Could you envision the Patriots and the Loyalists using their common love of tea as a springboard for colonial tranquility? How about the freed slaves and former slave-owners using their knowledge of plantations as a means to mollify the bitter tension in the Jim Crow south? Didn’t think so.

Now, try to picture 10- and 11-year-old Israeli and Arab children harmoniously playing soccer together, sharing their love of the “world’s game,” and exploring bi-national teamwork in order to take important steps toward peace in a divided Israel. Believe it or not, this actually has happened — and will continue to for years to come.

Soccer for Peace, a New York-based nonprofit organization founded three years ago by Israeli-born Ori Winitzer, held its third annual five-day soccer camp in the Wadi Ara Region of Israel last month between July 1 and July 5 for 50 Israeli and Arab children. The organization “use[s] soccer as a platform for Israelis and Arabs to interact,” the organization’s executive director, Deborah Clifford, says.

What Soccer for Peace accomplishes, though, transcends blissful interaction in its basic form: It fosters an environment in which the children can learn about each other, both personally and culturally.

And these children are going to be brought together even further, as Soccer for Peace is set to launch a year-long program, most likely by September.

This after-school and weekend program will closely emulate the organization’s past summer camps, and will provide an interactive experience for the same 50 children who participated in the camp this July.

Although soccer will be the focus, stressing unity, as important will be the supplementary dialogue and interactive activities, which will be held once a week. The idea of these two auxiliary facets will be to promote open-mindedness among young, malleable minds, reduce aggressive behavior, create common cultural bridges to unify the campers, and provide a catalyst for fun.

A notable activity held during the camp this summer was a day trip to a mosque and a synagogue. Ms. Clifford said that during this trip a lot of the campers “learned a lot and noticed similarities between the religions.”

Similarities … what a mature observation for 10- and 11- year-old children to make.

How mature? Enough so that their country must learn from it.

As it stands, the Middle East is not an environment celebrating cultural similarities. It is, in fact, quite the opposite: an environment celebrating hatred, and one that reeks of the bowels of dissension.

We watch as Israel teeters on the brink of possible catastrophe with Hamas rising to power and with Iran looming as a nuclear threat. In such a time, all Israeli citizens — Arab and Israeli — must be unified in order to ensure the solidity of their state. And this is where the children have a head start.

Other kids that have a similar head start are those that have been touched by Seeds of Peace, founded in 1993, which also attempts to bridge cultural gaps among more than 3,500 young people from conflicting regions around the globe. The organization, which does most of its interactive work in Maine, has a program specifically focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Advanced Coexistence Program, in which, as the Seeds of Peace Web site states, “Two hundred Israeli and Palestinian Seeds are coming together for weekly meetings … in four different locations.” Although I have nothing but praise for Seeds of Peace, I believe coming together for weekly meetings cannot yield quite the same results as coming together as a team on a soccer field.

Having grown up married to a soccer ball — we may split up at times, but we shall never divorce — I can attest firsthand to soccer’s ability to fuse 11 people easily into one. I understand how the game can open one’s eyes and connect people to others we would never imagine connecting with. For me, it was to teammates who were Colombian, Ghanaian, Jamaican, Albanian and to our opposition who were Turkish, Afghani, Italian, Greek, Mexican, you name it.

Soccer serves to bring people together. To my teammates and me, it did not matter what our ethnicity or race was, for when we bled together, we all bled red; working together to achieve victory was all that mattered.

Reflecting on my years of travel soccer, I remember flashes of different moves, scattered scenes of foreign towns, and a montage of balls whooshing as they smacked the back of the net. But what return to me most vividly are the scenes of my team on the sidelines, laughing, crying, and displaying its camaraderie.

It is time we Americans try this novel approach to the conflict in Israel and attempt to combat noticeable differences between Israelis and Arabs by helping them embrace ostensible similarities. We must facilitate their ability to witness the other group’s humanity and allow for them to see the “human face of their enemy.” This is why Soccer for Peace should be seen as a pioneer, as we must invest more energy in interactive, culturally informative programs like it.

Ms. Clifford says that currently the goal of Soccer for Peace is to add an age group each year, but that it is all based on funding. For those of us who are looking for ways to support Israel, for those of us looking for a peaceful means of achieving placidity, it is time to help fund programs like Soccer for Peace.

But no matter what we do, for the 50 children in Soccer for Peace, they will be together with a ball at their feet and a smile on their faces until they are 17, when the Israeli children are required to enlist in the army.

We can only hope that when these children part ways, they have learned something from a program that promoted “working toward coexistence.”

There is nothing Israel needs more.

Mr. Helene, a rising senior at the Packer Collegiate Institute, can be reached at dahelene@packer.edu. For more on Soccer for Peace, visit soccerforpeace.com.