n an arid intersection of cultures in the Middle East, where separation and suspicion are as common as sand, long-divided villages are tentatively reaching out across cyberspace. After 50 years of sharing only animosity, three towns -- Ein Shemer, a prosperous Jewish kibbutz; Kfar Ara, a traditional Muslim village within Israel's borders; and Kfar Ya'abed, a Palestinian town and former Intifada hot spot on the West Bank -- now share email and a collaborative spirit that is literally transforming the environment and creating some hope for peace.The villages found each other through The Living Weave, a community-based project that sponsors intervillage online chat among high school students in the participating towns. "We knew that computers would hold a fascination for kids no matter where they lived," says Deb Dvir, cofounder of The Living Weave. "The fact that none of the kids had experience with the Internet appealed to us because it meant that all of them would begin on an equal footing and learn together. Cyberspace answered our need for a safe, nonconfrontational milieu in which young people could share freely with each other." The program's tangible objective is to create a kind of conservation corps to care for the areas that lie between the villages. The intangible and, with luck, most enduring effect is cooperation and understanding between the people who will one day share the land -- the beginnings of peace. |
