Lesson In Amity

Lesson In Amity
Israel: A unique school aimed at breaking down Israeli-Palestinian stereotypes

A potholed dirt track leads through the Palestinian village of al-Khadar, 10 kilometres south of Jerusalem, to Hussein Ibrahim Issa's The Hope Flowers School. It is a unique institution: this is where Adina Shapiro, a 22-year-old Isareli volunteer, teaches Hebrew to Palestinian pupils. The bumpy ride to the school can be likened to an allegorical Palestinian-Israeli voyage through the treacherous rapids of hostility, fear and prejudice toward national reconciliation.
The message is encapsulated in the school's motto 'Peace, Freedom and Education'. "What better way of breaking down decades of encrusted stereotypes and changing dehumanised realities, than to teach Hebrew, the language of their enemy,to Palestinians on their own turf in an atmosphere of mutual respect," says Shapiro, an orthodox Hebrew University law student. "This is my way of performing the Jewish mitzva (sacred obligation) of tikkun olam (repairing the world)."
The slim and tall young woman has been regularly driving to the school once a week, doggedly teaching there for a year, in spite of the stubborn disapproval of her former school principal and friends, persuading incredulous soldiers manning road blocks after terrorist bus bombings to let her through when travel in the territories for an Israeli Jew can be dangerous and nerve-racking. Juliette Moise
A year later Shapiro is convinced that her decision was right. She has had soul-searching differences with older students and befriended Palestinian staff colleagues. Along the way she has picked sufficient Arabic to assist her in the classroom. In additional she has coaxed Israeli authorities to expedite applications by Palestinian teachers for entry permits to attend educational seminars in Israel. "I feel we have come to know each other as free and equal persons and that's a big step," said Shapiro.
"It's a process of mutual re-education and it's easier to start with the young who are not burdened by emotionally-laden, dehumanising stereotypes," said Juliette Moise, a recent volunteer Israeli Hebrew teacher on the staff. Moise, a Jerusalem educationalist who participates in science and humanities programmes designed to detect gifted children, meticulously prepares suitable teaching materials on Jewish customs and traditions for her Palestinian seven and eight-year-olds.
"We have established a good rapport; the children are eagerly learning Hebrew [ as one third-grader pragmatically said, 'learning Hebrew will help me to understand (Israeli) soldiers'] and I think I'm offering them an Israeli role model to whom they can positively relate. this way I'm really participating in the peacemaking process."
Unlike traditional Palestinian schools, teacher-pupil relations at the Hope Flowers School are informally friendly. Arabic is taught in Israeli elementary schools, though rarely by Palestinians and often discontinued within one or two years as parents consider them low priority.
"Shapiro, a religious moderate in Israel's diverse but conformist orthodoxy, was raised by American-born Jews committed to western values of tolerance and social pluralism-a fact which many of our rigidly orthodox Israeli Jewish counterparts find hard to internalise," says Yehezkiel Landau, a former South African Jew and secretary of Oz Ve-Shalom (Strength and Peace), a religious, politically moderate movement preaching accommodation with the Palestinians. "I have known Issa for many years. He deserves support. We have been morally supportive of his goals ever since he pioneered his courageous project 13 years ago and have raised funds overseas for school furniture and equipment." Adina Shapiro
Volunteers and smaller sums of money have been funneled to the school by church and civil rights groups in Sweden, Holland and the United States, by American Conservative Rabbis and the Australian Embassy in Tel Aviv, which donated 60 desks and chairs. Funds have not come, dis-appointingly, from wealthy American or European Palestinians. Being an independent institution, the school does not qualify for Palestinian education ministry funding.
The school is an unusual institution on the Palestinian scene. It began in 1984 as an experimental early child-care centre and kindergarten (then an anathema in traditionalist Palestinian society) for working mothers in the Deheishe refugee camp on Behtlehem's outskirts. several years later it moved to a hillside in neighbouring al-Khadar village where a new school wing is being built. Despite its spartan physical conditions (lack of running water and heating) and shoestring budget, it has grown into a full-fledged, prestigious school of 350 male and female students from five villages and three neighbouring towns.
Issa's unflinching personal convictions and brave resistance to PLO suppression have earned him widespread respect, even among orthodox Muslim families and high-ranking Fatah officials of the Palestinian Authority, a police and security services who apparently favour a liberal education for heir children and are willing to quietly go along with its social and political philosophy. They are impressed by the school's competitive academic achievements, arts and crafts courses and free tuition to orphans and children of Palestinian political prisoners. Adult Hebrew classes are also being held at the request of parents, many f whom work in Israel.
"For years my school was ostracised by orthodox Muslims (Hamas) for being coeducational and by secular nationalists (PLO) who accused me of collaboration, because I advocate free speech, liberal democracy and active Palestinian pursuit of dialogue with the Israelis,' said Issa, whose well-to-family fled the Israeli city of Ramle during the 1948 war. he was raised in poverty in Deheishe where demonic stereotypes of Israelis as Jews with long tails and red eyes thrived on fear and ignorance. Principal Hussein Ibrahim Issa
"Unlike most of my teenage peers who enlisted in the PLO, I believed that peace with the enemy could be achieved through coexistence, mutual respect and dialogue with Israelis," said Issa. his family was repeatedly harassed and threatened by their Palestinian critics for propagating renegade beliefs and during the Intifada petrol bombs were thrown at his home on several occasions and the school bus was destroyed.
Today, The Hope Flowers School is the only Palestinian educational institution teaching Hebrew language and Jewish culture. With the advancing peace process the school has become a Palestinian teacher training centre for Hebrew language and humanities studies and a growing trickle of Palestinian teachers in Gaza and the West Bank want to participate in the school's regular staff seminars through its twin relationship with the Democratic School of Hadera, an Israeli counterpart in the centre of the country which preaches Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. Five exchange visits have been held in the past year and professional workshops on Israel-Palestinian peace education are scheduled in March and April, funded by a $20,000 grant for Israel-Palestinian Rapprochement, sponsored by the US Agency for International Development.
"The venture is extremely important for bridging the tremendous cultural gap in our mutual understanding of each other's national conditions. Few Israelis know what Palestinian life and civil rights are really like in the territories, just as few Palestinians know what life is really like in Israel," says Douglas Cohen, an Israeli teacher. "Frank and honest discussion is needed at all professional levels, not just by political negotiators."
Strengthened by his family, supported by friends around the world, and encouraged by cracks in local Palestinian opposition, Issa pursues his not-so-lone struggle for dialogue with fresh hope. "Our two peoples are victims of injustice," he says. "I believe we can create a new Japan here, built on trust, and I am confident that eventually Palestinians and Israelis will maintain open state borders. It can't be otherwise."

YEHONATHAN TOMMER