Ramallah teens end Facebook chats with Israel teens

Reporters on the Job:The situation in Ramallah, West Bank, where I spent the day Tuesday, was calm but depressing. Every television is tuned in to the war, mostly to Al Jazeera rather than any local channels. Bank employees held a quite noonday protest.

Many West Bank Palestinians feel as if they should be doing more to help people in Gaza, but they don’t know how or what to do.

My Palestinian colleague’s 15-year-old daughter, Zeinab, has been active, going to a silent candlelight protest one night this week. One day, she went around to houses with a small group of other students, chosen by her schoolteachers, to collect donations for
people in Gaza.

Zienab says that early in the war, she and other Palestinian teenagers were talking with Israeli teenagers in a discussion group on Facebook. They’d hoped to explain their viewpoints to each other, figuring the other side “just didn’t have the right information.” Then things took a turn for the worse, insults and harsh statements were traded.

In the end, they had to stop communicating, Zeinab told me.