Wagering on Peace

New attention is being focused on efforts to encourage collaboration between Jews and Arabs

Israel’s Palestinian citizens do not yet know whether the past five months of violent conflicts in the Middle East will bring them political gains, but they have already begun to profit in an unexpected way. They have won the attention of Jewish donors in the United States and elsewhere.

Israeli nonprofit groups that promote Jewish-Arab cooperation and coexistence report that they are seeing increases in gifts, from both established and new donors, and are receiving many inquiries from potential supporters. What’s more, Jewish fund-raising federations in the United States have begun to consider providing financial support for Arab neighborhoods in Israel — something that not long ago most of the federations would have considered absurd and unnecessary.

More than a million Palestinian Arabs are citizens of Israel, making up nearly 20 percent of the total population. Relations between the Palestinian minority and the Jewish majority plummeted further in the fall, when 13 Palestinians were killed in clashes between Palestinian rioters and Israeli police and military units.

A Role for American Jews

“It was a major wake-up call,” says Steven B. Nasatir, president of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. While the welfare of Israel’s Palestinian community is first and foremost the responsibility of Israel’s government, he says, “there may be a role for American Jewish philanthropy as well.”

The UJA Federation of New York recently set up a committee to study what role it might play in helping Israel’s minority population, largely by extending its current programs to help Arabs as well as Jews. And it recently participated in a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Jewish Funders Network — an organization of grant makers — to discuss ways to better respond to the needs of Israel’s Arab citizens.

John Ruskay, the federation’s chief executive, says the group was motivated to take action after Avraham Burg, speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, made a visit to New York soon after the violence erupted.

“He strongly encouraged the federation world to become far more deeply involved in the fate of Israeli Arabs, which he considers important to getting the fabric of Israeli democracy to move forward,” Mr. Ruskay recalls.

As American and Israeli Jews are thinking of new ways to promote better relationships between Israel’s Arabs and Jews, not all Arabs are welcoming their attention. Ameer Makhoul, director of Ittijah-Union of Arab Community Based Organizations, a Haifa group that is an umbrella organization for Arab-Israeli organizations, says Palestinian-Israeli organizations “have less interest in coexistence now.” He adds: “There’s a feeling that the money coming from the U.S. carries political baggage with it.”

Even so, American Jewish leaders are still looking for ways to heal the divisions between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

At America’s Jewish federations, “the awareness has grown that their work for Israel will not be complete if they do not also work with Israel’s Arabs,” says Eliezer Ya’ari, executive director in Israel for the New Israel Fund, an organization that raises money in the United States, Europe, and Israel to finance projects that promote human and civil rights in Israel. “The institutionalized Jewish community has a difficult time with this, but the very fact that we’re on the radar screen is significant.”

The riots, and the deaths that resulted from the Israeli authorities’ response to them, initially caused great confusion among Israeli Jewish leaders who work on efforts to bring Arabs and Jews together, says Mr. Ya’ari of the New Israel Fund. Many felt despair that the situation had deteriorated to the point of violent outbreaks.

Arab civil-rights and community organizations, on the other hand, were angry at what they saw as the brutality of the Israeli police and army, and took action to mobilize constituents. “We found that the leadership we’ve helped create in the Israeli Palestinian community took on real leadership roles in their community in the October crisis,” Mr. Ya’ari says.

Subject ‘Not Taboo’

The Abraham Fund, the largest Israeli nonprofit organization exclusively devoted to improving relations among Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens, also reports a wave of new interest in its activity.

In November it was invited for the first time to make a presentation at the annual meeting of United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization that represents Jewish fund-raising groups throughout North America. In addition, presentations of the work being done by the Abraham Fund have become a standard part of the itinerary of nearly all of the “solidarity missions” that Jewish federations have been sending to Israel over the last three months, according to Dan Pattir, the fund’s executive vice president.

“They’ve seen that the subject is not taboo, and that those who support the Arab minority are contributing to the Jews as well,” says Mr. Pattir, who predicts that when donations for 2000 are totaled, his group may see an increase of as much as 25 percent. The organization typically raises about $3-million a year.

Mr. Pattir says he is especially encouraged by the response his group has had from Arab leaders. He notes that 40 percent of the seats at a recent fund-raising dinner for the fund were bought by Israeli Arabs, a much higher percentage than at similar events in the past.

The interest is coming just as the crisis has created a desperate need for new and intensified efforts, Mr. Pattir says.

“We’ve got a list of organizations that have requested emergency help,” he says. “There are some pretty serious difficulties.”

In the wake of the riots, even some Jews who had financed or otherwise gotten involved in coexistence activities, such as schools for Arabs and Jews, youth projects, and efforts to get the two sides talking, were shocked by the virulence of the violence and expressed an unwillingness to visit Arab villages, for example, Mr. Pattir says.

Gaining Lost Momentum

As a result, he says, his first concern is to regain lost momentum by getting Jews and Arabs to work together again in pursuit of common goals. With that in mind, the Abraham Fund has decided to change its strategy.

Until now, the fund has provided grants to organizations pursuing coexistence projects. Its board has now decided that the Abraham Fund will create and perhaps even manage large-scale programs of its own — for example, to promote Arab-Jewish understanding in six Israeli cities that have mixed Arab-Jewish populations, Mr. Pattir says. The fund will also take a larger role in serving as a public advocate of coexistence, he adds.

“Our aim is to create an active and involved coalition of supporters and donors both in Israel and overseas,” he says.

New Donors

Despite the palpable shock and disappointment that many Israeli Jews felt in the wake of the disturbances, coexistence organizations say that few, if any, of their donors have stopped giving to groups that promote Arab-Jewish collaboration. On the contrary, some are giving more and new donors are showing an interest. “Only a few of our donors say they are not interested in contributing to coexistence,” Mr. Ya’ari says.

In addition to increased donations from some established donors, Mr. Ya’ari says, several foundations that have never supported the group are now considering doing so.

Smaller organizations face a more ambiguous fund-raising situation.

Deanna Armbruster, executive director of American Friends of Neve ShalomWahat Al-Salam, in New York, says donations to that group dropped by about 20 percent last year.

Neve ShalomWahat Al-Salam is a settlement near Jerusalem where Jewish and Palestinian families live together. Donors typically provide about $600,000 a year to support a school and education center that sponsors projects and classes for Israeli schoolchildren and adults.

While Ms. Armbruster attributes the shortfall to the crisis, she notes that not all of the results of year-end solicitations have been tallied. “On the whole, we’ve been fortunate that our larger and smaller contributors have stood by us,” she says, noting that 65 percent of the organization’s budget comes from individual donors, while the rest comes from foundations and the New Israel Fund.

“There is a small percentage of new donors as well, and we’ve had a number of e-mail messages and cards from people who haven’t given before but who are anxious to learn more,” she adds.

Not Big Sums

Although American Jewish leaders agree that there is growing awareness of the importance of the work done by nonprofit groups that promote the welfare of Israel’s Arab citizens, they make clear that it is unlikely that Jews will channel large sums to Arab causes.

“There’s certainly a sense that this is something that needs to be explored much more seriously than it has been before,” says Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, a foundation that has sponsored projects to help Arabs in Israel. “The current crisis is in many ways mobilizing some serious thinking in terms of what should occur, recognizing that, when it comes to the formal organized Jewish community of the United States, it will be a complicated issue for people who’ve always supported Jews in Israel to see the importance of also supporting programs for Arab citizens.”

Leaders of many of the American Jewish federations say that primary responsibility for the welfare of Israel’s inhabitants must be taken by the Israeli government itself.

“While the problem is serious and long-term and begs for additive resources, primary responsibility for this issue rests on the Israeli government and the Israeli people,” says Mr. Ruskay of the UJA Federation of New York.

He notes that a long series of Israeli governments, led by prime ministers of both parties, have failed to carry out promises to direct additional government funds to help the country’s Arab citizens. A billion-dollar multiyear commitment is currently pending in the Knesset but has not yet been acted on, he points out.

“In the absence of the Israeli government taking that kind of action, of that magnitude, to deal with basic infrastructure issues such as roads and schools, my sense is that the federation world will not feel it is appropriate to significantly increase its funding in this area,” he says.

“If, however, the Israeli government takes such action,” he adds, “then they might well turn to the American Jewish community and say that for the strengthening of Israeli democracy, you can provide important additive elements.”