Dolores Chaudhari with her twin 4-year-old twins, Sadegh and Zara, and her husband, Alireza Chaudhari, at their home, May 2015. Chaudhari, the daughter of a Palestinian immigrant, was born in the Israeli town she lives in.
The children, whom they call their “nannies,” had taken a trip to Bethlehem only a few weeks before and have not seen the region since.
“When our family first got involved in the conflict, we were opposed to the Israeli forces’ actions against the Palestinians, because in every conflict you have bad people and good people,” said their mother, Dolores Chaudhari. “But we also learned lessons.”
When two American diplomats got involved in negotiations with Israelis and Palestinians at the United Nations, the two families met at the Chabad House, in Jerusalem’s Old City, where the children learned Torah and other religious texts.
Chaudhari said her daughters were among her best students. She said she is hopeful that her children will one day return to the Middle East and visit her granddaughter, Rana, whose mother’s side is of Palestinian descent.
“I hope they can look at [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas and try to understand that he is our president and they aren’t,” she said.
Dolores Chaudhari said she has not kept in touch with the two diplomats who helped broker the cease-fire talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
As for the children from Palestine, they had no idea that the U.N. had been in contact with them and had asked the Jewish Agency to help them apply for visas as part of an Israeli program for children of refugees. The children had visited several times, and the Jewish Agency helped them get appointments with U.S. embassy staff.
The kids had never seen Palestine, but had heard that Hamas had attacked Israel. They weren’t sure why they had been invited, but when their family’s name had appeared on a list in the news about Jewish refugees under a United Nations program, they realized that it was a sign that they might be invited for another trip.
But as the Jewish Agency’s staff helped them apply for visas, they became disheartened and confused.
The family’s story struck the Jewish Agency’s staff members as unusual because most other organizations had declined to help the Chaudharies’ children because