A Common Ground

by Dan Izenberg

A development of historic proportions is taking shape today in western Galilee. A group of educators and government officials, spurred on by two visionaries from Jerusalem, are planning to open a joint Jewish-Arab public school this coming fall in the Misgav area, some 35 kilometers northeast of Haifa. The school will include an equal number of children from the three Arab towns and villages - Sakhnin, Kaukab and Sha'ab - and from Jewish moshavim and communal villages in the area.

It will not be the first integrated school in Israel. One already exists in Neve Shalom, a model village of Jews and Arabs located in the Judean hills. But the school in Misgav will be the first sponsored by the local authorities and attended exclusively by local children.

The dynamic force behind the establishment of the school is the Center for Bilingual Education in Israel - a non-profit organization established by American-born Lee Gordon, a social worker and educator, and Amin Khalaf, an Israeli Arab teacher who devotes much of his time to organizing meetings between Jewish and Arab youth. "I would like to strengthen my child's Jewish identity and at the same time be able to teach him what he has in common with the Arab child - to build a common ground, a shared civility," said Lee, explaining what brought him to work for the creation of an integrated school. "I believe there is room for Jews and Arabs to build this shared culture. I'm more afraid of separation and ignorance on both sides than I am of assimilation and intermarriage, though I don't think this school will encourage assimilation and intermarriage."

In looking for a place to set up an integrated school, Gordon and Khalaf held some 50 meetings all over the country. In the Arab sector, the two met individually with at least 15 local officials. All but one embraced the idea enthusiastically. One of them was Kassem Abu Elhija, head of the Kaukab local council's department of education. "We live in close proximity to our Jewish neighbors," he said. "We are always talking about values, peace, equality and so on. But if we don't live them, they will only be theoretical."

In the Jewish sector, the going was rougher until Gordon and Khalaf met Yisraela Aloni, head of the Misgav Regional Council education department. "I talked to her for 20 minutes about ideology," Gordon recalled. "At the end of it, she told me I could have saved my breath. She agreed with every word." More important, she told Gordon she had the blessing of the Misgav Regional Council head, Erez Kreizler. And even more important, they had the support of Doron Mor, head of the Education Ministry's northern district.

In retrospect, Misgav was a natural choice for such a school because it has a long history of Jewish-Arab educational, cultural and recreational projects, including the regional spring music and nature festival, the autumn olive-press festival and a plethora of bed-and-breakfast homes in Arab villages catering to Jewish-Israeli tourists.

Once Gordon and Khalaf found that they had two willing partners, they swiftly set to work to create the school by establishing a project committee made up of local officials from the Misgav regional council, the three Arab towns, and a few interested parents. On February 15, the committee held a public meeting in Kaukab to broach the idea for the first time to the residents of the region. Over 120 Jews and Arabs turned out to listen. Since then, the officials of each of the three Arab towns have held meetings with parents to encourage them to register for the school. On the Jewish side, Limor David, a member of the project committee and mother of five-year-old Tomer, who will attend the school, has been canvassing the Jewish parents of kindergarten children.

At this point, it seems that there are enough families to open a grade one class of 20 to 30 children next year.

For the time being, the school will not require recognition from the Ministry of Education. It will be part of the existing Misgav state secular primary school, whose principal, Tami Dumai, is one of the project's warmest supporters. Although it will use the school's facilities, it will, to all intents and purposes, be a separate entity with its own curriculum and two home room teachers - one Jewish and the other Arab.

According to Gordon, once the integrated school gets off the ground, and a new class is added each year over the next few years, the organizers will ask the Ministry of Education for official recognition and money for a building of its own. And that, he hopes, will be just the beginning. "We see ourselves as a main catalyst to encourage local initiatives throughout the country," said Gordon. "Our goal is to build an entire network of Jewish-Arab schools."

Not surprisingly, not everyone is happy about the idea. One opponent is Deputy Education Minister Moshe Peled. On hearing of the meeting in Kaukab, Peled fired off a letter to Aloni and Dumai in which he asked: "Did you consider cooperation with other populations and communities close to you, like the religious population or the hundreds of immigrant children in Karmiel?" he wrote. "Is [Jewish-Arab] cooperation the top priority in Misgav?"

But Peled's letter has not deterred the organizers. "Just as one has to take the religious people and the immigrants into consideration, one must also consider the Arabs," said Elhija. "All of us are citizens. We must all be treated equally."