Overcoming Barriers Among Israeli And Palestinian Students Via Computer Science

The Middle East Education Through Technology (MEET) program is a non-profit organization based in Jerusalem, that aims to empower future Israeli and Palestinian leaders by teaching them computer science and business. From the perspective of MEET's instructors, this paper describes how MEET uses computer science education to foster professional and personal contact among Israeli and Palestinian high school students, two groups who otherwise would have little or no interaction with each other. MEET's primary method of overcoming the barrier is teamwork: students are divided into groups that include both Israelis and Palestinians and are assigned software engineering tasks. We believe that the techniques used by MEET can serve as examples for other computer science programs that overcome barriers between groups in the United States and other countries.