Friendship without borders

There are many unusual things about the friendship between Rami Aman and Roni Keidar. He’s almost 40, she’s almost 80. He’s Palestinian, she’s Israeli. But perhaps the most unusual is that he lives in Gaza, and she lives just kilometres away, on the Israeli side of the border. There’s a wall between them, so contact is mostly limited to phone and Zoom calls, but they have formed a rare, almost impossible friendship, despite both living in the line of fire.

Rami lives in a high-rise building in downtown Gaza city. He was born in Kuwait, one of seven brothers and sisters, to a father from Gaza and a mother from Algeria. When Rami was 11, his parents packed up their young family and moved back to Gaza.

“As Palestinians, we were proud to return to our homeland,” says Rami. He joined the YMCA to keep up with his sports, making friends among Gaza’s tiny Christian population. “My father prays five times a day, he has made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca three times, but he never said to me, ‘Don’t have Christian friends’. He