Who will be the future Israeli and Palestinian negotiators? How many will be each other's classmates from childhood, classmates with whom they solved problems successfully during their schooling?
Israel's security barrier winds through the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The Semitic School is a novel catalyst for generating a lasting Israeli-Palestinian solution. This day school would straddle the security barrier between Israel and the Palestinian Authority's territory and would purposely be constructed on land viewed as the border by both Palestinians - the 1949 Armistice Green Line - and Israelis, the ones who built the security barrier. The name of the school is based on the Semitic ethnicity that Israelis and Palestinians share, and on the fact that Hebrew and Arabic both belong to the Semitic family of languages. The teachers' lessons would be designed to motivate the students to primarily identify with this shared social trait without the teachers derogating the students' opposing nationalities and religions.
Students would be the children of the Israeli national politicians in Jerusalem, the children of the Palestinian administration based in Ramallah twenty kilometers away, and some from families from each side's general public. Advice from conservatives such as those belonging to the Israeli Likud party or the Palestinian Hamas organization would be particularly heeded as it is these parents who would be most reluctant in enrolling their children. The United Nations would provide peacekeepers and initial administrators if the two sides can not agree on the school's officials.
