Israel, I always say, is like a Chi Wawa. A very small dog that, thanks to its mighty bark, always draws more than its share of attention. The reason why it barks so loudly is because it is surrounded by so many hostile Arabs who keep firing at it. And the other way around, of course. Normally that is all one hears. But there is another side to the matter, and that is what it pleases me to write about today.

I live in Mevasseret Zion, about four or five miles west of Jerusalem. Another mile or so to the west is an Arab village, Abu Ghosh. Some identify it with the Biblical Kiryat Yearim, the place where David took the Ark of the Covenant after it has been recovered from the Philistines. It is also where Mary was resurrected, an event commemorated by a large Benedictine Monastery where concerts are held. During the last decades of Ottoman rule it was a den of highwaymen who preyed on travelers between Jaffa and Jerusalem. During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence its inhabitants sided with Israel, which is why they did not suffer expulsion but were able to stay on their ancestral land. Today it is an Arab, mostly Moslem, village with a population of about 7,600. Economically it is doing extremely well; the reason being that, come Saturday and almost all Jerusalem restaurants are closed, Jews flood the village in their tens of thousands.

Some years ago I had an Arab student who lived with her family in Abu Ghosh. Since our two places are so close to each other, I offered her a ride and after class. She gladly accepted but said she wanted to sit in the rear seat. Feeling slightly offended, I asked her if she really distrusted me. No, she said, I do not. However, she added, it is our custom. Try it and you’ll see I am right. We did try it, many times, and it turned out that she was right. A worry less for her, a worry less for me.

On the way we used to talk. I asked her how she came to be called Osnat, which is a name Jewish, but not Arab, Israeli families sometimes give their daughters (the original Osnat, mentioned in Genesis, was an Egyptian lady whom Pharaoh gave Joseph in recognition of his services to the crown). It turned out that her father was a heavy earth-moving machinery operator. At one point in his life he had worked for a kibbutz woman who treated him very well. By way of saying thanks, he named his daughter after her.

Osnat herself was in her mid-twenties. All her cousins had married at about seventeen and were already the mothers of several children. That, she decided, was not the life she wanted. Instead she went to study and was reading for an M.A in the humanities. More typical of Jewish women than of Arab ones. Her reward was to work as a teacher in east Jerusalem; being an Israeli citizen, she made ten times as much as her Palestinian colleagues. Later she and I lost touch, so I do not know where she is or whether she is still single. Possibly she did not stay in her village but found an Israeli-Arab husband living abroad—educated Israeli Arab women often do.

Nor is this the only way in which Jewish and Arab-Israeli approaches to life often change places and merge. Some years ago CNN did a series on wedding customs around the world. One of the episodes described an Arab wedding. But which Arabs were they? Israeli ones, of course. To distinguish it from a Jewish Israeli wedding one had to be a real expert.

Or visit an Ikea shop, where you will see Jews and Arabs quietly queueing together or else sharing a table while taking a meal. Or Dabach, a supermarket and general purpose store not far from the town of Carmiel in the north that has been doing sufficiently well to spread into central Israel. Same story.

Or visit Karim, a native of Abu Gosh who owns the grocery shop where my wife regularly does her shopping. Over the years we learnt that he is actually a university graduate with a degree in agriculture. Unable to find work in his field, though, he opened a shop and did well enough to take over the one next door as well. Right opposite his place is an Israeli-Jewish plant-nursery several of whose employees are Arabs. This is where the whole of Mevasseret Zion goes to obtain its grass, shrubbery, potted plants, gardening equipment, and so on. Arab or no Arab, I love going there. So much so, in fact, that I sometimes do so with no intention to buy anything, simply for a breath of fresh air.

The recent construction of a new children’s amusement park will no doubt bring in additional hordes of visiting Jerusalemites. Nor is Abu Ghosh the only place where many of us Israeli Jews go in order to get Arab (or “Oriental”) food. My late mother, who was born and raised in the Netherlands before, aged 30, moving to Israel with her husband and three small children used to refer to Arab music as “Arab caterwauling.” Not so many younger Israelis who like to listen to it, as I myself also do; somehow it fits into the landscape in a way Western classical music never can.

Briefly, the impression of eternally squabbling ethnic groups is often misleading. It gets even better than that. Many Western countries have a problem with Muslim women’s clothes. Seeing them as religious symbols, they try to ban them from schools, the civil services, the streets, and even the beaches. Here in Israel we never had any of these problems. True, few Arab Israeli women wear the niqab or face-cover. Go to any beach, and you can see it for yourself. But a great many wear headcover without drawing attention. In any case some Jewish women have also taken to wearing a niqab.

So far, and in spite of events in Gaza, northern Israel and southern Lebanon, the peace in Abu Gosh has held. Whatever may be going on in people’s minds, Never in the four decades my wife and I have been going there did we hear one bad word said about Arab this or Jewish that. Please God, may it stay that way.