Galilee School

Founded in the same year as Hand in Hand's Jerusalem school, but in a distinctively different setting - a rural region in northern Israel - the Galilee school has seven years' experience in bilingual multicultural education in Israel. In 2004, the Galilee School pioneered the first Hand in Hand junior high, an experimental modular program that includes integrated studies with both the regional Jewish and Arab high schools.

History and Character: A Shared Home in the Galilee   When Hand in Hand founders Amin Khalaf and Lee Gordon sought to launch their dream of bilingual multicultural education in Israel, they selected two focal communities in different areas of Israel. Their main criterion was a critical mass of parents courageous enough to join them in making bilingual multicultural education in Israel a reality. Given that the two initiators were based in Jerusalem, that city was a natural choice. The second location was in the Galilee, in the area of the Arab town of Sakhnin, and the Jewish rural area of Misgav.  What distinguished this area from others was an overwhelmingly enthusiastic parents group, ready to take risks and join this pioneering project. As one parent recalls, "rather than a typical lukewarm reaction, our response was: 'Yes! When can we start?'" Almost overnight, on September 1, 1998, Hand in Hand's Galilee school set out on its journey with one first class (K-1) totaling 32 Jewish and Arab children. 

Eldad Garfunkel, whose son is now in the 9th grade at Hand in Hand's Galilee School, vividly remembers late-night planning meetings in the kitchens of Londo and Abdallah in the Arab town of Sakhnin, and Yaffa and Stuart in the Jewish rural community of Shorashim. ("We held so many meetings, and parent workshops that would prepare us for what might happen on that first day of school," he recalls, "but the children blended so naturally that we realized that we were the problem, not them."

The warm reception, first by residents of Shorashim and Sha'ab, was not entirely coincidental. These two communities had a history of good relations, and to show for it, they had a fifteen-year history of running a joint summer camp. Close relations between Jewish and Arab neighbors in the Galilee, however, is not necessarily a matter of course. This mountainous region of Israel has an Arab majority, and is thus the target of government initiatives to increase the rate of Jewish settlement. Tensions flare every October around the time of "Land Day," declared in commemoration of the six Israeli Palestinians killed in 1976 following protests against government land appropriation. Three of them were from Sakhnin.

The most recent reprise of serious violence occurred In October 2000, when during a general strike and rioting in the Arab sector, 13 Israeli Arabs were killed by the Israeli police. This crisis was not without its repercussions in the school. External consultants were called in to help the staff work together amidst the palpable raw feelings, questioning and despair. Parents, asking themselves if they were crazy, transported their children to school, through police barricades and despite the admonishments of their neighbors. They were welcomed by the principals, standing side by side with open arms and prepared for any eventuality. No one knew if the school would open the next day, or if this was the end.  Yet the school, like a magnet, brought the Jews and the Arabs of the region together once again, to learn and live. Years later, retrospect affords a glimpse of the school community's heroic determination to persist and flexibility to renegotiate alliances.