Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom is a unique community located on a hilltop between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where Jewish and Palestinian families have lived together since the late 1970s. 

Mike Lanchin first visited in the early 1980s when there was just a handful of Jews and Palestinian families living in makeshift houses poking out from the scrub land. Now, it boasts a fully bilingual-binational day school – the first of its kind – with children coming from the surrounding area, as well as a conflict resolution centre visited by Palestinians and Jews. Facilitators from the centre host inter-faith workshops outside the community. 

But in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the community faces some of their most testing times. 

Mike has been speaking to residents, old and young, about the future of their experiment in coexistence.