It’s hard trying to have a regular teenage life in a war zone. The boarding school I go to in Jerusalem is really close to [the Palestinian cities of] Beit Jala and Ramallah, and we hear the helicopters flying overhead all the time. By now, I can probably recognize what kind is passing just by the noise it makes.
It’s like living under siege. The gates are closed, and there are guards everywhere. We can’t leave the grounds unless we have permission both from our parents and from the school director. You just never know where or when the next [suicide bombing] is going to happen.A few weeks ago, there was a bombing on the street in Jerusalem, and I was on a bus two blocks away, heading right there.
In Israel, everyone is hurting. We’ve all lost someone close during this conflict, whether it’s a soldier or a friend. A couple of months ago, the mother and sister of a friend from school were killed when two terrorists came into their house in one of the settlements and shot them. There are no excuses for that.
With all this violence, my friends at school just don’t understand why I would want to be friends with Palestinians or why I tutor Arab-Israeli kids in Jaffa, west of Jerusalem. It’s hard for them to draw a line between terrorists and civilians. They’re very right-wing, and they see me as a traitor. But I never saw Palestinians as my enemy. I moved to Jerusalem from Russia when I was seven, and back in Russia, kids wouldn’t want to play with me because their parents told them not to play with the Jewish girl. Having experienced that, I can’t hate others.
I joined Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings together teens in areas of conflict, two years ago because I wanted to meet the people my society sees as “the enemy.” I think that’s the first step in resolving the conflict between the two sides. When I first met Palestinian teenagers, there wasn’t a cultural divide. It was just me and some other kids. Our cultures are actually quite similar: The Koran and the Bible say the same things, have most of the same prophets. When I go to Jaffa and am playing or reading with those little Arab-Israeli kids, they don’t see me as Israeli, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe those kids won’t grow up hating Israelis. Then, I’ll know I’ve made a difference.