BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK -- Even in a group of orphans and children from troubled homes, two-year-old Ahmed sticks out as the most needy.

Seeing a stranger in the hallway, he grabs a pant leg and clambers up to be held, then hugs as tight as he can to resist being put back down.

Though he is too young to understand why, Ahmed wears the Palestinian equivalent of the mark of Cain.

His father was alleged to be a collaborator, the dirtiest word in the Palestinian vocabulary, and unless he is very lucky, his entire life will be shaped by that fact.

The small, skinny, dark-eyed boy, and his sister, Lilliana, 4, attend a daycare in Bethlehem run by an order of Catholic nuns, the Daughters of Charity.

Inside the stately hallways of the century-old institution, no one ever mentions their family history.

Outside, they are not so lucky.

"The other children say: 'The son of a collaborator, you bastard,' " said Elisabeth Abu Labani, a lay co-ordinator of education at the daycare.

"Children are afraid to talk to them. It is a kind of black shadow. 'He is unclean,' they say. 'He is a collaborator.' "

As a result, one of the more important lessons the children need is in self-respect.

"It's not as important for them to say 'two plus two equals four, as it is to say 'my name is Mathilde, I have black hair and I am proud of my T-shirt.' "

The nuns, who also run an orphanage called the Holy Family Children's Home, have created a refuge for the outcasts of the troubled society that surrounds them: abandoned children, unwed mothers, the children of suicide bombers and collaborators.

"All the troubles come to us," one of the nuns, Sister Munira, said.

Every year, hundreds of Palestinians, mainly men, are accused of collaborating with the Israelis, usually by helping to finger Palestinian militants for arrest or even assassination.

Each of the accused meets a different fate, but the story of Ahmed's father is not unusual.

Nearly two years ago, Mohammed Daifulla, then 26, was denounced as an informer in the Israeli assassination of a member of Bethlehem's notorious Abayad clan, a gang of car thieves and small-time hoods who have reinvented themselves as Palestinian freedom fighters.

Mr. Daifulla had been convicted by a Palestinian court and was in a Bethlehem jail when the Israelis invaded the town last spring.

In the confusion, someone butchered him and threw his body in the street on a garbage heap.

His children, Ahmed and Lilliana, now live with their grandmother, Huda Daifulla, who still hopes against hope that she can establish her son's innocence, and end the family's misery.

"I want the innocence proven most of all for the sake of the children," she said, sitting in her living room, surrounded by a halo of cigarette smoke, with a U.S. soap opera flickering on the television nearby.

"I don't want them brought up being told their father was a collaborator.

"The people at the daycare have a great conscience," Mrs. Daifulla said. "They say these children have nothing to do with this situation. The daycare protects them. They will not be afraid."

It is hard for outsiders to imagine the suffering that is visited on the innocent relatives when a supposed collaborator is identified.

After her son's arrest, Mrs. Daifulla said, relatives took out a newspaper advertisement disowning her entire family.

Her daughter-in-law, Iman, Ahmed and Lilliana's mother, still comes to see her children every day, but her parents are pressuring her to abandon them and remarry.

"Lilliana refuses to go [to her grandparents' home] because her grandmother hits her and calls her the daughter of a collaborator," Mrs. Daifulla said. "Iman cries all the time, wanting to be with her children.

She says she will commit suicide if she cannot come and live with them."

The nuns have tried to create a refuge from all this, at least for the children.

There isn't much that can be done for the mothers, Mrs. Abu Labani said, beyond caring for their offspring.

"At least she can see her children be part of a group," something often not possible outside, she said.

The teachers are careful never to give any hint of a child's background, especially since children of suicide bombers or men killed fighting the Israelis may be in the same class.

Every one of them, Mrs. Abu Labani said, is struggling with a burden of someone else's making.