Could the Christian community of Israel act as a bridge between Muslims and Jews? Michail Fanous-- executive director of Open House in Ramle-- thinks so, and he is not alone.
Open House is a “unique community-based coexistence center” which operates out of a little house in Ramle. The house itself acts as a microcosm of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was built in 1936 by the Al-Khayri family. They were Palestinian Arabs who were forced to flee their home as a result the 1948 War. Dalia Eshkanazi Landau’s family were Bulgarian Jews who immigrated to Israel and moved into the house, which had been labeled “abandoned property” by the state. In an open letter to Bashir Al-Khayri, Dalia explains what it was like to come to terms with her adopted country’s history, and describes the experience of coming face to face with the people who had built their lives in that house before they were forced to abandon it.
Bashir was arrested for his activities in the PFLP, which included allegations of involvement with a bomb that killed multiple civilians. In his response to Dalia’s letter, he explains how what looks like an act of terrorism to one person, can be an expression of nationalistic self-determination to another. He says, “we were exiled by force of arms. We were exiled but we left our souls, our hopes and our childhood in Palestine. We left our joys and sorrows. We left them in every corner, and on every grain of sand in Palestine.” Bashir once tried to return to his homeland, this place which contained his very soul. He boarded the Al-Awda in 1988, which was sunk in the Cypriot port.
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| Dalia Eshkanazi Landau |
This revelation shocked Dalia. Even more shocking was the story Bashir told next. In 1948, the six year old Bashir found a shiny metal object around his house and brought it inside to play with it. It turned out to be an explosive which blew off most of his left hand. Because of these incidents, Bashir had a very different perspective of Zionism than Dalia had. Bashir had this response to Dalia’s descriptions of his actions as terrorism: “You cannot equate the struggle of the people for liberation and independence and self-determination. You cannot equate that with aggression, expansionism and oppression of the other.”
As a result of this dialogue, Open House was born. It runs a nursery school for Arab toddlers, both Christian and Muslim, as well as a Center for Jewish-Arab Coexistence and Reconciliation. Its executive director is Michail Fanous, a Christian Arab and former educator, who became a prominent voice in Ramle educational policy when Mayor Yoel Lavi recognized an unacceptable gap between Jewish and Arab educational quality, and set out to find innovative ways of reconciling it.
Fanous says he has often felt “like a bridge between Jews and Muslims. Christians have always lived between the two worlds. So, maybe we’re the ones who can connect them.” (Rosenthal, 305). Perhaps occupying this position “between two worlds” gives the Christian Israelis a less-biased perspective of the conflict, in much the same way that children, innocent of the weight of history, see no reason to differentiate amongst playmates. “‘Most of the time we reach parents through their kids,’ Michail reports, ‘As they learn about each other, they see that if you don’t talk, you can’t make peace.’” (Rosenthal, 322). This video shows some Israeli teens from the Open House program aiming to do just that: learn about each other, talk, and make peace.
Another Christian Israeli hoping to be a part of this bridge between Jews and Muslims is Maher Turjman, Regional Director for the Pontifical Mission for Palestine. According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette “the agency provides both emergency assistance and long-term education and development to the region, without distinction of the recipient's nationality or religion.” In this audio clip, Turjman mentions his own hope that his organization can act as a bridge between Jews and Muslims.
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| Maher Turjman |
The sources for this post appear reliable. The idea to look further into the Open House program came from Donna Rosenthal’s book, and the information about the Pontifical Mission for Palestine comes off the Pittsburgh Post Gazette website, which is Pittsburgh’s largest daily paper.
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