At St. Edward’s University, students from different backgrounds attend classes together and no one gives it a thought, but in Israel, schools remain segregated between the Jewish and Arab populations. One exception is the Hand in Hand schools.

The first Hand in Hand school was established in Jerusalem in 1997 to foster community and co-existence between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. In a country where roughly 80 percent of the population is Jewish and 20 percent is Arab, the four Hand in Hand schools in Israel serve as a few of the country’s only centers for Jewish-Arab education, Lee Gordon, the school’s co-founder, said.

On Nov. 2, Gordon and two of the school’s students, Yaeli Keinan and Haneen Kinani, spoke about the Hand in Hand schools at St. Edward’s. Gordon, who lived in Israel for two decades, saw the need for a school like Hand in Hand.

“When people are separated, they don’t know each other and can continue to have stereotypes about each other,” Gordon said.

Keinan is Jewish and a junior in high school while Kinani is Arab and a senior. The students have attended the school since the first grade. Keinan and Kinani spoke proudly of the school and feel that attending the school has given them a better cultural understanding. The school is a tight-knit community of 70 students.

Keinan said that she gets along with her Arab classmates.

“We go to movies together and have sleepovers. We do all the things normal teenagers do,” she said.

At Hand in Hand, students are taught a bilingual, multi-cultural curriculum. Keinan’s first language was Hebrew and Kinani’s was Arabic, but the students now speak each language fluently. Kinani has two younger sisters who attend the school and her mother is the principal of the elementary school.   

Some of Keinan’s and Kinani’s friends and family questioned their decision to attend Hand in Hand. Kinani’s grandfather was originally opposed to the idea of her going to the school, but he has since changed his mind. Keinan’s friends often ask her why she goes to Hand in Hand when she could go to “a nice Jewish