Peace from the ground up: social entrepreneur Fred Schlomka seeks to desegregate Israeli housing - World

National Catholic Reporter, March 5, 2004 by Margot Patterson

Fred Schlomka is counting on "Pennies for Peace" boxes to help bankroll his plan for new communities in Israel that integrate Israeli Arabs and Jews. The simple cardboard cartons meant to capture donors' spare change will be placed in shops, libraries, offices, food co-ops and other public places in the United States and Israel. It's a small but important component" in Shlomka's effort to develop funds and grass-roots support for integrated housing in Israel. Peace begins on the ground, he contends, with Arabs and Jews learning to live together as neighbors. Even as the current Israeli government is erecting a wall between Israelis and Palestinians, Schlomka is trying to tear down walls between the communities.

A $60,000 grant from the Echoing Green Foundation in New York is giving Schlomka seed money to fund his plan for new "mosaic communities" in Israel where Arabs and Jews will live side by side. Schlomka was one of 10 recipients selected this past summer out of a field of around 1,000. The New York-based foundation funds social entrepreneurs with innovative approaches to combating intractable social problems, and over the past 15 years has awarded more than $20 million to 350 fellows, funding projects in 28 countries. In addition to seed money, the foundation will provide Schlomka with support services and mentors to help him realize his plans.

For Schlomka, the effort to bring Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel together as neighbors is an outgrowth of his prior work in Israel. Until last spring, Schlomka was operations manager of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, an Israeli peace group that protests the demolition of Palestinian homes. Some 12,000 homes have been demolished since the Occupation began in 1967, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless. Less than 5 percent of the homes that have been destroyed are those of terrorists, Schlomka said. Most belong to ordinary Palestinians whose property is located in or next to existing Palestinian communities that Israeli land planning keeps from expanding.

"To illustrate the bizarre nature of the situation, imagine if you will the [U.S.] federal government controlling the zoning of a city and zoning all the areas around existing black neighborhoods 'for whites only' so the black neighborhood would not expand," Schlomka said. "The way the government does this is they zone individual building plots as agricultural land."

Denied building permits to alter their homes, many Palestinians live two or three families in the same house. Some risk demolition by adding on to their house without permits. Schlomka said one of the saddest cases he'd witnessed was a Palestinian family who had renovated a shed next to their house for their handicapped adult son. Denied a permit by the Israeli government, the family was careful not to change the exterior, but made everything inside the shed handicap-accessible. Despite family pleas, the Israeli army demolished the structure when it learned of the renovation.

Arab communities in Israel also face restrictions on expanding. Recently, there's been a "tremendous upsurge" in Israeli house demolitions of Arab homes in Israel, Schlomka noted.

It's this need for housing that Schlomka's mosaic communities seek to address. Structured as a cooperative, the enterprise, which has five Arabs and three Jews on the board of directors, will purchase private land and also get rights to build on government-controlled land already zoned for residential use. Schlomka said he and the other directors will look at land that was not confiscated from Palestinian refugees and will issue shares of stock that investors may purchase. The cooperative will subsidize housing mortgages in a similar fashion to what the Israeli government does now for Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories.

With the second intifada now dragging into its fourth year and peace between Palestinians and Israelis more elusive than ever, Schlomka said the time seemed right to start a new venture in Israel that will lay the ground for a common civil society.

"As I've seen many of my colleagues lose hope, I felt the time was right to begin building something new, to lay the foundations for a new way of living together," he told NCR.

Except for a few places such as Haifa and Neve Shalom where Arabs and Jews live in common, Israel mandates segregation in housing and public schools. This, Schlomka said, is part of the problem. "The only way to learn how to live together is to live together," Schlomka said. "One day we're going to have to learn to live together or we'll kill each other."

Schlomka said Israeli society currently emphasizes differences between the two communities rather than similarities. He noted that his experience working for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions in the Occupied Territories brought him a better understanding of the common values shared by Arabs and Jews.

"What I've come to understand from working with Palestinians ... has reinforced my belief that they want the same things as Israeli Jews: good jobs, decent schools and a nice environment," he said.