For a decade, Israeli Dror Amedi and Palestinian Kamel Jabarin worked side by side to build something rare in Jerusalem: Kulna, a space where Jews and Arabs could meet, talk, and simply be together.
Then came October 7, 2023.
Hamas’s massacre and the war that followed shook the foundations of their partnership, forcing both men to confront painful questions about whether their shared vision of coexistence could survive. Yet, despite the suspicion, anger, and grief that divided their communities, Amedi and Jabarin chose not to walk away.
Instead, they decided to keep building bridges.
Testing the partnership
“It left me in a bad mental and social state. I felt as if it had happened to me directly,” Jabarin, 40, told The Jerusalem Report in a recent interview.
“You feel for those innocent people who were attacked, and I tried to pass this empathy to people in my community in east Jerusalem,” Jabarin, who lives in the Shuafat refugee camp with his wife and five children, continued.
In an attempt to deal with what had happened, Jabarin called in all members of the Kulna team and urged them to share their feelings as they decided how, as a coexistence organization, they should move forward.
“We had to decide: Will we move on or not?” he said.
For Amedi, 39, a father of four from the west Jerusalem neighborhood of Katamonim, the events of October 7 were a massive shock that immediately put his life’s project in jeopardy.
“At first, I didn’t know what we would do. October 7 happened right in the middle of our busiest period … we had so many activities,” he recalled, adding, “We had to go through it together, and it became clear to me that we can’t give up – we must keep going.”
“We processed it, we supported each other,” he said. “Kulna is not just work; for us, it’s a safe space.”
Yet, the pain and complexities created by Hamas’s brutal attack were both palpable and personal.
Amedi’s brother-in-law was wounded on one of the kibbutzim in southern Israel while fighting to repel Hamas’s onslaught.
“We went through a hard time, but I never lost hope,” he said.
“What’s the alternative?” said Jabarin, adding that both of them realized that “cutting off civil society work would only make things worse.”
They emphasized it was their strong friendship forged over a decade that helped them withstand the crisis.
“There is a deep trust between us, that’s the secret,” stated Amedi.
“The most important thing is to see the truth and not to close your eyes to reality,” added Jabarin, pointing out that some in his community refused to acknowledge Hamas’s massacre.
“Pretending things didn’t happen just doesn’t work,” he said. “And it goes both ways. You can’t deny terror attacks, and Israelis cannot downplay attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Suspicion in friendship
Jabarin said that his journey to this point of understanding and acceptance was arduous and long. Growing up in a refugee camp surrounded by poverty and neglect, he said, was “enough to make you hate the other.”
“When I was young, I hated Jews,” Jabarin said, recalling his family’s role in the Palestinian national struggle during the First Intifada. “I used to be the kind of person who wouldn’t listen to a different opinion, who wasn’t even willing to hear Jews out. I was convinced that Jews took my land and didn’t want to live with us in peace.”
He recounted how his father spent 14 years in an Israeli prison for security offenses and how a rubber bullet hit him before he was arrested at age 13 for throwing stones at Israeli forces. Later, he lived through the Second Intifada and admitted that “all my experiences up to 18 were shaped by encounters only with police forces.”
“Anything that went wrong in my life, I blamed on the Jews,” Jabarin said, adding that it took him a long time to realize not everything bad that happened to his community was “because of the Israelis.”
Kulna came later, after a chance meeting with Amedi at a musical event, long before the association was officially established in 2016.
Amedi said: “I wanted to create a space where people could just be together and feel comfortable.”
“We started with zero budget,” he noted. “After a series of gatherings, we realized that there was a craving for this kind of encounter and we continued to organize more activities of this sort, which became part of social life and a platform for connecting people in the city.”
Amedi, a 7th-generation Jerusalemite from a family with deep Jewish roots in the city, recounted how the idea for the gatherings came after a visit to Jerusalem’s Old City, not long after he’d finished his military service.
“I felt like I was abroad in my own city,” he said, adding that he then noticed the Shuafat refugee camp, Jabarin’s home, which, although part of Jerusalem, sits beyond the West Bank security barrier.
“It makes you feel as if you’re living in two parallel worlds within the same city,” he said.
Jabarin admitted that he was suspicious of Amedi at first.
“You see someone with a kippah and think, ‘those people – they don’t want us here.’ But as we kept deepening our relationship, a real friendship grew,” Jabarin said.
He added that he has faced criticism from within his community, with some accusing him of “normalizing” ties with Israelis, but now, he said, Kulna feels like “home.”
“After everything I’ve been through, I see it as a refuge, a place to turn to for calm. Here, you don’t need to lie or pretend. This is a place where you can find the truth,” he stated.
Connection over cynicism
Addressing skeptics who question the value of a Palestinian-Israeli partnership, especially in the aftermath of October 7, Amedi said: “People who don’t have dreams are the ones who become cynical and skeptical. I really believe in this.”
He said the reactions following October 7 were difficult, with some people saying, “We told you to watch out; now their true face has been revealed,” or “One day your Arab friends will turn on you also.”
But, Amedi added, “This is not a show. Kamel and I are not pretending to be friends; we are friends, it’s real.”
However, he said, it has become much harder to find financial support, with those on the Right more hardened against Israeli-Palestinian coexistence initiatives, while those on the Left accuse them of not serving the goals of fighting what they see as the Israeli occupation.
But for Amedi and Jabarin, the main goal is not political but rather to bridge the gaps in their city.
“Don’t define us as Left or Right; we’re not there,” Amedi said. “We don’t think about the conflict in abstract terms; we’re on the ground, focused on practical issues, people-to-people interactions, and shared life in Jerusalem for all groups.”■