Ulpan Akiva near Netanya was a secret refuge for the cognizanté. It was not just a language school. The ulpan’s director, Shulamit Katznelson (1919–1999), established a sanctuary for Arab-Israeli coexistence—and not in a saccharine, maudlin, naive manner. She was a proud nationalist whose family members were political pioneers in Israel. Under her guidance, Israeli politicians studied Arabic, Arabs from Gaza and Ramallah studied Hebrew, and Christian and Jewish tourists learned about Israel and its language.
I was introduced to Katznelson and the ulpan in the late 1980s, and we developed a great mutual admiration. She hosted my family and me for Shabbat alongside her students and guests. She invited me to lecture to her students, and we discussed the destiny of Israel. My kids were dazzled by the Israeli personalities who would come to Ulpan Akiva to refill their Zionist batteries, including politicians from both sides of the aisle, and the likes of Israeli laureate Chaim Guri, Soviet refusenik Ida Nudel and artist Menashe Kadishman. We also met Christian Zionists, including the now-incoming U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his parishioners.
Several incidents stand out for me. I once entered a classroom where Arab women from Ramallah were working with young Israelis to compare Hebrew and Arabic idioms. The Arabs were nurses who were going to work in an Israeli hospital’s maternity ward, and the Hebrew would assist them tremendously. The Israeli women were from an Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence unit for whom an understanding of Arabic was vital.
Another time, I saw Nudel—who, after many hardships, made it to Israel in 1987—studying at Ulpan Akiva. She and her dog, Pizer, were in a classroom. On the other side of the room were two clerics from Gaza who were uncomfortable sharing the space with a dog. In my discussion with them, I learned that something else bothered them even more. In those days, Israel Broadcasting had only one television station, and it dedicated a few hours daily to Arab audiences. The Gazans rightfully objected that Israel was broadcasting programs with nude women, such as newsreels from the Rio Carnival, to entice Arab viewers. I put the clerics together with the seemingly most incompatible lobbying group, an Israeli feminist organization, to voice their opposition.
On another visit to the ulpan, this time in the 1990s, I met a prominent Gaza doctor who worked in a Beersheva hospital and an engineer from Gaza who worked on major building projects in Gaza. Months later, while traveling through John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, I saw Israeli security guards hassling the doctor. I rushed over to vouch for him, and we continued to the gate. Later, at the invitation of American diplomats, I went to inspect some apartment complexes in Gaza that were under construction. A Gazan in a hard hat gave me a warm greeting. “Hi, I am Mohammed (name changed). I was at your son’s bar mitzvah.” He gave my son a lovely bar mitzvah present: a silk prayer rug. Yes, indeed. I had invited Katznelson to the bar mitzvah, and she brought two of her Hebrew students with her.
The relationship between Gazans and Israelis in those days was far from Pollyannish, yet there was cooperation. Things went downhill after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 and PLO leader Yasser Arafat set up his Palestinian Authority.
Coexistence projects in fields like health care, education and agriculture, which began before Arafat’s return to the region, were anathemas to the PLO leader and subsequently canceled. The offices of independent Palestinian newspapers in the eastern areas of Jerusalem were firebombed, presumably by Arafat’s goons.
Security coordination between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers quickly disintegrated when Arafat’s men turned their guns on Israeli security personnel. Israel’s new Labor-led government, in 1999, chose to ignore the blatant PLO violations. During the time, I was a senior diplomat in Israel’s Washington embassy, Labor ministers censored the distribution of a video called “Jihad for Kids,” which showed bellicose Palestinian school lessons for children.
Various Israeli governments avoided challenging Arafat or his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, for violating the Camp David Accords, always seeking to resuscitate the chimerical two-state solution.
U.S. administrations led the charade in their attempts to maintain even-handed policy. They denied Israel the weapons that would have wiped out Hamas. Former President Barack Obama withheld Hellfire precision missiles for Israel during the 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” and more recently, then-President Joe Biden withheld heavy JDAM, precision bombs and heavy bulldozers for Israel’s response to the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Maybe in some European and Arab capitals, the notion of a Palestinian state is still spoken as lip service. In truth, many Arab leaders loathe the Palestinian leadership and reject the establishment of an Iranian proxy. The fantasy, though, is kept alive by Western media and Obama’s disciples.
Otherwise, Palestinian statehood is barely mentioned in Washington and Jerusalem. The election of U.S. President Donald Trump to a second term turned out to be the death knell for the Palestinian nationalist and Islamist jihadi aspirations.
After Oct. 7, the nostalgia for Ulpan Akiva’s paradise experiences among Israelis—Jews, Muslims, Druze and Christians—is forever lost.