Strip, there’s a small village giving hope to the region -

00:14:02 Neve Shalom or Wahat al-Salam - "Oasis of Peace" in Hebrew and Arabic,

00:14:08 and it's home to more than 300 Arab and Jewish Israelis living together in peace.

00:14:14 A utopia in the midst of a perpetual conflict.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]

00:14:19 We really live in peace together [00:14:22 EVI GUGGENHEIM SHBETA, NEVE SHALOM/ WHAT-AL-SALAM RESIDENT] and it’s not just a peace where one tells the other how to live in peace but it’s really the only place in the Middle East where people come in order to live together because they want that. We live the model where we share the land, the power and the everyday life and administration, and this is our message.

00:14:47 Now we have a Jewish holiday which is Passover.

00:14:54 This is first grade now.


[VO]
00:15:00 The Feast of the Sacrifice or Eid-ul-Adha for the Muslims

00:15:02 and the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur...

00:15:04 are both on the same day this year.

00:15:06 to 00:17:10 This combined class of Jewish and Arabic children are learning about the two religious holidays


[SPOKEN]
00:15:11 What do we do at Eid-ul-Adha?

00:15:18 What do we build at Yom Kippur?


[VO]
00:15:22 Teacher Reem Nashef lives in this village for 14 years ...

00:15:24 and teaches biology at this mixed primary school.

00:15:27 Many of the students travel from nearby villages to study here especially.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]

00:15:34 I’ll show you the arts room. Mary is an Arabic teacher, she teaches art in both languages.


[SPOKEN]
00:15:42 Good morning, class.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]

00:15:50 REEM NASHEF, Primary School Teacher
00:15:46 We had a very hard summer this summer and we were very tense as teachers, how we were going to open this year, after the Gaza war, and we were wondering what should we tell the children because you build, build, build peace and then something like that comes and smashes it to the ground, and when we came at the behinning of the year we saw that after that all the children, they only think about playing together, being together and they still envision the peace that we, the older people maybe think that it’s impossible but they think it’s still possible and that’s what we want to put in them as the growing seeds of this state.


[VO]
00:16:32 The school is unique in Israel: Jewish and Arab students in one classroom...

00:16:36 learning Hebrew and Arabic, playing together and discovering each other's culture.

00:16:47 Arabic Nadine and Jewish Tali grew up together as classmates and neighbours.

00:16:53 They remain best friends.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:16:55: Since when are you friends, and how come?

00:16:59 Since the fourth grade, right?

00:17:05 NADINE NASHEF
00:17:01 Yes, pretty much since I moved here, cos she lived across the street from me. I think that’s how we met our parents introduced us to each other and y’know it was just like, ever since then.

00:17:14 TALI SONNENSCHEIN
00:17:13 Yeah, we were neighbours and we went like to sleep over at each other’s houses and Nadine didn’t know Hebrew yet so we were talking in like, I don’t know how we got talking because my Arabic was like, huh.

[VO]
00:17:26 30 Nadine and Tali go to a Jewish high school outside the village together.

00:17:30 That's where they were first confronted with the divide in Israel.

[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:17:35 I think that the difference between being an Arab and a Jew, especially if you’re in a place like a Jewish school, is that I’m always seen a representative of the Palestinians, of the ‘Arab sector’, that’s what we’re called here, we’re called a ‘sector’ we’re not called a society or people or nation, so it’s contantly ‘’Nadine, you’re the representative here’’ or someting like that and Tali is just another part of society y’know, another individual in society, part of the Israeli society.

00:18:06 It was mainly different for the kids who were already at the school to meet y’know, Arab children their age for the first time y’know and to see that we talk in Arabic sometimes, I understand everything she says and we grew up together it was different mainly for, to understand that this is our reality whereas for them it’s the first encounter, it’s the first time so it’s to teach them that this is how we live and it’s normal for us.

[VO]
00:18:36 It all starts on a bare hilltop in 1977.

00:18:39 Priest Bruno Hassar and a group of students come together and founded their oasis of peace.

00:18:50 36 years later, their dream has become a real village.

00:18:50 The waiting list for Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam is long.

00:18:53 In the near future, 90 new families are joining the community,

00:18:56 but  it was years before the government gave permission for this extension.

[Spoken]
00:19:15 Have they finished the job up there?

[VO]
00:19:22 Rajaa and Khalil Danaf are watching as their new home is finally built.

[Spoken]
00:19:26 Five years ago, we wanted to leave Israel. As Rajaa is a Palestinian from Syria,
the Israeli authorities made problems when she needed documents


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:19:52 RAJAA GHANEM DANAF
00:19:47 At the last minute, we come here and see this village and we think ‘maybe it’s a good place for be in’ and, for me, actually, I felt that I can be here with good people who accept me.

[VO]
00:20:03 Rajaa, Khalil and their family have been trying to become members of the village for five years

00:20:08 going through a string of selection processes.

[SUBS]
00:20:11 Ready?

00:20:13 Yes, completely ready.

00:20:14 Do you have to add another layer?

00:20:17 No, just over here.

[VO]
00:20:20 New residents have to be certain they canbe happy in the community.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:20:25 And what do you think for you is going to be the biggest challenge?

00:20: 28 To be myself, to be a Palestinian woman to talk about my sorrow, about my history without feeling guilty wthout giving the Jewish or my neighbour, to feel guilty or the people who are listening to me.

[Spoken]
00:20:51 Who can explain to me what we just did?

[VO]
00:20:56 The villagers of Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam want their ideas to spread

00:20:59 well beyond their village.

00:21:04 With that in mind, the School for Peace has organized workshops for 35 years ...

00:21:08 to 00:23:10 bringing Jews and Palestinians together in dialogue.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:21:11 The issue is to humanize the other side because there is a lot of process of demonization of the other side. We would like them, our Palestinian guests, to share with us their strategies is in Palestine to end the occupation.

[VO]
00:21:34 Nava Sonnenschein organizes workshops for a new generation of lawyers and politicians ...

00:21:39 hoping they will be able to bring  Israel future peace.

00:21:42 She also tries to positively influence project developers.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:21:52 NAVA SONNESCHEIN, Director, School for Peace
00:21:47 The lecture is about how their profession is connected to the conflict, and then they have to initiate projects, joint projects or individual projects in which they... after they have this inner change they can influence their environment, or the committees in which they sit, or...

00:22:12 And what do you hope they change?

00:22:16 The status quo about land policy in Israel. The land policy is very discriminative and we want them to work so that it will be more equal.

00:22:28 So this is the renting house?

00:22:31 Yeah, and we will move, we’re actually here from four years, and we will move to the new.

[VO]
00:22:42 For Palestinian refugee Rajaa this village is the only place in Israel she could live.

00:22:47 For her, perhaps the most difficult thing was telling her father.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]

00:22:54 RAJAA GHANEM DANAF
00:22:51 Papa, I’m going to live in a village for Jewish and Palestinian, and he look at me like, and I said ‘Oh my God he will... ‘ and I told him that it’s very important for me to live with people with my values at least. I don’t care if they’re Jewish or Black or White I need it here, especially in Israel, I need it and he said, he look at me like this, and said ‘I’m proud of you’.

[VO]
00:23:26 So is this village a real utopia?

00:23:29 Many of the residents don’t think so.

00:23:31 The community is home to frequent discussion and disagreement.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:23:41 NADINE NASHEF
00:23:35 It’s very rare to find people who agree on things in this village, I think that’s something people don’t understand, that it’s not just one homogenic community there’s such a wide range of thoughts and ideas and beliefs here.

00L24:02 TALI SONNENSCHEIN
00:23:51 Well a big issue in Neve Shalom / Wahat as-Salam is the army. The youth that grow up, like the Jewish, have to go to the army but I think for us we also got through it, we talked about it, some of us were eight at the same age, some of us didn’t go

00:24:10: What about you?

00:24:12: I did. I went to the Home Front Command. I tried not to go to the army, it’s a really big conflict because you grow up thinking that peace is the only way. The military is not something you grow up thinking you’ll be in, everybody grows up in Israel, when you’re a child they say when you grow up they want to be in the army, and necessary any more and it’s a really big thing you have to go through here.

00:24:41 What was your most important question to her when she went to the army?

00:24:45 I think it’s a very big contradiction to go to the army after you’ve grown up in this village, both because it’s very militaristic, it’s violent, it’s a violent organisation, and it’s occupying our people, so that’s y’know, our question, how is that possible? How do you live with this contradiction? And you know there are many different answers to that.

00:25:10 And what’s your answer?

00:25:11 I thought that it was important if I already have to go to speak my mind and say everything that I believe even though I’m in that organisation and I know that, my friends know that, I’m the same person, I have the same beliefs and it doesn’t change who I am.

00:25:29 What we got from growing up here is not just to close up and livwe our own utopian lives, you realize that you’re connected to society through your experiences here and you realize that you need to take it outside and that maybe, you hope that it can affect what’s going on outside so it’s like a responsibility to try, at least.

[Spoken]
00:25:55 Cheers to the new year.

[VO]
00:26:02 Tonight the Sonnenschein family is enjoying a feast.

00:26:05 Tomorrow is the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur...

00:26:08 A major Jewish holiday with 24 hours of fasting,

00:26:11 no driving permitted, and public amenities closed.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:26:20 NAVA SONNENSCHEIN
00:26:14 It’s difficult and of course most of the Jews just think about themselves, they don’t think about how the Muslims are limited because this is a Jewish state and the main feast is a Jewish one not the Muslim one.  

[VO]
00:26:34 In the late 70’s, Tali's parents arrived in Neve Shalom / Wahat al-Salam with big ideals.

00:26:41 Their friends and family did not respond with enthusiasm.


[ENGLISH SPOKEN PART]
00:26:25 COBI SONNENSCHEIN
00:26:44 Originally they thought we were lunatics, and naive, and that it won’t exist for more than a few months.

00:26:51 We went to live with Arabs. That was really beyond their imagination. Also friends, some friends and family, but we’ve got other friends.

00:27:11 You have three children and they all grew up here, right? In the village?

00:27:15 Yes.

00:27:16 And what did you want to give them with that?

00:27:20 Different... different growing up, that Arabs are not our enemies, that’s it. Basically that’s it.

00:27:32 But you can imagine the struggle of your own daughter having a Palestinian best friend and going in the army and it’s all contrary to each other, right?  

00:27:44 Well that’s part of Neve Shalom, that’s part of living together. It’s not that we will all think alike, it’s not that we are all the same, we are different and the issue is how to coexist in spite of the differences.

00:27:58 So it’s not a utopia you live in here?

00:28:00 No not at all.


[Spoken]
00:28:10 The question about peace is: does community come first, or do we have to step outside
and try to change things even when we know there’s little chance of success?