Jewish settlers invited Palestinians over for the holidays. Everything went better than expected.

[oberliner]

EFRAT, West Bank — The gathering wasn’t exactly unprecedented. Jewish settlers and their Palestinian neighbors have met quietly before, many times. But not like this. This meeting, this was rare.

The settlement of Efrat is a bedroom community of 10,000 affluent Jews, including many Americans, a few miles south of Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The residents of Efrat live the good life in a growing hilltop community the United States considers illegal and an obstacle to peace.

The Efrat mayor, Oded Revivi, who is also a colonel in the Israeli army reserves, invited Palestinians from surrounding villages to come to his house and celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, when the faithful gather in palm-roofed huts, a remembrance of their 40 years of wandering landless in the desert, back in the time of Moses.

A couple dozen Palestinians accepted the mayor’s invitation earlier this week to share brownies, grapes, cookies, apples and coffee, alongside another 30 Israeli settlers. This was a first.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/jewish-settlers-invited-palestinians-over-for-the-holidays-everything-went-better-than-expected/2016/10/20/fa527250-960d-11e6-9cae-2a3574e296a6_story.html