MetroWest inspires dialogue between Israeli Left, settlers

by Gil Hoffman
Special to NJ Jewish News

JERUSALEM — The gap that divides the secular, left-wing kibbutzniks of the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council in southern Israel and the religious, right-wing settlers of the Gush Etzion Regional Council just outside Jerusalem in the West Bank often seems like it is 5,000 miles wide.

So it took the people of MetroWest, who live 5,000 miles away, to help bridge it.

The people of Sha’ar Hanegev and Gush Etzion have opened a dialogue and started a relationship thanks to a contribution from the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey. The goal of the dialogue is to ensure that the day after the implementation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s controversial plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, the rifts in Israeli society will begin to heal.

MetroWest has acted as the matchmaker, bringing together people who otherwise might never have met and might never have made an effort to try to understand each other. The groups talk about the challenges they share in living in the Jewish state, study Zionist texts together, and are planning joint field trips for their children.

The idea rose six months ago with a recommendation by Amir Shacham, director of MetroWest’s Israel office. The two communities had begun a relationship with MetroWest during the 2001 Israel Emergency Campaign. Shacham said he wanted to help the people of MetroWest understand the complexity of the Gaza disengagement plan and its potential impact on Israeli society by taking part in a special project to break down the walls between Israelis with opposing points of view.

“As we go into this difficult period for Israel, I can’t think of a better use of MetroWest funds than to help ease Israelis through this transition,” MetroWest Israel/Overseas Committee chair Joyce Goldstein said last Tuesday on a visit to Jerusalem. “MetroWest should be proud that we were able to start a dialogue between Israelis with such different ideologies.”

Groups led by Gush Etzion Mayor Shaul Goldstein (no relation to Joyce) and Sha’ar Hanegev Mayor Alon Shuster met for the first time in March. They have since met several more times and visited each other’s communities. Now they are being divided into subcommittees of professionals who will learn from each other in a more intensive manner and build new social bonds.

At first there were settlers who saw no point in meeting kibbutzniks and kibbutzniks who did not want to meet settlers, including one woman who said she had never entered any of the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War. But they gradually overcame their prejudices and realized that they had more in common than they had thought.

“They come from opposite perspectives but they are committed to working together because what unites them is more than what divides them,” UJC-MetroWest executive vice president Max Kleinman said. “They share the same vision for a Jewish democratic state connected to the Jewish people around the world.”

Both areas have been targeted by Palestinian violence. Many Gush Etzion residents were killed in drive-by shootings on the way to and from work in Jerusalem. Sha’ar Hanegev is regularly hit by rockets and mortars fired from the nearby Gaza Strip.

Sha’ar Hanegev is actively absorbing into its communities settlers who are moving from the nearby Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Goldstein and other Gush Etzion officials have become leaders in the effort to prevent the Gaza Strip withdrawal plan from being implemented.

But ironically, it is the Sha’ar Hanegev residents, who support the Gaza withdrawal, who are liable to be hit by increased attacks from the Gaza Strip due to the withdrawal, while the withdrawal would have no impact on the anti-disengagement Gush Etzion settlers. The groups decided from the start to keep politics out of their discussions.

“We all agreed that in politics, we will not be able to convince each other,” Shaul Goldstein said. “But it’s important to learn new things from each other. We are one people and therefore we have to know and respect different points of view. These meetings go a long way to helping us understand the other side.”

Goldstein joked in one of the sessions that now the people of his community could stay in Sha’ar Hanegev after attending political rallies in the Gaza Strip.

Shuster said that the people in his group have learned a lot from Gush Etzion by asking their counterparts how they handle municipal issues, education, welfare, and the security situation on a local level. Shuster said he particularly admires how the people of Gush Etzion came together as a community in reacting to terrorist attacks that targeted the area during the years of Palestinian violence.

“Israeli society has to be able to overcome its internal disputes,” Shuster said. “We have the same mission of maintaining a Jewish, democratic state. After disengagement there will be a rift and we have to continue to live together. I don’t want the rift to get out of control later so we have to bridge the gaps now.”

On June 27, Kleinman and Joyce Goldstein attended a session of the dialogue group, joining participants from Gush Etzion on a visit to Sha’ar Hanegev. Kleinman said that he hopes the Gush Etzion-Sha’ar Hanegev dialogue group will be a model for other communities in Israel.

Joyce Goldstein said it is tragic that one thing that unites the people of the two communities is that their children are both suffering from the psychological distress of violence.

“It was painful for both communities to see the uncertainty of their children’s lives,” Goldstein said. “Had it not been for us, they never would have met.”

‘Heartbreaking’

Besides the dialogue group, Kleinman and Goldstein visited several MetroWest projects throughout the country, attended sessions of the Jewish Agency Assembly, and met with an IDF officer who heads military intelligence in the IDF’s southern command.

Kleinman and Goldstein dedicated an ambulance in MetroWest Partnership 2000 community Ofakim and met with the leadership of the extended school-day program that MetroWest has begun in the southern development town.

The officer told Kleinman and Goldstein about the complexity of the situation in the Gaza Strip, his efforts to block smuggling of weapons through tunnels from Egypt, and the army’s operations to prevent the firing of missiles, kassam rockets, and mortars at Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and throughout southern Israel.

Goldstein said that visiting the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip helped her understand both sides of the disengagement issue, but she favors the plan.

“It’s heartbreaking to see the gorgeous greenery and playgrounds and talk to people who have lived in the Gaza Strip for 35 years,” Goldstein said. “But you look across the road and see how the Palestinians are living and the contrast is incredible. The situation of 8,000 Jews surrounded by 1.37 million Arabs is untenable.”