Below, I write about Mohammed, who is responsible for the programs and projects of the Hanoar Haoved VeHalomed movement in Tamra, a Palestinian city in Israel. He is also the head of civil service volunteers in the Arab sector of the movement.
At age 27, Mohammed’s energy and drive are contagious. Perhaps the many years he has spent educating and inspiring Arab Israeli youth and engaging with Jewish Israelis have blown away any of his shyness about who he is and what he is trying to do.
It’s fascinating that he’s come to possess such a surety, given how his family was forced from their villages in 1948, barred from returning, and settled in Tamra – a city that would become part of Israel and fifty to sixty percent refugee-descended.
He told me how growing up, his father often educated him about his family’s past. During the Lebanese Civil War, his father funneled weapons from Jordan and Iraq, through the West Bank, to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Clearly, he had no shortage of being told about the Nakba, resistance, and other elements of the Palestinian narrative.
With his father in jail during his childhood, he was much like many youth in Tamra, hanging out on the streets, smoking, and throwing stones. He told me, not so shamefully, that he had thrown stones at Jewish-driven cars, too. Upon this trajectory, one day he got into a fistfight with two Arab youth in which he was overpowered. Luckily, they withdrew their blows on the condition that he would give their movement, Hanoar Haoved VeHalomed, a chance. This street encounter would change the course of his life.
Eleven to twelve years later, he organizes the Hanoar movement in Tamra, which now counts 1,200 Arab youth in its ranks from having been three to four hundred when he joined. He recounted how his father was furious he would ever participate in a movement affiliated with the Jewish Labor Party in Israel. His father even chased him around the house brandishing his shoe, a show of deep disdain in Arab culture. Eventually, his father permitted him to continue on the condition that he would never come back saying he had made a mistake.
Since then, he has come to respect the path Mohammed chose for himself. He saw how Mohammed became a new person, his commitment day in and week out, truly helping society over the long haul. Mohammed told me about deriving meaning from connecting youth with each other, allowing them to stimulate each other’s drive for success. Seeing such tangible results from Mohammed, his father now directs youth to him, encouraging them to check out his son’s movement!
Mohammed now nurtures the identity of Palestinians in Tamra – as members of society not more Israeli than Palestinian, and vice versa. They are striving to become Palestinian-Israelis committed to both the Israeli state structure and the Palestinian identity.
I was impressed by the transformation of both Mohammed and his father – and also by Mohammed’s unwavering belief in change as process. People in armed resistance can come to believe in coexistence and a shared future with ‘the enemy’, like his father did. The youth on Tamra’s streets can one day lead and build movements, like Mohammed did. His conviction of change as long-term process seems to sustain two of his traits: calm patience and a “march on!” resilience. In a country where narratives are clashing in a small space, he still has the patience to remind Jews and Palestinians that knowing each other’s collective traumas actually facilitates communication. Similarly, he sees Bibi Netanyahu’s new government as a time not to despair, but to redouble efforts for furthering Jewish-Arab cooperation and keeping youth focused on their futures.
Mohammed’s conviction that people and society can change will remain imprinted in my mind for a long time.
The Medford Pact 