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TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors Private Peacemaking USIP-Assisted Peacemaking Projects of Nonprofit Organizations Part III: Interaction Among Young People Seeds of Peace in the Middle East by John Wallach Seeds of Peace exists to fill a void: addressing a human dimension that governments ignore. Peace treaties are negotiated by governments and signed by presidents or prime ministers. However, this does not mean that true peace subsequently exists. More often than not, there is no practical basis to convert dreams into reality. In fact, while treaties themselves are said to “go into force,” little is being done to change the climate in which ordinary people work, study, and play. Creating a secure environment in which the next generation can experience peace is the aim of The Seeds of Peace International Camp for Conflict Resolution. Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Tunisian, and Gulf State teenagers are encouraged to enroll in the program. Schools throughout the Middle East nominate students who have both a working knowledge of English and proven leadership potential. They write an essay, “Why I Want To Make Peace,” and are interviewed individually as well as in groups. The final selection process, which is administered by each government, is designed to produce a widely varied group of young people which reflects the social, political, and economic composition of each society. Through their participation, governments help send the signal that the involvement of ordinary people in the peace process is as vital as that of the governments themselves. The Seeds of Peace goal is to create a safe place—a 150-acre camp along the shores of Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Maine—where teenagers who have grown up perceiving the “other” as a permanent enemy can begin to feel comfortable with their adversary. Of course, Seeds of Peace tries to achieve more, trying to encourage the next generation to make the personal investment in forming lasting friendships with individuals they are often taught to hate. We focus on 13 to 15-year-olds because they are still young enough to experience profound psychological change, yet mature enough to understand the importance and difficulty of the challenges they face. Creating a secure physical environment is the first part of the challenge. Because a major source of the conflict is territorial, it is important to conduct the program on neutral ground. The American government has a long track record of helping to mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict; therefore, the program is designed to take place in the United States. Moreover, the uniquely American institution of summer camp is ideal for experiencing coexistence. Maine provides natural beauty, helping to reinforce the concept of a “return to basics,” while simultaneously fostering the excitement of creating a new community, a virtual “nation of peace.” Bunking and eating together, and a carefully programmed schedule of swimming, canoeing, soccer, basketball, street hockey, drama, crafts, archery, and other activities involve the campers in cross-national team-building. These exercises encourage acceptance of the “other” as non-threatening and allow for the potential to see the “other” as a friend. Creating a personal support system is the second part of the challenge. The personal environment is as important as the physical setting. A team of counselors and facilitators is carefully selected on the basis of relevant conflict resolution experience. They train together in the week preceding camp to establish trust and confidence in one another —requisite to a stable foundation for building the Seeds of Peace community with the campers. The heart of the program is the daily conflict resolution seminar, called a “coexistence” session. Trained facilitators spend 90 minutes guiding intensely emotional exchanges which are occasionally accompanied by a flow of tears. There are twelve coexistence sessions every day, six in the morning and six in the evening. They are often led by Arab and Israeli facilitators paired to function as role models and to help reinforce a common objective: learning the listening and debating skills that will enable two hostile peoples to respect one another. Once the youngsters have relaxed in their new environment, and have accepted the possibility of friendship, the coexistence sessions become vital to achieving the psychological and emotional breakthroughs that allow them to bond. The youngsters initially need to vent their feelings of victimization and injustice and to voice their prejudices and preconceptions, no matter how spiteful, before any catharsis can take place. The stories of suffering that are shared in the intimacy of the camp lodge permit the grief of both peoples to be heard. This is the first step in the healing process. Only when both groups stop competing over who is suffering the most—and understand that all are victims—can the work of building a new basis for coexistence begin. For example, almost every Israeli has been conditioned to believe that the Holocaust is the ultimate defining experience of the Jewish people. Before you can expect an Israeli to empathize with Palestinian suffering, the Israeli must have the opportunity to sensitize Arab participants in the coexistence sessions to the roots of Jewish insecurity. For Palestinians, the creation of Israel—which deprived them of their lands—is due entirely to the Holocaust, without which Palestinians do not believe they would have suffered the loss of their land. They were clearly not responsible for the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust; therefore, they do not accept it as a legitimate Israeli argument in the competition of suffering. Yet for the Israeli to be able to open up, he or she must be allowed the opportunity to explain that the Holocaust was not merely murder on a grand scale but the systematic extermination or genocide of an entire people. The Israeli needs to convey his ingrained fear that the Jews remain a persecuted people—witness the latest bus bombing—and that only the shield of nuclear weapons and regional superpower status provides the guarantee that there will not be another Holocaust. Once a teenager has had this opportunity, he or she may be more prepared to listen to the suffering of others. Similarly, before you can expect Palestinians to empathize with the profound fear of Israelis, they must have the chance to share their own often heart-wrenching personal histories. This means that 14-year-old Mohammed, who still bears the scars from beatings by Israeli soldiers and the fragment of a bullet in his shinbone, needs to share the saga of seeing his friends shot during an anti-Israeli demonstration. “Excuse me, you want to know why we throw stones?” he said in a coexistence meeting. “Because I see my lands, our lands, Palestinian lands stolen every day, every day. I see my city become settlements every day. I saw my two friends killed. I saw blood on the ground. I saw my aunt die in the ambulance because the soldiers stopped the ambulance. When they shot me on my back and foot, and bullets in my leg, what can you do if you are Palestinian and that’s happening to you? What can you do, watch or throw stones?” This is only one example of the intensity of exchanges that take place every day over a period of three weeks under the watchful eyes of the facilitators. Their goal is for these youngsters to bond with each other even if they cannot agree on very much. “I am happy for the fact that outside of the coexistence sessions we are still friends,” said Noa. Indeed, it is largely because they have learned to hear each other, even if they don’t like what they hear, that they remain friends on the playing fields. Their sense of personal achievement stems from the fact that they are able to disagree, often vehemently, and yet maintain the sense of unity that defines the new group they have formed. Nancy, an Egyptian, said: “I never would have thought that I would share with Israelis my roses and thorns [a good and a bad experience in camp], pray with them before I sleep in my bunk, eat with them from the same main dish three times a day and share our differences and similarities. A friendship between me and an Egyptian is strong because of what we have in common. But between me and an Israeli it’s strong because we were able to overcome our differences and still admire each other for them.” Dan, a 13-year-old Israeli, put it boldly when he addressed an adult audience. “Picture this, an Israeli kid, a Palestinian kid, an Egyptian kid, and a Jordanian kid sleep next to each other. They share their food, the soap, the toothpaste, everything. They share their life. I want you to tell me if that’s a dream or if that’s reality. If you think it’s a dream, come to my bunk and see.” Dr. Stanley Walzer, former chief of child psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Boston and a staff member, explained that for Dan, “the biggest accomplishment is not that he has accepted the Palestinian right to a state, which I think many kids have, but just coexistence in the most literal sense of the word. He is coexisting with Palestinians and he is proud of it. It means something to him.” There are, of course, many limitations. Seeds of Peace now has a full-time coordinator in Jerusalem whose responsibilities include helping our graduates publish a monthly newspaper, The Olive Branch, and arranging as many reunions, in homes and schools, as possible. But the lack of funds for a more ambitious follow-up program is a major handicap. Many youngsters feel abandoned when they return home. Leen, a Jordanian, said that after she made a presentation to her class about Seeds of Peace, and was walking down the hall to her Arabic class, “this guy from the ninth grade made eye contact with me, and said, ¥Traitor!’ If I had time, I would have stopped and talked to the guy. But I was in a hurry for my next lesson so I gave the guy a dangerous look and walked away. It hurt to see someone say that, but I should expect it when some people are extremists.” A Palestinian teenager wrote that when she returned to Gaza, her friends simply could not believe that she had slept in the same bunk with Israelis “and they didn’t kill you.” The computer era, however, has helped these youngsters maintain a virtual community after they return home. Access to the Internet affords them the privacy of being able to maintain relationships with the “other” without their immediate friends or family being fully aware of it. More importantly, the Internet allows our graduates to share their deepest feelings as they did at camp, in the immediate aftermath of terrorist incidents and other acts aimed at destroying the peace process. But where e-mail communication can easily take place across borders, arranging reunions in the region is much harder. Obtaining entry permits for West Bank Palestinians, or visas for Jordanians and Egyptians to visit friends in Israel, may take weeks or months and requires fortitude to battle the bureaucracy. Our aim, moreover, is to encourage other bordering nations, particularly Syria and Lebanon, to participate in the program. That, too, is almost impossible in the current political climate. The Damascus government believes that such people-to-people exchanges, even among teenagers, are goodwill gestures that reward Israel for its continuing occupation of the Golan Heights. Syria will not join, nor allow its Lebanese ally to participate, until it regains sovereignty over the Golan Heights. What, then, have we learned in the first five years of Seeds of Peace? First, to remain independent. Accepting official government funding would seriously compromise our integrity. For example, Arab governments do not support exposing these youngsters to the pain of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Yet it is important for Arab teenagers to see the museum because many of them have never been taught about the Holocaust and consequently do not accept the genocide—despite the searing personal accounts they heard from their Israeli peers during coexistence. Similarly, the Israeli government objects to our permitting Palestinian teenagers to say they are from Palestine—even though we insist that the Palestinians make clear they mean an as-yet undeclared state of Palestine that will coexist with Israel. It is also important for the Palestinian youngsters—despite Israeli objections—to have their flag raised, and to sing their national anthem, when the flags are raised, and anthems are sung, of all the participating nations. We have learned many practical lessons as well, for example, that coexistence sessions are more successful if they are facilitated by a team, preferably two opposites in gender, race, or nationality. That way the two can check each other while simultaneously demonstrating that opposites can work together. But the most important lesson we have learned is never to underestimate the courage and conviction of the next generation of Arabs and Israelis. Having had the coexistence experience that enabled them to deal with their fears and prejudices, many of these young people may now be willing to fight as hard for peace as their fathers fought in war. Among our youngsters, and their families, there are signs of a willingness to take the required risks. A Palestinian father was publicly warned against sending his daughter to Seeds of Peace during the weekly sermon at his Hebron mosque. He refused to be intimidated, getting up several hours early to speed his daughter to the airport to catch the plane. There are other examples. On September 25 and 26, 1996 when rioting followed the Israeli opening of an archaeological tunnel in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian girl braved Israeli bullets to get to the home of an Israeli friend she had met at camp. They stayed up all night arguing, and did not agree on anything, but it was comforting for the Israeli that her Palestinian friend had risked her life to get there. Success, in short, cannot be measured by headlines. What these youngsters are achieving is barely notable in newspapers. It is small print: a group of Israeli teenagers taking a teary-eyed Palestinian from Jericho to see the house in Ein Kerem, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, where her father was born. It is a proud Palestinian father taking an Israeli friend of his son to see “liberated” Jericho, and telling the inquisitive Palestinian police, “I am only showing Jericho to my two sons.” There are hundreds more stories like these. In the final analysis, our success or failure must be measured by the degree to which our Israeli and Palestinian graduates remain in touch with each other when the situation deteriorates in the region. That is when they are most susceptible to resuming old habits and falling prey to propagandists. The chat session has now become a weekly event. Regular e-mail communication also continues. Dozens of messages are sent every day, some filled with pain and anger, others with compassion, reassurance, and encouragement. Many are about the normal, everyday things that kids have to deal with: school, friends, family. They convey a genuine caring about the Seeds of Peace community. “People,” e-mailed Yazeed from Jordan. “We have to communicate. We have to know each other even better. We have to do what our leaders are not doing—and will not do if we don’t push them. All of us are so very lucky to be a part of the Seeds of Peace family. Please continue fighting for what you believe in.” TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors
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