A Companion Called Hate Has Torn Their Worlds Apart

RAMALLAH, West Bank — In some ways, 12-year-old Lely and 13-year-old Sami are mirror images. She is Israeli; he is Palestinian. They live an hour apart -- she in Tel Aviv, he in Ramallah. Both are privileged, middle-class children, raised by educated, worldly parents, and both have been marked by nearly three years of unrelenting conflict. The Times spent a day with them to see how their worlds have been shaped by the fighting -- and by the prospects for peace.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Morning came in cool winds and white sunlight, and Sami Najjar slipped from his sheets to fix himself a cheese sandwich, thick for strength. The shadows were still long; his mountain bike waited downstairs.

The silver 21-speed with rusting spokes is everything to 13-year-old Sami -- the edges of his universe are traced by its path. All summer long, the boys have clattered off at daylight and panted home at sunset. On Thursday they had a plan: They'd go to the edge of town, farther than Sami had ever ridden.

Even though gunfire in the street rattled Sami awake the night before, his mother has declared the intifada over. That means that, for the first time in nearly three years, Sami and his sister can leave the neighborhood without worrying, too much, that the town will become a war zone and that they will be stranded in the streets when Israeli soldiers impose a curfew.

By the time Sami got to the curb, Tamer Salen, a longtime friend whose curls were frozen stiff with styling gel, was ready. Together they waited for a third boy. Sami slipped a salmon pink mobile phone from his pocket, glanced up and down the street and glared.

"Nobody keeps appointments," he said, dialing. "We've been waiting for an hour!" he groused into the phone; in fact, it had been five minutes.

A boy with dimpled cheeks and limbs so lanky he resembles a colt, Sami is wealthier, and more Westernized, than most Palestinians. He and his friends sport slumped Tommy Hilfiger jeans and spray Boss cologne onto their necks. Sami is the proud proprietor of a single cigar, which he is allowed to admire, but not to smoke. He has Nike sneakers, a poster of Britney Spears alongside his computer and a thick silver bracelet with his initials engraved in English -- "It's prettier than Arabic," Sami said.