What are the Hebrew and Arabic lyrics to Ofra Haza's song Middle East?

The short answer:

/sholem/ is how "shalom" is pronounced among some Yemenite Jews.

/sholem sholem we'en sholem/ is a Biblical quote ( http://biblehub.com/jeremiah/8-11.htm , http://biblehub.com/ezekiel/13-16.htm )

/Wen essalam/ is Arabic for "where's the peace?"

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The long answer:

There are different ways Hebrew is pronounced.

"shalom", the word you know, is how it's pronounced in the so-called Modern Hebrew (which largely follows the tradition of Sephardic Jews where vowels are concerned).

But there are other traditions of pronunciations. Most notably Ashkenzi and Yemenite. While these crowds nowadays speak "Modern Hebrew", in their religious life (when reciting prayers and blessings, or songs) they use their traditional pronunciations.

Haza often uses the traditional pronunciation (Yemenite), so you should expect to hear many words "pronounced differently" than what you expect to hear.

For example, the world "shalom" is pronounced /sholem/ among many Yemenites (mostly of the south; others (mostly north) pronounce it /sholom/). That's because they pronounce the qamats as /o/ and the holam as somewhere between /o/ to /e/ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holam#Pronunciation ). (I mentioned this issue at another question of yours, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201206... , see /benim/ there.)

"shalom" is pronounced /sholem/ among some Ashkenazim too, but most of them pronounce it /sholom/. BTW, the pronunciation /sholem/ went back (through Yiddish) into "children speak" in Israel (e.g., when a child says "anahnu be'sholem!" he means "we're now friends!" (literally "we're in peace"). In child-speak this word means "reconciliation" (because they fought a few minutes before ;-). Naive people would suggest that this children-speak is what Ofra Haza had in mind, but we'll soon see that it's not (see Biblical ref).

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BTW, you mentioned Arabic. The reason Hebrew has /šalom/ and Arabic has /salām/ is because of the so-called Canaanite shift ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_shift ) . The long 'a' vowel transformed into 'o' in Hebrew. You can see this in many words.

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"Also what do the other words that I posted mean?"

"Wen essalam" means "where's the peace?" in Arabic. "The peace", in Arabic, is written down as "al-salam" but is pronounced "assalam" or "essalam".

As for "Ween sholem": a naive would suggest that whoever wrote the song simply tried to synthesize Arabic with Hebrew. However, I notice that she sings "sholem sholem we'en sholem". These four words appear in Jeremiah 6:14, Jeremiah 8:11 (and Ezekiel 13:10, Ezekiel 13:16). Look it up: it's somewhat pessimistic. This concurs with some pessimistic (or "realistic") notes elsewhere in the song.