'Collect ID cards from all of them - the Jews, too'

[Englander]

By Aryeh Dayan

The ugly reality only penetrated the pleasant bubble that surrounded the bus passengers as they returned to central Jerusalem on Friday last week. About 30 adolescents and several adults, Jewish and Arab residents of Jerusalem and the surrounding area, had participated in the tour. Most of the Jewish teens were observant members of the Conservative Movement and the Movement for Progressive Judaism. The Arab teens were Muslims and Christians. Some of the Arabs were Israeli citizens and others were residents of the Old City and Palestinian neighborhoods beyond the Green Line. The tour, organized by the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI), was the culminating experience of a year-long educational process for 12th graders - six of them Jews and six of them Arabs, both boys and girls. They met every few weeks to examine, as a group or in partnerships, the salient issues that plague Arab-Jewish relations. They were asked to present their conclusions and their disagreements on a tour of some of the most disputed sites in the region, with their friends and relatives in tow.

First, they viewed the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque plaza from the Mount of Olives. Then, they visited the section of the separation fence that bisects Abu Dis, the seam line between Givat Ze'ev from the refugee camp of Shu'afat, and, finally, the Qalandiyah Checkpoint. At each site, a pair of Jewish and Arab students was asked to express their opinions of what they observed and what is happening at that location.

At the Mount of Olives, Maya Yehieli, a student at the Hebrew University High School (popularly known as "Leyada") explained the depth of her religious, national, and cultural bond to Jerusalem, and Salah al-Zrari, a student at the Beit Safafa High School and Muslim resident of Jerusalem, said that he felt as if all the Muslims in the world had entrusted him with the mission of defending the Old City mosques. Yet, both of them agreed that it is possible and vital to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while addressing deep religious issues.

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Despite the explosive potential inherent in the tour, the trip was conducted in an atmosphere of courtesy and goodwill that occasionally permitted participants to imagine that obstacles that divide Arabs and Jews had indeed vanished. Icy relations between Arabs and Jews, at the beginning of the tour, thawed gradually and, as the tour continued, the passengers on the bus appeared to be transformed into a unified group with similar backgrounds. Then, several moments after wrapping up their visit to Qalandiyah to return to central Jerusalem, the ugly reality penetrated the bus and shattered this illusion.

It happened as Miri Marmour, of the Hebrew University High School, and Hiba Alian, of the Beit Safafa High School, presented conflicting opinions regarding checkpoints. At that exact moment, the bus was stopped at a checkpoint and a member of the Border Police boarded the bus. Within less than a minute, he transported all of the passengers back to the real world. "Who are you?" he inquired, after a quick glance at the passengers revealed the unusual composition of the tour.

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