The Palestinian and Israeli kids trying to be friends

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, the summer camp for teenagers with a bold ambition.

0:31Back with you as normal tomorrow.

0:36It's a boiling hot day in August and I've just arrived at a summer camp in the Trudos Mountains in Cyprus.

0:46I'm stood outside a building surrounded by pine trees and I can see small groups of children who are huddling around tables and chairs.

0:57A camp leader is welcoming children, smiling and strumming a guitar. But there is something different about the 40 teenagers gathered here today. They're all from Israel or occupied Palestine and many have been bereaved by the decades-long conflict in the region. What made you decide to come to the camp? to tell our story to the world and let them know the pain we are in. To speak about our life in West Bank under occupation, to speak about peace, and I want to have freedom to go to anywhere in this life. I live in Israel. You don't meet Palestinians in Israel, not from the West Bank. You just can't come there, and they won't be welcomed if they tried.

1:49They've come here to try to make a difference and they know it might not be easy Actually I'm so scared because I don't know what's their reaction going to be They probably have different worldviews so you're afraid so what if everybody will not accept each other

2:13Bringing together Israeli and Palestinian teenagers is controversial. Once, an Israeli MP even threatened to blow the camp up.

2:27It's now two years since October 7th, when 1 ,200 people were killed by Hamas, the majority of them civilians, and 250 hostages were taken to Gaza. Since then, Israeli attacks have killed at least 66 ,000 people in Gaza. The actual toll is higher because this figure doesn't include victims like those buried under the rubble or killed by starvation. The first phase of a peace deal has been reached. But with a full plan yet to be agreed, the situation remains fragile. Reconciliation between the communities still feels far away. Could these children offer a glimmer of hope for the future? From The Guardian, I'm Nathalie Hdena.

3:14Today in Focus, the Palestinian and Israeli teenagers trying to make peace.

3:31It's day one. I'm standing outside the main camp building, under the trees, and watching as the camp starts to get underway. All around me are groups of teenagers. They're playing games, chatting to each other, and so far at least, they seem to be having a lot of fun.

3:55I'm with one of the groups, and I'm chatting to Ibrahim. He's tall, a big friendly presence, and at just 20 years old, he's working here as one of the camp helpers. So what are you doing? What is happening right now? These look like outside exercises? Yeah, these are called ODT activities. The logistics team brings together all the kids and some equipment for them to have fun. It's like ice breaking, because even if the kids talk to each other and say, my name is, and my name is, whatever, they're not going to bond. Kids love playing. So when they play together, it makes a special bond and breaks the ice.

4:43Ibrahim is one of around 40 members of staff, but he used to come to the camp himself. When I came here, I had no experience with any Israeli other than the soldiers. You could tell it's not the best thing in the world. They obviously occupy our land and destroy our staff. So when I came here for the first time, it opened my eyes to something that the Israeli kids are unknowing about what happened. Like when we told them about the wall, about how my cousin was killed when he didn't do anything and he was a teenager. And we told them about all that stuff and they don't know. I want to hear more about Ibrahim's cousin, who he says was killed.

5:36So later on, in a quieter moment at the camp, I ask him to tell me more about him. My cousin Jihad was a teenager. He was a teenager that loved to dance, that loved debka, that loved studying, was a very good student. He dreamed of studying abroad. A bullet ended all of that. He was standing at the top of his parents' house's roof, and the IDF soldiers were coming to the neighborhood, which they do very usually, and sometimes just to break stuff and make us feel miserable. And he was standing on the roof.

6:25And they shot him. and that's the end of jihad's life, jihad's dreams.

6:38It really affected me, really affected a lot of decisions that I've taken in my life. For example, coming to the forum. I come to the forum activities for him. When Ibrahim mentions the forum, he was talking about the Parents Circle Families Forum that runs the camp. This organisation was started back in 1995 by an Israeli man called Yitzhak Frankenthal. His son Eric was killed by Hamas. He brought together grieving families from both sides to try and find a path to peace and reconciliation.

7:18The camp brings together children from Israel and the West Bank. There's no one here from Gaza, although the shadow of the horror that has been happening there hangs over the week. First podcast. First podcast. Well, it's evening now and I'm meeting a boy called Dor. He's full of beans and he loves to chat. Dor's got this thick black hair that falls over his eyes. We grab a chair in one of the empty activity rooms. It's already dark outside when he starts to tell me how his family have been affected by the conflict. So I'm Dorinon. I'm 17 from Israel. My grandparents lived really, really close to Gaza, like 400 metres from the border.

8:04Their names were Jacobi and Bilainon. My grandpa was an agronomist. He was a really, really good and appreciated agronomist. So he used to take us to the fields to see the sowing. And what about your grandma? What was she like? She was really, really artistic. When we come to their house, we used to do a lot of artistic things with her. So October 7th for me, I was like, I woke up in the morning and I very quickly realized that people are crossing the Gaza border. And not just regular people, terrorists with guns, with the intention of hurting civilians. they lived in the closest town to... Nativa Sara is 400 meters from the border.

8:51So if people cross the border, they'll come to Nativa Sara. There was a feeling that there was something in the air. And then they said that there was a terrible thing fallen upon us and my grandparents are dead. Everybody was in total shock. and not only they are dead, their house has been burned down. All of the house only exists in our memories now. And it's like...

9:26Seeing my grandparents' house on TV and seeing it burned down and knowing that their bodies, that their burned bodies are in there somewhere, was really, really, really hard for me.

9:53Dor's dad is an Israeli peace activist, Maz Inon. Most of the children in the camp come from open-minded families like Dor's. They're unusual in their desire to hear the views of those from the other side of the conflict. As the camp goes on, there are more activities encouraged to get the two sides working together. On day two, for example, they make dishes from each other's cuisines together. One thing that keeps surprising me is learning how little contact the teenagers from either side have ever had with each other before the camp. Mohammed tells me that for many Palestinian teenagers, soldiers at the checkpoints that divide the West Bank are the only young Israelis they have ever met.

10:39We don't know anything about each other, and it's the main problem. We live in the same land. The children live, I think some of them, less than one hour, far between them, and all of the Palestinian kids didn't meet any one Israeli before. The Palestinians think the Israeli is a soldier, killer, and the Israeli think about the Palestinians as terrorists. The Israeli didn't know anything about how the Palestinians live, didn't know about the checkpoints, didn't know that the Palestinian, if he wants to go to his school, he needs two hours to go to school because there's a gate closed, because the soldiers in this day didn't want to open the gate.

11:26Those Israeli kids in one day maybe will be in the army. So if these Israeli kids listen to the story, I think he will be fair soldiers with the Palestinians. Mohammed tells me the divisions and the way the teenagers live can even be seen in their journeys to the camp. So for the Israeli teenagers, the camp in Cyprus is a short flight away. For the Palestinian children, living under occupation, it's taken days to get there. From Palestinian port to Israeli port, in past three minutes. In these three minutes, we wait four hours. From the Israeli port to Jordanian port, five minutes or less. We wait three hours.

12:22This life, this is the Palestinian home.

12:32The Palestinian teenagers' lives are shaped by the occupation in other ways, from the threat of settler violence to the aspirations they can have for their futures. Hello everyone, my name is Az. I am 17 years old. I am from Palestine, I live in Nablus. My dream to become a pilot, but that's impossible because I am in Palestine and there isn't any airport in my country. What did you think about Israeli people before you came to the camp? I was taught all the Israelis in the world, like the soldiers on the checkpoints on my town, and who support the occupation in West Bank. And how do the soldiers treat Palestinians?

13:25They mate with us like we have animals. How does that make you feel? I feel very bad and I think always to leave this country because I don't have any freedom and I feel angry because anyone from the other side feel freedom and can go to anywhere in this world.

13:57I sat outside with Nir Oren. He's an Israeli social worker who works at the camp and his mother was killed in a suicide bombing of a bus in 1995. He sent his children to the camp too and he explained to me how controversial it could be for both sides to be there. It's not easy to come here. My children were attacked, you know, verbally only, in the classrooms when they talked about what they did in the summer, when they participated in the summer camp. People think they are crazy, people think they are putting themselves in danger. And the Palestinians as well, you know, for them coming to meet the enemy and meet the perpetrators and meet the conqueror, it's problematic.

14:43Humanising both sides is a major aim of the camp. But it's only becoming harder with greater consequences. Knowing the other side, no. Manage to listen to the story which is not easy for you. Because when I'm talking about my suicide bombing, obviously you felt empathetic. You said you're sorry for my loss. The Palestinian knows that one of his members of his nation, of his people, did this to my mother. He probably has, you know, something bothers him or not. Vice versa, it's the same in Israel, what we are doing there, of course. And he can say, well, your mother deserves it, she, whatever. It's easier for him to deal with it.

15:28When I'm sharing stories with my friends and my colleagues about Palestinian bereavement, they said they probably were terrorists. Or in Gaza, many Israelis said all babies are potentially terrorists. But saying they're potential terrorists, it's inflicted on their inner emotional states that it's hard for them to see that we are killing babies. So they're finding a kind of cognitive resolution and reframing their emotional guilt, for example, to let it say it's okay. They deserve it. They should do it. and this is what we want to find people to acknowledge their own feelings and to understand and to acknowledge our aggressiveness.

16:22So what are you guys doing today? We're going to make a movie, a short movie. A short movie. And you're doing it together? Yeah, yeah, together. We're a team. So tell me who are you, what are your names? It's day three of the camp and I'm joining a photography and a video workshop. Around half the kids at the camp are here in this big bar. There are snacks, there are soft drinks laid out and there's a big projector at the front to show them their photos and films. There's workshop leaders and helpers milling around and all the kids have these headphones in their ears which broadcast live translations so they can understand each other.

17:00We asked just before they left to take their photos who wants to work with a Palestinian, who wants to work with a Jewish Israeli. And it was quiet in the room and after five seconds we started seeing hands go up. We started seeing them go across the room to someone they just met two days ago from the other side. Beautiful. I caught up with Dor to find out how he had found the workshop. It's the third day now. I'm wondering generally how it's been going first of all. It's been going like really good. I was together with Ez and we filmed photos. The idea was our biggest fears and losing our loved ones.

17:44That was the film that we did. They told us we need to explain the photos we took from each other point of view. So Ez talked about my grandparents and my loss from my perspective. And it was wow. It was really significant. That has a significant impact for me. When, as you're saying, that I loved my grandparents and I used to hang out with them a lot and now I miss them and that's what the image symbolises. Hearing the people which you're taught to demonise and are taught they're bad and don't like you, hearing them empathise with you in a clear, well-spoken way is moving and amazing. The camp was intense for the teenagers, but they were still a bunch of young people thrown together, so sometimes unexpected things would happen.

18:43Like this dance-off which suddenly broke out.

18:52On day four of the camp, things got harder. Netanyahu had announced Israel would be occupying Gaza City. Inside the camp, too, it was a tough day. the teenagers were being challenged to look at the conflict from the other side's point of view. They were doing an exercise based on a popular Israeli TV show, which is called Sorry for Asking. In this show, people can ask the things they've always wanted to know. OK, so today is the day where they're talking about more conflict. One thing I'm noticing is a lot of the children are, like, leaving the meetings. I'd noticed two Palestinian children in separate groups leaving the room with a facilitator with their arm around them to kind of talk to the camp leader on their side.

19:41Hi, Dor. You OK? Actually, I've just seen Dor also leave. As I was sitting nearby, I caught sight of Dor, who was leaving the exercise and seemed to be a bit upset. So later on, I caught up with him to find out what had actually happened. And he explained that it began with a conversation about the hostages. Very quickly, we came to a question that talked about, I think, what the Palestinians know about their hostages, the Israeli hostages. For the Israeli side, it was a very heated and emotional conversation. What they have seen in the news, they said that the hostages look healthy and they hugged their captors and the Israeli side responded very, very harshly.

20:35The conversation showed the gulf between how the media in Israel and Palestine portray the conflict. It was really hurtful because there was another Palestinian that spoke after that. and he said, he like told me, I'm sorry for your loss, but the reason that the 7th of October happened is because that the IDF killed civilians in Janine. There's a feeling like I represent all of Israel. I'm really, really mad and spoke really passionately. I'm not IDF. People died from both sides. I know it's not right. Death is death and it's never, never right. specifically when you're talking about uninvolved people and civilians.

21:21So how can it be that you're attacking me and saying it's OK for my grandparents to be killed? At the camp, the teenagers are told that if they want to come together, they can't compare suffering. Everyone's pain is valid. And Dorr said he found the exercise useful as well as difficult. You don't have to be a peace activist and believe that being able to acknowledge the pain, all of the pain of the other side, which in some parts, at least for me, it makes me believe that peace is easier than I've thought before. Peace is possible and also seems now, after all the things that happened today, it seems more reachable.

22:12On day five I caught up with Ibrahim. He was the camp helper I'd spoken to earlier on in the week. I wanted to understand how the camp had affected him over the years. I've been to the camp multiple times as a participant but this is my first time as a staff. I've been here for a long time and I love it. He told me about his own major realisations from being at the camp. It contradicts with my idea about Israelis before I came here. Because the only time I've been acquainted with Israelis was on the border or checkpoint. And the soldiers there love to humiliate us for some reason. They hate people.

22:54They shout at people for absolutely no reason. And if you try to do as much as breathe in the wrong way, you're a goner, basically. So it contradicts with that, that there are some Israelis that are willing to listen and are willing to recognize that there's an occupation going on. And that's what made me come back. Because if they want to listen, who am I not to deliver the message? I realized that if people are willing to listen, there is a chance for a change. and every time I come here I hope our community and communities like it get bigger and attract more people which happens but at a very slow pace so that we can hear one another and my story can get heard and other people's stories can get heard which is the first step of a change.

24:00I could see the camp was affecting people in lots of different ways A young woman called Noah came to speak to me She was 18 and she's at that age where a lot of her friends are doing military service In fact, one of her friends had sent her a photo of their newly shaved head Almost all Israelis are expected to do military service But Noah says that her mind had been changed Like next year I'm going to work in like an organic farm. Usually most Israelis my age don't really go this way. If they're not religious, they usually go to the army. Since my first camp, I did become more politically involved in opposing the occupation and not wanting to serve in the army.