One step after another...a journey makes.

As I picked up the phone in the telephone cell outside my hostel, I thought: “I am calling a stranger.” However, I had been in Tel Aviv for three days and shared a room with the hostel’s toothless cleaner. Two hours later I packed my suitcase and sat at B's kitchen table, thanking her for her hospitality. We met only a day before at Peace Child Israel: an organisation using Forum Theatre to facilitate conversation between Jewish-Israeli ‘tweens’ and their Arab-Israeli counterpart.

I had spoken to the pre-teen participants on the playground and their English impressed me. Serious talks about Israel’s politics were conducted while they showed off new bracelets and plaited hair. There were no boys, just girls. When the mini-van arrived to drive us to Jaffa, B told me to sit in the car. Soon I realised the Hebrew grunts coming from the driver were met by tense smiles of my companion. She whispered: “Don’t leave the car, he doesn’t want to go to the Arab area.” Thus I stayed quietly, until the girls jumped in and their babbling and singing soothed the tension.

The lush landscape changed to drier land as we drove away from the wealth of Tel Aviv and groups of men at the side of the streets stared at us: thirteen women in a van.

We were welcomed into the Arab school: their girls were more timid, the two boys even worse. The session started by a warm up, after which scenes of conflict were re-enacted and the group asked to make suggestions for resolutions.

One of the boys told how two Arab friends were out fishing and suddenly were taunted by a group of Jewish- Israeli: the group made suggestions how the situation could be diffused. It became clear why this age group was chosen: too young to be tainted by previous escalations and still young enough to believe in solutions.

However over a lunch of bread with buckets of hummus, two Arab girls confide that they are annoyed the sessions have to be in Hebrew, their second language. The other group of girls should learn Arab, one scowls and suddenly I can feel the difference in status grating.

Drinking tea at her kitchen table, I ask Batgal who the boy in the picture is. It’s her brother, killed by Palestinians during the last of the violent spells. His loss clearly still pains her and I ask her whether she is still angry. She nods. I sip my herbal tea and ask about the message of peace they try to communicate. “It is up to the girls now.” B sighs, “They need to keep searching for a solution, I can’t.”