Neve Shalom - Incidents

Incidents

On May 31, 2010, the village political council placed a sign outside the village decrying the deaths of several human rights activists during the Gaza flotilla raid and called for the lifting of the Gaza siege. The wording of the sign originally described the deaths as "murder", though this was subsequently changed to "killing", which emerged as better reflecting the village consensus. In June, Arutz Sheva, a newspaper close to religious Zionism, reported that a rift had broken out between the Jewish and Arab communities over this issue, the former reportedly defending the IDF's soldiers against flotilla radicals and calling for the release of Gilad Shalit. It also reported that threats had been made to expel the Jewish residents from the village. In response the community posted on its website a note to the effect that the initiative was undertaken and authorized democratically and came from both Jewish and Palestinian members of the village. In July of the same year the community organized a joint Jewish-Palestinian conference to address the broad issues of human rights in the area, which was attended by speakers ranging from Gideon Levy to Neve Gordon and Ziv Hadas, Executive Director for Physicians for Human Rights.

On June 14, 2012 village residents were shocked by a price tag attack in which 14 of their vehicles had their tires punctured overnight and several were vandalized by having racist slogans painted on them.