Collaboration can build a stronger, healthier tomorrow
by Mohammad Darawshe
The tragic war in Gaza is the longest and most brutal war we’ve ever known, and has shattered everything we’ve worked so hard to build – mutual responsibility, compassion, trust, and a shared society between Arabs and Jews in Israel.
But the war isn’t the only force threatening the social fabric. Israel’s most extreme government to date is weakening Jewish-Arab relations, inciting against civic partnership, and nurturing narratives of fear and hatred.
The Arab society in Israel is experiencing this war with deep, unbearable pain. Words fail to capture the helplessness, the despair in the face of such devastation, or the silent cry of a people bleeding without any way to stop it. Seeing the traumatic images on social media and foreign news, Arab citizens of Israel are left feeling increasingly alienated.
This is the reality in which Givat Haviva – Israel’s largest civil society organisation working toward a shared Jewish-Arab future – works. Since the 1960s, our traditional path, as a home of the Hashomer Hatsair movement, has changed and we have added new goals focusing on mutual understanding and learning for Arabs and Jews. As part of the organisational update, the Institute for Arabic Studies and the Jewish-Arab Centre for Peace were established. Bringing Jews and Arabs together, by various programmes and projects, became our main tool. But – and this is important to understand – we do not operate in a vacuum.
As an educational space, we offer language skills to those who never got a chance to acquire this basic knowledge. That is essential for communication between our two societies. We also offer opportunities for youngsters and adults who never had a chance to talk or play together. We know how unique and important is our safe zone. We listen to what’s happening outside of Givat Haviva, we’ve clung to the tools of partnership on “regular” days and throughout the war, and committed to working with Jewish and Arab children and educators who desperately need hope, healing, and a future. Because during the past couple of years there were so many more wounds, we have launched our educational programmers – bringing Jews and Arabs together – in emotionally attuned formats. We have searched for creative ways to stitch the wounds and generate dialogue from within the pain.
We have kept the doors of our international school, which offers leadership skills and excellent education to Arabs, Jews and children from all over the world, open, despite the rockets falling on Israel and the deep societal fracture. We have created safe spaces for kids to grieve, ask questions, and share their hearts. We have encouraged action – through art, sports and shared play – so they could experience the strength of partnership.
Surveys we have conducted during the war have confirmed that Jewish and Arab communities have closed off and distanced themselves from each other, avoiding the few shared spaces left in Israel. Against this backdrop, we have nurtured a healthy, thriving microcosm at Givat Haviva where partnership is not a necessity but a conscious choice. Jewish and Arab students arrive charged, angry, and hurt – but after 48 hours with children from the other society, they breathe easier. Thousands of emotionally wounded students came to us and left with friends and a smile. It’s hard to express just how meaningful it is to witness this process unfold every day, and to know that not all is lost.
Our vision hasn’t changed since the 1960s, when Israel lifted military rule over its Arab citizens and granted them equal rights. We took it upon ourselves to give meaning to that national partnership and promote true equality between the Jewish and Arab societies. It’s no easy path – reality constantly collides with our vision – but when we’re able to advance the value of partnership in the Knesset, in the media, in education, and in public life, it is immensely rewarding.
Even in 2025, despite this long war and despite an extreme right-wing government working to divide us, a shared society is still seen as a utopia worth imagining, and the vision that drives it still beats in many arenas. Today, it’s no longer possible to claim that Israeli interests contradict the possibility of coexistence. Our societies are deeply interwoven – Jews and Arabs together build the social and economic foundations of the country, uphold the healthcare and education systems, and struggle side by side for a better life quality. After this long journey, we understand that collaboration is the key to a stronger, healthier tomorrow. In the face of continuing government incitement and division, believers in this vision insist on creating together, educating together, and filling the void where the state has neglected its citizens.
Visitors to Givat Haviva often rub their eyes in disbelief: Jews and Arabs building deep, meaningful relationships every day, in every space, without denying their identities or narratives. Through our educational tools, mutual suspicion and fear are replaced with healthy curiosity and a desire to understand. Those elements can’t be built on ignorance nor denying the pain of those living across the road.
What I describe here is not magic, but the fruit of hard, often Sisyphean labour. Israeli society was built divided, with little room for shared life. Without Givat Haviva, hundreds of thousands of Jews and Arabs would live their entire lives never meeting one another.
So I turn to you, our partners in the UK – raise your voice. Remind Israel of the future it has forgotten, for the sake of its citizens who so desperately yearn for it. The Jewish and Arab children playing basketball right now on the sunlit court at Givat Haviva are counting on us to succeed.
Mohammad Darawshe is director of strategy at Givat Haviva’s Centre for Shared Society
