Coach Miranda Roth teaches catching skills [MARC ALTMAN 2009 marcaltman.com]

Now we report from the integrated sports day, where a team of coaches working with the non-profit organisation, Ultimate Peace, are challenged to teach over 140 children, from different Palestinian and Israeli villages, how to throw a frisbee.

Music pounds out from the marquee in the centre of Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv.

It is a sunny day, with no wind in the air. Perfect conditions for learning how to throw a disc (or frisbee).

The children, aged between eight and thirteen, have arrived at the park accompanied by their community youth teachers.

They already compete at basketball within their youth teams under a program sponsored by The Peres Centre for Peace. 

Each team represents an integrated mix of the same-age children from Palestinian and Israeli villages.

The Peres Centre runs a sport-specific program for youth with the belief that sport can "encourage solidarity, mutual understanding, respect and interaction".

The program provides the children, who are from socio-economically disadvantaged and peripheral communities within the West Bank and Israel, with access to peace education instruction and educational support.

Every three weeks the children come together to learn and compete in basketball teams, but today they will learn the relatively new sport of Ultimate.

Sporting challenge

Learning to throw a disc is quite different from learning the ball skills that most children are familiar with.

The first thing the Ultimate Peace team do is demonstrate how to play the game.

The children, fidgeting excitedly, are seated in front of the Ultimate field (roughly the size of a football field) as Ultimate Peace organiser David Barkan explains the rules and the coaches demonstrate the game.

Barkan's commentary is translated from English into Hebrew and Arabic.

This is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the day – overcoming the hurdle of the language barrier, as only a few children speak English and very few of the  coaches speak Hebrew or Arabic.

Then Barkan explains the concept of self-officiating. For the children, this will be one of the most challenging aspects to learning this sport, as they will be expected to make their own judgement calls in the heat of competition.

A young competitor chases the disc  [MARC ALTMAN 2009 marcaltman.com]

The children split into their teams and join their coaches for the day.

They receive new team shirts which have been provided by elite Ultimate teams in the United States who they will be named after.

There is chatter everywhere as the children greet their coaches with big smiles: "Salaam! Shalom!"

The first item on the agenda for the coaches is to teach the basics.

There are many ways to throw a disc. You can throw backhand, or forehand. You can throw far, or short distances. You have to learn how to adjust to the wind. And you have to learn how to catch.

"Pancake catch" says a coach, opening and closing his hands in front of him.

"Pancake" repeat his team, not really understanding the word.

"Like a crocodile…catch like this"  he repeats, and soon, through visual interpretation and hand gestures, the children begin to understand the principles of throwing and catching.

A few of the children from Jericho arrive late and are united with their coaches.

Perhaps they have been held up at a checkpoint – the reason is not clear. But soon, the morning gets off to a flying start.

It's chaotic. Most discs fly over heads or fall into the ground at the start. But gradually there is progress and within an hour the children are beginning to make controlled passes to each other.

What is clear is that they are enjoying this new challenge.

A young Palestinian boy waves at a nearby video camera.

"How are you?" he asks in broken English.

The cameraman, who does not speak Arabic asks what his name is.

"Karim" he replies.

The language is a barrier for them both, and so the conversation does not flow, but the smile, and the enjoyment is obvious.

"You having fun?" asks the cameraman.

Karim signals a peace sign. 'Yes' he smiles. As he turns away, you can see he has 'peace' written on his shirt in English, Arabic and Hebrew.

David Barkan sits with the children  [MARC ALTMAN 2009 marcaltman.com]

Then, it's lunchtime. Falafel and pita is on the menu and the children sit around in their teams, chatting.

It's hard to say whether the Israeli and Palestinian children are fully integrating at this point, despite their obvious co-operation on the field.

Coach Moses Rifkin, who is working with a team called 'Revolver' named after their sponsoring US team from San Francisco, understands the challenge of the language barrier not just between the coaches to the children, but also for the children to relate to each other.

"I'm not sure if it a question of distrust or comfort. It is a challenge without the languages to break down the social barrier", he told Al Jazeera.

"When we were coaching, social barriers existed, but once we started doing drills and paired them, we made a subtle effort to break up those groups.

"One drill involved running after a disc from a coach, and they were cheering each other on".

I ask if the children are generally aware of the cultural differences between them?

Miranda Roth who is coaching children from Tokharm in the West Bank and a team from Jericho believes that some did more than others.

"They are aware of the differences, but when we were scrimmaging it didn't matter who the person was, they just wanted to play with their teammates".

And as for the language barrier: "It wasn't easy" admits Ultimate Peace organiser Barkan.

"But kids are kids. They don't do what you tell them".

Shadow of Gaza

The recent conflict in Gaza is fresh on everyone's mind of course, none more so than the coaching staff.

Whilst there are many West Bank villages participating with this project, there are no communities within Gaza taking part.

Barkan relates an anecdote told to him by one of the leaders of the youth teachers.

"During the conflict in January, the leaders brought their teams together. They facilitated a short discussion [about the conflict], and let the children speak their minds," he explained.

"The Palestinian children were very upset and needed to talk. They let the kids talk, acknowledged what they said, and let them play. It wasn't about denial, but acknowledgement".

This simple approach, Barkan believes, is the key is to keeping the aims of the initiative simple: giving disadvantaged kids who do not have the privilege that other kids have to learn sport.

And now is the best time to forge these kinds of relationships, observes coach Miranda Roth:

"I coach the same age back home [in the US]. This is the age children are before they become prejudiced or form any bad feelings about sports or people…the fun that transcends everything is very clear at this age.

"The differences now are mostly geographical and language".

Coach Nathan Castine works with the children[MARC ALTMAN 2009 marcaltman.com]

After lunch, it's time to plunge into playing real games in a mini-tournament.

It's messy at first, but the kids soon get the hang of it, gaining a greater sense of cohesion and teamwork as the afternoon goes on.

I ask Rifkin how the concept of the Spirit of the Game (self-officiating) has gone down with the children.

"It will take more than one game to take hold" he says.

"But the play was very spirited. (Because of the language barrier) we didn't really have a way to articulate this, but when fouls would occur, they would look to the coaches, and we would shrug, and they would sort it out themselves."

He relates one incident, with a girl called Yuval on his team. She accidentally hit the opponent's arm, who called foul on her. She looked at Moses, he shrugged and left it up to her to resolve the situation.

"It was a little foul," she admitted to her opponent with a smile on her face, and play resumed.

Team bonding

The day draws to a close as the sun lowers in the sky. The coaches are exhausted, but the children have boundless energy and are still throwing discs around.

There are lots of shouts: "C'mon Ironside", "Let’s go Jam" as the teams, named after US elite teams, cheer each other on in the final games of the day.

There is lots of improvement as the kids get more adept at longer throws and athletic catching. At the end of the games there are team huddles, and cheers with the other teams.

Finally, it's time for pizza. As the sun sets in the sky, and the children sit around munching on pizza, you could be at any park in the world.

A group of Palestinian boys stand up. They ask for some traditional music to be played and treat everyone to a 'Depka' – a traditional Palestinian dance.

The crowd clap along and there is a sense of unity and shared experience.

As everyone says goodbye, friendships are brokered between the coaches and the children.

"It was a special moment for us all", said Rifkin.

"We signed our shirts and hats with each other. There was lots of sharing of email addresses."

Big deal

Ultimate Peace is an adult-led initiative, but ultimately a project like this can only work with the co-operation and agreement of the children and communities involved.

Barkan understands the significance of the commitment made by the children to such a peace initiative.

"It was not easy – it's important to remember that just showing up is a powerful statement and when we ask them to integrate, they did, even though at times there was some reluctance," he told Al Jazeera.

"For this kind of event they will take some slack back home. It’s a big deal".

But it appears to have been worth it.

"At the end of the day, one of the kids came up to me and said 'I know what we should do, we should stay all night, so we can play tomorrow!'," Barkan relates.

The coaches know that the most important day of this week will be when they visit the villages and introduce this sport to the youth teachers and aim to plant the seeds of a long-term programme.

Al Jazeera will join the coaches later in the week as they head into the youth communities.