31 October 2026
Chair.wasns@nswas.info
To:
Gadi Eisenkot – Head of the Yashar Faction
Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid – Heads of the Beyachad Faction
Yousef Jabareen – Head of the Joint List
Yair Golan – Leader of the Democrats Party
Mansour Abbas – Leader of the United Arab List (Ra’am)
Avigdor Lieberman – Leader of Yisrael Beiteinu
Subject: A Call for Jewish-Arab Partnership in Building the Next Government
Dear Party Leaders,
Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom is a village where Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel live together by choice. The residents share their lives and jointly manage the day-to-day affairs and institutions of the village, on the basis of full equality and a shared commitment to justice, peace, freedom and equality, both within the country and throughout the region.
The village was established nearly 50 years ago and is home to approximately 100 families, roughly half Jewish and half Palestinian. Children from both communities grow up here together, alongside a rich and diverse community, cultural and creative life.
We invite you to visit us, get to know our community and its way of life, and see for yourselves how, even in the face of a difficult reality and despite differences of opinion and disagreements, we continue to live together, grow and develop, nurture what we share and flourish.
Our invitation is more relevant today than ever. At a time when the State of Israel faces fateful decisions and an urgent need for profound reform and a change of direction, we wish to present you with a living example of an alternative possibility for shared life. We would be pleased for you to meet our children, who grow up and study together, and the younger generation who grew up here together, and to experience firsthand the possibility of building a shared, resilient, equal and healthy society.
Drawing on our experience and our belief in the future of Israeli society, we call upon all of you – the leaders of both Jewish and Arab political parties – to demonstrate responsible leadership and political and civic courage, and to work together to create a new political reality.
We believe that political partnership between Jews and Arabs, including partnership with the Joint List and Ra’am, must be an integral part of the foundation upon which the next government is formed, and must be explicitly reflected in its guiding principles. This is not merely a political necessity or a means of enabling the formation of a governing coalition. It is a matter of principle: recognizing Arab citizens of Israel as equal partners, with both the right and the responsibility to participate fully in shaping the country’s future and in making decisions that affect all its citizens.
Such a partnership requires a willingness to engage in dialogue, mutual recognition, reaching agreements and sharing responsibility. The responsibility for advancing it rests with all of you. It requires Jewish leadership to recognize the legitimacy and importance of political partnership with representatives of the Arab public, and Arab leadership to become an active partner in shaping the civic agenda and building an alternative governing coalition based on agreed-upon guiding principles.
We believe that genuine Jewish-Arab partnership is not merely one of the possible ways to form the next government, but one of the foundations upon which the future of the State of Israel must be built.
We would be pleased to welcome all of you to our village, introduce you to the reality we have created and continue to sustain here, and discuss how this vision can become a broader reality throughout the State of Israel.
Sincerely,
The Village Leadership
Chair.wasns@nswas.info
