Tuesday in the Negev

Our day on Tuesday began at the Hagar Association in Be'er Sheva. The Hagar Association runs a school for Jewish and Palestinian children. It began five years ago with five families. It now goes rough the fourth grade. Next year it will go through the fifth grade. It is hoped that the school will eventually go from day care through high school. One very positive sign is that the daycare is 100 percent full.
Each class at Hagar is balanced along both cultural and gender lines. Fifty percent of each class is Jewish and fifty percent is Palestinian. Likewise, fifty percent of each class is female and fifty percent is male.
There is also a balance in pedagogy and curriculum. Each class has a Jewish teacher and an Arab teacher. Half of each lesson is taught in Hebrew and half is taught in Arabic.
The purpose of this balanced approach is not to blur identity and difference, but to celebrate identity and difference.
The goal of the school is to give each student a toolkit to cope with the realities of life within the school and outside the school. They teach the children from a young age that every conflict - whether it be a schoolyard conflict of an international conflict - has two sides. The object is not necessarily consensus. Rather, it is to encounter every person with respect, empathy and sympathy.