Katz Ben Shalom exported Artneuland to the German capital in November 2006, four years after she had initiated the project at home in Tel Aviv.

"I had the idea of establishing an art space in Berlin dedicated to the trialog between the three monotheistic cultures," she said. "I wasn't interested any longer in just dealing with the topic of Israel, but wanted to branch out to more global everyday issues."

With Artneuland Tel Aviv, Katz Ben Shalom aimed to bring art to the people, to facilitate artistic exchange, initially by means of video art and photographic works and later through scholarly projects and readings. After the second Intifada broke out in September 2000, the Israeli-Palestinian dialog came to a halt. It prompted Katz Ben Shalom to eventually invite German artists to take part in Artneuland as well, and she soon attracted attention from Israeli art patrons for this new Israeli-Arab-European "trialog," as she calls it.

"The (Israeli sponsors) tried to understand why Germans with their past history can play an especially important role in this trialog," Katz Ben Shalom said. "They donated money because they found that we were on the right track with our concept."

Help from a third party

Many of the Israeli patrons had been disappointed by the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian dialog, which was like a ping-pong game.

"Wars here always follow the same pattern: a campaign triggers a reaction, which in turn induces a new campaign, and so on," the artist said. "A third partner can perhaps show us the way out of this spiral of violence."

Katz Ben Shalom chose Schumannstrasse 18 in Berlin's Mitte district for Artneuland not only due to its central location, but also because she saw the building as embodying a chapter of German history.

"It was important to me to find a historical place with which I feel a connection," she said.

The house belonged to a Jewish family named Strassmann. The father was a prominent gynecologist and opened a private women's clinic there. Due to his Jewish background, he was unable to rise to an executive post at the Charite hospital. In 1936, he was forced to sell the clinic and immigrated to the US. A recent biography of the Strassmanns claimed the doctor had also been an art collector, Katz Ben Shalom said.

Praise from Syrian ambassador

The first exhibition Katz Ben Shalom organized at Artneuland, titled "Videoland," featured 18 Israeli, Arab and German video artists discovering new geographies.

In "Message From Behind a Wall," German artist Agricola de Cologne filmed a section of the wall dividing the West Bank that had become a playground for Palestinian children. Palestinian artist Hannan Abu Hussein's "A Small Country with 2 Big Moustaches" examined her feelings about the physical and mental occupation by Israel. For "The Dreamers," Israel's Dana Levy filmed Israelis and Palestinians -- teenagers, children, prisoners and poets -- describing their dreams.

Katz Ben Shalom's endeavor has already met with a positive response from Syria: the country's ambassador to Germany, Hussein Omran, announced that he approved of the project.