[6] He joined the Dominican Order, was ordained into the priesthood in 1950, and sent to Jerusalem to establish a centre for Jewish studies in 1953, where he obtained Israeli citizenship in 1966.

In 1970, in order to promote ecumenical interfaith dialogue, he obtained forty hectares (120 acres[7]) of terrain classified as no man's land[8] in the Latrun salient, at a 'peppercorn rent' of 3 pence a year on a 100-year lease from the local Trappist abbey.

[9] At the outset foreigners came to share the experience with him, but few remained beyond one or two months, save for Anne LeMeignon who settled in a hut and stayed on.

In 1994, after lobbying by foreign supporters and the American diplomat Samuel W. Lewis, the Israeli government had a change of heart and began to provide subsidies, and extended legal status to the village as a municipality.

[22] The "School of Peace" closed down in a month-long strike, in protest and mourning, at the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada in 2000, and made efforts to provide welfare for Palestinians as the violence spread.

Even in schooling, Grace Feuerverger's account documents, achingly painful tensions do arise in relationships as children, teachers and families interact.

[26]To mark the advent of the new millennium, towards the end of the 1990s the Trappist monastery decided to hand over half[27] the land, some 20 hectares (50 acres), to Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salam as an outright gift to its residents.

[29] The following month Arutz Sheva reported that a rift had broken out between Jews and Arabs over this issue and threats had been made to expel the Jewish residents.

[33] When matters of principle are on the agenda, a plenum, made up of all full members of the village, is constituted to deliberate, and its final decisions are binding on everyone.

[34] Since the adult Jewish residents are not equally fluent in Arabic,[22][25] the minutes of official deliberations are taken down in Hebrew and workshops are conducted in Hebrew to account for what Rabah Halabi describes as a large gap between "proclaimed policy and the actual situation,"[35] and Feuerverger, using the theories of Paolo Freire, illustrates that language issues refract problems of power.

[25] According to Grace Feuerverger, Neve Shalom/Wahat as-Salam's emancipatory education 'has become a global role model of intercultural harmony, of teaching and learning to live together in peace.

On June 22, 2006, Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters played a live concert at the village, attracting over 50,000 fans.

[40] The Neve Shalom project has drawn a wide range of evaluations: some hail its exemplary function as a regional model for co-existence, while others dismiss the experiment.

Montville's evidence shows a case where a Jewish boy absorbed guilt in an act of 'prodigious sympathy' while his Palestinian counterpart exuded rage.

'[41] Ahmad Yusuf, director of a U.S.-based Islamist think tank, emphasizes the limits of dialogue concerning reciprocal negative stereotypes.