Though it’s been mired in controversy lately, the Israeli army is the country’s greatest unifying force, bringing together people from all walks of society and providing a shared experience. On The Front Line captures the ideological and religious struggles of twenty diverse Israeli youths in a pre-army prep course, as they learn to get along with each other amidst the chaos of the Second Infitada.

“In the past, pioneers dealt with physical swamps, now we deal with social swamps,” explains Lt. Col. Hosea Friedman, founder of Beit Israel, a pre-Army prep course. “The rift in Israeli society is the greatest danger.”

Gunshots arch over the Jerusalem skyline while classes are in session, and in their down time students armed with camcorders capture massive tanks rumbling by their windows — life as usual during the second Infitada. For teens like Elkana, a child of the Kiryat Arba settlement in Hebron, what’s extraordinary is not the gunfire, but the fact that he is conversing with the likes of Avner, a leftist Kibbutznik. Immersed in community work, academic discussion, and each other, the students at Beit Israel don’t just tackle fundamental questions of their Jewish and Israeli identities, but more importantly, begin to chip away at their preconceived notions of those on “the other side.”

Radically different environments have shaped the young lives depicted in On the Front Line. “On the day of Rabin’s assassination, some of my friends were happy,” recalls Elkana, who grew up in the majority Palestinian city of Hebron, where his family lives within a concrete and barbed wire compound. An aspiring radio jockey, Elkana grew up without television. The only modern entertainment to speak of on his compound is the radio, blanketing the pops of bullets and Molotov cocktails from the Arab settlements on the hillside. “It’s frustrating that the Israeli army doesn’t retaliate enough – that every time we go outside my mom has to call me a million times on my cell phone to make sure I’m alive and safe,” he says.

On the other side of the political divide is the liberal Avner, who grew up on Kibbutz Metzner. “How would you feel,” Elkana asks him, trying to explain his right-wing position, “if you were asked to leave your kibbutz?” Avner calmly replies, “ Part of democracy is always having values colliding each other. Not everything that divides is bad – not everything that unites is good.”

For some students, the course at Beit Israel it is their first time toe to toe with faithful Jews. Secular and religious values collide, in and out of the classroom, and the students struggle to get along or to disagree respectfully. “Some of the boys told the girls they weren’t dressed modestly enough,” says Morit, a secular Kibbutznik. “I don’t know if it scared me, or amused me, or made me feel contempt.”

It is not only religious and political values that are on the front line, but also questions of social class and ethnicity. Whether it is on the settlements, in kibbutzim, or in upper class neighborhoods, many of the students have grown up in elitist environments. Their time at Beit Israel, an ‘urban kibbutz’, where part of the course involves interactions with the locals, is a first exposure to the everyday conditions of poverty. “From the outside, it seems so romantic, the prep course kids playing with the local children,” Morit confesses. “It seems so harmonious and beautiful but its not. I have to remind myself that these are not kids from my kibbutz.”

Other students were already painfully aware of these subtleties. “Here in the neighborhood, people are not stupid. They can tell when people are put off,” explains the sephardic Shlomi, a descendant of the Libyan Jews of Tripoli. “They eventually realize that because of their ethnic background and the shade of their skin, they are treated condescendingly.”

On The Front Line engages the most pressing issues facing Israeli youth today, and offers a glimpse into extraordinarily different young lives. In a year’s worth of dialogue, the students at Beit Israel have found no concrete answers to their questioning, no single means to bridge the religious, political and socioeconomic lines that fracture Israeli society. Yet, they have begun to comprehend each other.