The first thing that gets my attention as we enter the village is that most of the tumbledown huts have the green flag of Hamas flying.

I tell myself this is maybe the same as the ubiquitous Obama signs hammered into all the lawns of Brookline, but I am not convinced.

We are in the Bedouin village of Laquiin, just north of what is mellifluously called the Southern Conflict Region. The senior staff and I have piled on a bus early this morning. We are in the field, trying to help children at risk.

I am not ready for the Hamas flag thing. Then I remember, kind of, that Israel is a democracy; there are more Hamas flags allowed to fly here than there are Israeli flags flying in, say, Teheran. I think this is good. But I don’t like the flags. For the staff, this is just another day at the office.

In any event, the politics of this (which I have previously said I will not discuss, except to say, like everyone else in the Middle East, I am sure that I am right and everyone else is wrong) do not matter. Whatever is going on here, it is not the fault of the kids.

Fewer people in the world get a rawer deal than Israeli Arabs — other Arabs think of them as Israelis, and the Israelis, to their discredit, too often treat them like, well, Arabs. They are, literally, caught between Iraq and a hard place.

Toward the bottom of even this food chain is the Bedouin; at the bottom of that food chain are the women and kids. The Bedouin are tribes in transition: they have been nomadic for tens of centuries, but that is now no better a business model than General Motors. Yet, when your job is herding, there are not that many transportable skills to take with you. So many of them have gathered into mud hut villages where they do….not very much. Except fly the flags of Hamas.

Laquiin is such a village. The roads are muddy, electricity and running water are in scarce supply. Camels and goats wander about freely. It smells….funny. There are scrawny chicken or roosters or something cackling around. It is like stepping into a different time.

Ashalim (remember Ashalim? This is a blog about Ashalim) has a pilot program here, called Eschel. I don’t know what Eschel means, either, but it is programs designed to help kids (and their parents) from birth. 

Most money spent on kids at risk is for some form a rehab; if we can proactively help them before they need some kind of intervention or rehab, the theory is that we are ahead of the game. Works for me.

Our first visit is a pre-school area, where a half dozen kids are in different corners by themselves, trying to figure out the business end of a crayon, with the moms equally separate. It is almost eeriy quiet – turns out that in parts of the culture, women are not encouraged to speak to each other. So they don’t exactly know how.

I am sometimes concerned on visits like this that they bring out of a bunch of show babies and stunt kids, to show what a great job they are doing. These are not show babies; they are kids trying to figure out how to play.

Early schooling here is traditionally done at home, and the schools that exist for older kids are pretty sporadic. We hope to get the kids to a base level of reading and socialization before they enter that grinder.

It has taken a few years to get this program to its current state. There is suspicion among the women, and many are forbidden by their husbands from participating. Gradually, participation has increased, and I even see a dad drop off his kid, looking a little sheepish.

I meet a woman who calls herself the first Bedouin social worker. I think she speaks the truth, but she has the body of a linebacker, and I am not going to arm wrestle her over the statement. She has been trained by Ashalim.

My normal use for social workers is to season them well, cook until well done, and serve to someone I don’t like. But this woman is a hero – the first in her family to actually have a say in choosing her husband (more than half the marriages, I am told, are still arranged on the biblical ‘I’ll give you two sheep and a dog for your daughter’ basis). Her husband is a member of Knesset, which gives her a platform for the changes she espouses. So does ESCHEL.

She has struck a chord with the women I see in a center for slightly older kids; they are talking freely, laughing even, and the kids are playing with each other. A 21st Century moment occurs, when the moms, dressed in traditional clothing, are answering questions for us. A cell phone goes off, and each woman reaches into her bag to see if it is hers.

This is true cultural change. It will take a long time, and will go over many bumps in the road. Parts of it will not work, other parts may run out of funding before they have a chance to work. But there are steps forward, concrete baby steps, as my friend Bobby likes to say.

These people are clearly not sure what to make of us. We are beings from another planet, but I think they can figure out that we’re there to help.

Maybe they’ll be fewer Hamas flags next time I visit.