“It hurt too much to see my best friend fall to the ground after he was shot dead by a Palestinian soldier” – Mahmoud Alarawi, 17, from Gaza.

Mahmoud has been living in a refugee camp in Khanyounis, a municipality in Gaza, for the past 11 years. While he hopes for some sort of a decent future, he spends his days attending a school run by the United Nations, but his favourite moments are the time he spends drawing, developing what he calls a “gift from Allah”.

“We learn very basic stuff at school; we have no computers for example, so it is very difficult to imagine what our future could be like. One day I hope to go to university, but it is very expensive here – it is still a dream that I cannot possibly picture. For the time being I want to continue drawing as it is the only way I can express how I feel and my hopes for the future,” Mahmoud said.

He shows me his drawings that depict the situation in Gaza and particularly the way it affects the people living there. The drawings are filled with emotion – hopelessness, desperation, the wish for peace and freedom.

Mahmoud left the refugee camp earlier this week to travel to Malta to attend a conference for young people from the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

The four-day conference, “A Mediterranean Youth Vision for 2020”, funded by the youth programme of the European Commission, has been organised by the Euro-Med Movement – Malta and the Leo Savir Foundation for a Mediterranean Vision 2020 in the Peres Centre for Peace.

Although the organisers worked hard to get all the necessary permits during the past two months, Mahmoud arrived in Malta two days after he left Gaza – a process that foundation coordinator Ronit Zimmer describes as a “logistical nightmare”.

“After obtaining the necessary permits for flights and transfers, we were still faced with barriers, so we had to make different plans and get permission every time,” says Ms Zimmer.

She added that despite the difficulty to leave Gaza, Mahmoud and other young people from Palestine and Israel did not want to give up on this unique opportunity for them to meet on neutral ground in an atmosphere of peace and dialogue.

This was one of Mahmoud’s very few opportunities to leave the camp and the first time he met young Israelis who are not soldiers fighting him or his family and friends.

“It feels great being able to experience something new away from the camp. I am always on the lookout for such opportunities that may help to bring peace among Israelis and Palestinians, but then I think of everyone else back home, living in a very bad situation and suffering. It is very difficult. We get maybe an hour of electricity and two hours of water every day,” he said.

Some of Mahmoud’s drawings are caricatures and he explained the meaning of each of the ones in the two folders he brought with him. He then offered to draw something impromptu and within minutes he had completed a picture that is very representative of the conflict for people living in Gaza.

The picture with the Mosque in the background shows the wish for peace; the catapult the woman holds in one hand is given little prominence but the Palestinian teenager explained that stones are the only weapons they have, which they use to defend their territory.

At the moment, Mahmoud’s drawings are the only object with which he can look into the future – hoping for peace and freedom – since these are the two things that will give young people like him a better life.

I asked whether he believes that there can ever be peace between the two peoples, who are neighbours but only meet in situations of bloodshed.

Mahmoud insisted that behind the façade of fighting and hatred, there can be a lot of love between Palestinians and Israelis, but “our future is in the hands of our leaders – that is where the main problem lies. In essence, Palestinians and Israelis don’t really hate each other, but the whole political situation brings out the worst-possible scenario.”

Mahmoud’s vision is in fact the same as that of the Peres Centre for Peace – bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in a unique experience in which they can celebrate their differences.

Ms Zimmer said the conference is the foundation’s first project in which young people from the Middle East have been brought together with other people from the Mediterranean, like Spain, Italy and Jordan.

“They’ve learnt a lot and such meetings bring out the similarities between them. Everyone is equal in such an environment and the fact that they don’t really hate each other emerges.

Islam and Judaism, essentially the root of all the problems in the Middle East, are no different from each other. Jews and Muslims both have the same one God.

Differences between the two religions lie in their perceptions and this conference, which brought together young people from the Mediterranean, was also an excellent way of introducing another religion into the picture – Christianity.