Israeli, Palestinian youth "just want to have fun"

TEL AVIV/RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov 23 (Reuters)

Both young and articulate with a penchant for cappuccino, Israeli Noa Tamir-Helfgott and Palestinian Nelly Soudah share common goals: leave the Middle East conflict behind and live a normal life.

As Israel and the Palestinians head to Annapolis, Maryland for a U.S.-led Middle East conference, Tamir-Helfgott, 28, longs for a peace deal that will free her husband from annual army reserve duties and remove the fear of suicide bombings.

Soudah, 24, wants a Palestinian state that will ensure the freedom she says she's denied by Israel's occupation of the West Bank, and hopes one day she can travel without authorities "freaking out" when they see her Palestinian passport.

Born into a conflict that is now more than twice as old as they are, the way the lives of these young people unfold will have an impact on generations to come around the world.

"We are normal people, we just want to have fun," said Tamir-Helfgott, a TV producer, in a trendy cafe in Israel's secular metropolis on the Mediterranean coast. "Palestinians go through shit, but on the other hand Israel has to defend itself so we can sit here and have coffee in Tel Aviv."

Soudah works for an education aid organisation in Ramallah, the Palestinians' administrative centre in the occupied West Bank. She also wants to live a "normal" life.

But her future looks dismal as Israeli travel restrictions shut down opportunities for work, study and leisure, and she is plotting her escape to the United States.

"It's like something is choking me ... and as an ambitious young person who wants to achieve something, it's getting very hard," she said in a Ramallah cafe where the Western fashions, and the frothy milk coffees, differ little from Tel Aviv.

As an undergraduate, Soudah was unable to complete her final exams because of an Israeli curfew, and says she limits travel within the West Bank to avoid long waits at military roadblocks.

She also accuses Palestinian leaders of squandering cash and failing ordinary people, and says even if peace talks yield a Palestinian state, she would think hard before opting to stay. "I hope our Authority would ... work for the wellbeing of the people," she said. "If it was a good government, of course some stuff would change ... It would be much calmer."

Tamir-Helfgott also flirted with leaving her homeland. A two-year stint in Australia gave her a taste of the "no worries" lifestyle, but she says it also taught her to appreciate Israel, despite the 60-year-old conflict with the Palestinians.

"I realised we have so much that is good here, (despite) the insecurity, the army and all the bad stuff," she said.

Both young women lament the way the conflict has sown distrust between the two peoples. Tamir-Helfgott, who has no Palestinian friends, was surprised at an enriching encounter with a Palestinian taxi driver in Australia and hopes for more personal interaction between the two sides.

Sadouh said her Christian family used to visit Jewish friends for Passover, but relationships with Israelis always seem to be "interrupted" by political issues: "They believe in what their state is saying and I believe that we are occupied," she said. "So I don't know where we go forward with that."