In response to the need to educate the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian children in the village , a school was set up with a bilingual curriculum in both Hebrew and Arabic , English French before the children left primary school to enter into the Israeli state school system . The School of Peace , with input from Northern Ireland 's educational system and elsewhere , established in 1979 , also emerged from this paedeutic necessity . Throughout the 1980s , the NSWAS model was widely covered , both by the international and local Israeli press , for its role in promoting dialogue in the midst of the ongoing Israeli – Palestinian conflict . The stress on neutrality nonetheless came under considerable strain in the 1980s , during With Israel 's Lebanon War , and especially after the outbreak of the First Intifada . Hussar refrained from taking any public stand , though he did write in his 1988 book , '' When the cloud lifted '' , that the Intifada was : " a natural consequence of growing pressure on the ' territories ' , due to the Occupation and Jewish settlements – and it has given rise to inevitable and harsh military repression . " At this time , a Nazareth Muslim resident and friend , Abdessalam Najjar , began to assume , as village secretary , a larger leadership role . As a result , the village staged a one-off , exceptional protest against the oppression in the Occupied Palestinian territories . Hussar 's own dedication to Zionism did not change . He thought the Jews had a right , sanctioned by the United Nations , to live in a land of their own . At the same time , he declaredIn itself Zionism in not in any way against the right of the Palestinian Arabs to a national existence in the same region ; the land is spacious enough for that . ( … ) No Jew who truly lives in the spirit of the Torah can be indifferent to the fate of the Palestinian Arabs and their hopes . This land is their home too . ” In 1983 , NSWAS opened a HUGE building , later capped with a white dome and set apart , within a landscaped garden environment , called the Doumia ( '' silence '' in Biblical Hebrew ) . Hussar made a precise semantic distinction in Hebrew between '' sheket '' ( absence of noise ) and '' dumia '' ( profound silence ) , associating the latter with the ' freshet of air , the voice of a subtle silence ' Elijah heard in the desert according to the Book of Kings ( 19:12 ) . In his later years , Hussar withdrew there , returning to his foundational notion of a place where prayer and meditation would play a formative role within his community , as the point of conjunction between the three Abrahamic faiths . He was even more culturally eucumenical , learning from a Japanese priest how to perform mass while practicing zazen . He was to break his retreat into silence on hearing of the news of the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin , which struck him as putting an end to illusions created by the peace that had promised to be built after that coincided with the Oslo I Accord . He interpreted it biblically as a sign of '' aharit ha-yamim '' , the end of days , and a ' a major step forward in the march of the Jewish people towards messianic fullness . . . when the Jews and the Gentiles , trees that complement God ’s single olive tree , will be united in the same praise . ' On the occasion of Brother Hussar 's death , 8 February 1996 , and burial at Neve Shalom , thousands of people only from Israel gathered at NSWAS . Hussar was nominated in successive years ( 1988 , 1989 ) for the Nobel Peace Prize . Until 1989 , the village lacked recognition as an Israeli village , but in September of that year the Israeli Ministry of the Interior finally granted it that legal status . Difficulties arose in the increasingly conflicted years that followed , esp . during the Al Aqsa Intifada , as NSWAS found itself isolated , unable to forge significant connections with either Israeli or Palestinian society . His friend of long-standing Dubois , went on record as stating that both he and Hussar , in embarking on a naive adventurous Zionism , had ' completely denied the Palestinian tragedy '
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
Bruno Hussar