Habibi Discussion

In my group's discussion last week, we talked a lot about the differences between the book Habibi and the documentary we watched in class a couple weeks ago. Because the experiences of the characters in the book (Liyana and Omer) were vastly different from the kids in the documentary, we first wondered if the author of Habibi was an insider and a credible source. After realizing that she is both of these things, it was hard for me to grasp the discrepancies between Liyana and Omer's friendship and the friendships of the children in the documentary. It seemed a lot easier for Liyana and Omer to become friends; they didn't grow up hating one another because of their race, religion, ethnicity, as the children in the documentary did. I wonder: Are these just very different experiences? Or were circumstances in Israel vastly different in the setting of Habibi than they were in the time of the documentary?