Residents warn that an Israeli village where Israelis and Palestinians live together to promote peace could lose important overseas funds after the Israeli government proposes to impose 80% tax on foreign donations.
The main figures of the unique community - Wahat Salam/Neve Shalom flew to the UK on a visit this week, a “oasis of peace” hosted by a partnership group that called on the UK government to support a peaceful cooperative with foreign and development policies around the world.
Samah Salaime, an Israeli Palestinian, and Nir Sharon, a Jew of Israel, co-directed the village’s educational institutions, which include a peace school for activists and a primary school where 250 Jews and Palestinian children learn from each other’s history in Arabic and Hebrew.
The co-director coincided with Nakba's 77th anniversary at a parliamentary roundtable attended by Labor and Cooperative MPs and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOS) on Tuesday, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were distributed. On Saturday, the two talked about the partnership's annual shareholder meeting in Manchester.
Before the meeting began, Salaime told the Guardian that the bill was debated in Israel’s Israeli parliament. If it becomes law, it will weaken the finances of Israeli NGOs receiving funds from foreign countries.
"Foreign support for the left-wing peacemakers, liberals and Democrats; humanitarian or legal aid to Palestinians will be taxed by 80% on foreign countries," she said.
“The biggest supporters of Wahat Salam come from the UK, from cooperatives, our friends in Switzerland, Sweden, the United States. We don’t have any local Israeli support for our projects…economic and ideologically, they are against us.”
"In the past, we had financial problems and challenges, but if this law passed, we would be in serious problems and most educational programs would be closed."
The village was conceived by Jewish Catholic priest Bruno Hussar and began with a minority in 1978 in "unmanned land" between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Now, it has 300 residents, half of Israeli Palestinians and half of Israeli Jews, including scholars and technical professionals, waiting for about 200 families. There is no synagogue or mosque: Instead, residents pray or meditate in a dome called "Silence" court.
The public life in the village is surrounded by olive trees, surrounding the committee meeting, where the co-op’s decisions were voted on, sharing meals, swimming pools and rescuers’ gardens, in honor of the heroes of global disaster. There is a hotel in the village where children from the surrounding area are taken to school by bus.
"We were attacked by settlers three times. We had two arson attacks in 2021. They shot at our Peace School, we rebuilt it and the Peace Library. They attacked the elementary school, destroyed 16 cars ... We had all kinds of unfortunate events and we survived."
Salaime, a social worker of the "third generation of Nakba" and a feminist, moved to a village from East Jerusalem in 2000 five days before the second uprising, looking for a "decent school." Her three sons grew up with Jewish friends and faced the “complexity” of “soul mates” and agreed to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. When her home is home from a series of rockets in Gaza, Salam assured her mother that she could use the shelter of Jewish neighbors.
"We broke the rules and broke stereotypes, and mainstream Israeli brainwashing is impossible," Salaime said. "We have to win this victory and provide a different agenda."
When his parents moved to the village 23 years ago, Sharon was 14 and said "to isolated left-handed, Jewish peacemakers and activists" was a place where "coexist".
"We are not some kind of utopia, everything is perfect, no debate," he said. "When there is October 7 and the war, we have to talk about it."
Paul Gerrard, the policy director of the cooperative, led the peacebuilding campaign for the cooperative, which the village said is a breathtaking example of people revolving around a goal in this way that they can survive and thrive”.