Israeli Palestinians make up about 20 percent of Israeli citizens and, for the most part, live separate lives from their Jewish neighbors--lives fraught with political, social, and economic divisions. Attempts to initiate interactions between Palestinians and Jews outside official frameworks have often dissolved under political and economic pressures.

One lasting effort began when the School for Peace was established in 1976 in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a joint model village set up in 1972 by a group of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. Since its inception, the School for Peace has...