Four 12-year old boys were placed in the same group this summer. Two Arab cousins, and two Jewish cousins. One of the Arab boys, Ahmad, and one of the Jewish boys, Daniel, attend the Hand in Hand school year round and had been exposed to an integrated Arab-Jewish environment before. Ahmad’s cousin Rami grew up in an Arab village in the North, and had very little interaction with Jews before attending Project Harmony; Daniel’s cousin Yossi grew up with his grandmother on a settlement just north of Jerusalem. Ahmad and Daniel are in the same class at Hand in Hand, and never got along – but not for distinctly Arab-Jewish reasons. Their personalities simply did not mesh. When each brought a cousin to Project Harmony who had never been exposed to integrated programming, Ahmad and Daniel’s rivalry transformed—into an issue of religion, nationality, language, geography, politics—because those were the terms through which Rami and Yossi had grown accustomed to making sense of all of their disagreements with “the other.” After two weeks of camp, the boys were at a stalemate; if they were in the same room, punches were being thrown.
During the third week of camp Daniel went on vacation with his family, leaving Yossi in a tough spot. Feeling disarmed, vulnerable, he had three choices: he could stop coming to camp, he could fight his battles alone and outnumbered, or he could figure out a way to coexist with Ahmad and Rami. The boys’ counselors were shocked by an almost sudden transformation in Yossi—despite his family history and societal pressures, despite his cousin’s voice in the back of his mind, he realized the simple joy of acceptance and playing together. The three boys ran around kicking a soccer ball together as if they had known each other all their lives, and they were inseparable. When Daniel returned to camp he found an entirely new dynamic, and found himself rejected by the group when he tried to pick the same old fights. With enough time and patience, these four boys found their way to friendship despite their preconceptions. Their good example inspired their peers as well as the staff.