"Coexistence" at Givat Haviva

by Khittam Na'amneh

Givat Haviva, an educational center founded in 1949 by the National Kibbutz Movement, recently froze a 14-year-old project in coexistence called "Children Teach Children" (CTC), dismissing the staff of Jews and Arabs. The "October Intifada" inside Israel has shaken up other programs in coexistence as well. Teachers and pupils from most of the participant Jewish and Arab schools have ceased to meet. Institutions that used to focus on the topic have turned instead to other issues, like secular-religious relations within Jewish society.
On May 24 the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz published a long article by Tamar Rotem on the crisis affecting projects in coexistence, entitled "Too Radical for the Coexistence Industry". (Ha'aretz chose not to include the piece in its English edition.) According to Rotem, the number of such projects increased to over a hundred in the 1990's. (Note by K.N.: The Abraham Fund alone funds 350 "coexistence" projects, including Givat Haviva; according to its Web site [www.abrahamfund.org] it provided a total of $5 million from 1993-1999.) Recently, however, researchers have questioned their effectiveness. The critics include Dr. Ramzi Sleiman from the University of Haifa and Dr. Yif'at Ma'oz from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. They find that the usual meetings between Jewish and Arab pupils (which amounted to visiting Arab villages, eating humus and dancing the Debka) did not help to overcome the basic lack of trust between the two groups and did not, therefore, contribute to true coexistence. The balance of forces, their research claims, always favored the Jewish side. The reason was that the Jews directed the meetings (and funded them). Given this inherent weakness, it is no surprise that the programs collapsed in the winds of October.

Children Teach Children

Tamar Rotem's piece in Ha'aretz focuses on the program known as Children Teach Children (CTC) at Givat Haviva. Its original concept was to bring together pupils, teachers and administrators from Jewish and Arab schools, with the idea that each group would teach its native language to the other. This was the flagship program of the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace at Givat Haviva, which belongs to the kibbutz movement. CTC was selected as one of 400 educational programs to take part in Canada's "Expo 2000". It was also chosen as one of eight projects for exhibit at the Disney Center in Florida. The worldwide success of CTC lent much prestige to Givat Haviva. It fit the atmosphere created by the Oslo Accords.
Leah Leshem, who worked at CTC for seven years, was recently dismissed together with nine other counselors. In an interview in June, she told Challenge : "The original program of CTC was totally lacking in content. All that the pupils did at the meetings was eat Arab food and folk dance. There was no open discussion between the pupils. After I joined the program, the decision was taken to change it, both in organization and content. In addition to the project's Jewish director, Shuli Dichter, an Arab director was appointed, Jalal Hassan. The purpose in appointing Hassan was to fulfill the meanings of the words, coexistence and equality. The administration of Givat Haviva objected to the change, and especially to the appointment of an Arab as head of the team."

In fact, the administration stood fast, for five years, in its refusal to recognize Hassan as project head. Only two years ago did it officially accept his appointment. After the organizational change, an attempt was made to introduce new content. The Arab-Israeli conflict took center stage at the meetings, overshadowing the traditional social aspect. The program now focused on three goals: 1) to strengthen the Palestinian identity of the Arab pupils; 2) to rebuild Israeli identity among Jewish pupils - but along new lines, which would take into account the existence of Arabs in the state; 3) to explore the idea of a new kind of citizenship, which would find expression in an equal distribution of land, budgets and resources between Arabs and Jews.
This change did not suit the administration at Givat Haviva, and it tried to diminish the influence of the CTC team. According to Leshem, the administration refrained from inviting team members to internal meetings; in recent months, it prevented Jalal Hassan from representing the project abroad as he had in the past. All this went on, despite the fact that CTC brought in a substantial part of Givat Haviva's funding.

The October Intifada

According to Leah Leshem, the al-Aksa Intifada served Givat Haviva merely as a pretext for getting rid of the group. Already in October, she said, the entire team was dismissed. Some of the members were then brought back - but under clear conditions. The administration published a contract, which stated that the CTC program would be restored in its original form. Team meetings would be under administrative supervision. The members would focus on topics like environment, avoiding the Israeli-Arab conflict.
The CTC team accepted these conditions, said Leshem. Nevertheless, in April the administration fired ten of its members. Givat Haviva explained these dismissals as a consequence of "budgetary constraints". Yet CTC, as mentioned, was a flagship program, attracting substantial funds. The director of Givat Haviva's Jewish-Arab Center, Sara Usetsky-Lazar, brings us closer to the reason, I think, in a statement she made to Ha'aretz: "Jalal has to know that he isn't working for Azmi Bishara or Yasser Arafat. What to do - the fact is, Givat Haviva has a Zionist administration and belongs to the kibbutzim." (May 24)
In Ha-Daf Ha-Yarok ("The Green Page"), a newspaper of the kibbutz movement, Usetsky-Lazar explained further: "The fact is, something has changed in the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel since October, and we have decided at the Center to set up an educational department that will look into all our educational programs, adjusting them to the new reality." (May 3.) Masks Off

The October uprising had an impact not only on relations between the Givat Haviva administration and the CTC team. It also tested relations between the Jewish and Arab members within the team itself. "At the time of the Intifada," Leah Leshem told Challenge, "the Arab members were furious with their Jewish colleagues, accusing them of lacking solidarity. The Arabs felt they were standing alone in the struggle, and this caused a rupture within the group."
This fury also marked the way the members of Arab schools felt toward their Jewish colleagues who had taken part in CTC. When the smoke cleared, Arab schools ceased showing up for meetings. The October Intifada stripped off the masks of peace and equality that Israel has been wearing for the last decade. It exposed the tremendous gap between the two peoples. The concept of "coexistence", as preached by institutions like Givat Haviva, has proved counterfeit. At the root of such spurious programs lies an Israeli wish to gain the obedience of the Arabs without having to pay the price.
True coexistence will require a basic change in the racist assumptions that presently dominate Jewish society. Assumptions and attitudes change, however, not of themselves, nor chiefly through periodic dialogue sessions, but through prior change in the economic and political realities - class realities - that form the basis of oppression.

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