By Rachel Kohn
The plot of land chosen for Heaven’s Field Organic Farm, or Allah’s Farm in Arabic, is strategically located between the Arab village of Husan and Jewish suburb of Beitar Illit, less than an hour’s drive southwest of Jerusalem in the West Bank. The field is an acre in size, a modest space for Jews and Arabs to interact as individuals while working the land so dear to so many.
Heaven’s Field started as a vision shared between a Palestinian farmer, an Israeli teacher, and the Israeli co-founder and director of Eretz Shalom, an organization that facilitates dialogue and peace-building activities between Arabs and Jews in the West Bank. They believe that just as personal convictions and a fierce sense of connection to this land can pit people against each other, so too can these forces unite people and help peace take root.
The founders of Heaven’s Field certainly speak from experience. When Farm Manager Ziad Sabatin, 41, was ten-years-old, he watched helplessly as Israeli soldiers uprooted his family’s sprawling groves of olive, apricot, and almond trees. “We raised those trees like you would raise a little boy, pampering him and raising him and giving him everything he needs,” says Ziad. His father and brothers demanded an explanation and were told that the land was now part of a military zone.
“When you see something like that, suddenly all of your hopes destroyed”… It is a strong strike to the heart,” he says.
In 1987, Ziad began the first of two stints in Israeli prison; like many teenagers, he had channeled his pent up frustrations into the first intifada, a popular Palestinian uprising targeting Israeli military and civilians. It was during his time in jail that Ziad and other Palestinian inmates decided that violence did not serve their interests. Upon their release, they teamed up with former Israeli soldiers and founded Combatants for Peace, an organization committed to challenging the cycle of violence through dialogue and grassroots activism. 
Ziad left, undeterred, and about six years ago he found a kindred spirit in Rabbi Menachem Froman. Chief Rabbi of the West Bank town of Tekoa, Rabbi Froman advocated using religious values and love of the land and as a common ground to open dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. He supported Jewish and Arab co-existence in the West Bank– even as part of a Palestinian state, if it meant peace. By the time of his death in March 2013, his philosophy had attracted Palestinians like Ziad, and settlers like Nachum Pachenik, head of Eretz Shalom, and Shaul Yudelman, a Jewish immigrant from Seattle living in the West Bank for 13 years.
“I grew up in a multi-cultural western city– full of humanistic, universal[ist] messages,” says Shaul, 35. “As much as those fantasies have been challenged by living here through the second intifada, the Lebanon war, the rockets in the south, being shot at and more– I think Rabbi Menachem was able to elicit for me a new way of believing in the process of peace work.”
“If there is a way for the killing and hatred to stop– how could we not try to do what we can?”
Now the environmental director of Heaven’s Field, Shaul originally came to Israel to find Jews who were connected to both Jewish tradition and the land of their forefathers. “You find young people who are very connected to living on the land,” he says, “taking joy out of working the land, harvesting, building in a more natural way– not everyone, but some– and a vision of a Jewish life reconnected to the gift of this land that searches for learning not just in the books but a return to something more oral and alive.” There is a Biblical commandment for Jews in Israel to commemorate, every seven years, “that ultimately, this is the land of the Creator and we are here as guests,” says Shaul. “Permanent guests– but guests. So the idea [for Heaven’s Field is] a piece of land where Israelis and Palestinians could step into a extra-territorial zone where we don’t need to stake our claim against each other, and in that space to honor the land in the way we work with it. We envisioned this site as a place where our two communities can meet each other around something we both care about, but in a safe, spiritually respectful way.” The choice to go organic reflects respect for the land, the people who work it and their future customers. 
The attribution of the stall in development to Palestinian and Israeli power politics, respectively, echoes a perspective not unique to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the idea that it is always the other side holding you back from progress, maintaining the status quo. It is possible and even likely that both men are correct, but politics does not alter their mission nor change their principles.
“It’s not like I’m coming up with this stuff by myself from my own head” says Ziad, referring to the idea of Palestinians and settlers working together. “In our villages in our area, for example, everyone is very supportive and encourages us to keep going, they say they are with us. Everybody.”
Even with the farm not yet operational, the project has generated a network of Jews and Arabs whose day-to-day interactions and friendship cross “a very clear line around here,” says Shaul. This network even facilitated a peaceful local mediation between families after a Palestinian teen stabbed an Israeli (thankfully the incident was not fatal). This is only “a microcosm of the real work of the farm that has been successful,” he says.
There are conflicts between Palestinians and settlers in various adjoining communities in the West Bank, Ziad acknowledges, but he sees the dynamic between people in Husan and Beitar Illit as a realistic example for other communities to emulate. “And we’re not going to sit and be quiet,” he says. “We want to keep moving forward, not just in this region but in others.”
“God is peace and peace is God. Every individual who contributes to peace contributes to himself and to God. I believe in God; we all believe in God,” he says.
“Every person can make peace, there is no one who can’t.” There is a catch in his voice. “Every person can.”
A native Michigander, Rachel Kohn is completing her Masters in International Media at American University. Before moving to the DC area, she ran her own small business as a public relations consultant and freelance writer in Jerusalem, Israel. She graduated from Brandeis University in 2007 with Bachelors degrees in Political Science and Environmental Studies, two of her passions. While attending a religious studies program in the West Bank town of Elkana from 2002-2003, she volunteered as a foreign correspondent for her hometown paper, reporting on the Second Intifada and life in the shadow of the U.S.-Iraq War. Rachel thinks that knowledge through contact is the key to understanding and coexistence. She also tends to dance in her chair if music is playing.