BY ANN S. KIM | OTISFIELD Don’t call Yehoyada Mandeel a peace activist. It’s true that the 26-year-old Israeli is one of the original Seeds of Peace campers, a volunteer at the organization’s Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem and a participant this week in the first leadership summit of camp graduates.
But to Mandeel, a peace activist is someone who might protest an Israeli military checkpoint, someone whose patriotism might not match his own, someone whose vision might not be connected to reality.
Mandeel feels he’s coming from another place, one that includes seven years in the military, the knowledge of what it feels like to be a soldier on a checkpoint and no regrets about his service.
“I am a person who believes peace is possible,” said Mandeel, who goes by the nickname Yo-Yo. “I think peace is the best thing that can happen to Israel and the region.”
These are the experiences Mandeel brings to Otisfield for a meeting of 130 Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and American camp alumni. These “Seeds,” who were teenage campers from 1993 to 1999, have grown up, lived through political tumult and seen optimism about Mideast peace wax and wane over the years.
Some things haven’t changed since the lakeside camp had its first session in 1993.
The Seeds still shout the same camp cheers, Israelis and Arabs still bunk together, and people from opposite sides of a conflict still come together for regular and sometimes emotional dialogue sessions. This week’s leadership summit, organized and designed by Seeds alumni, is part reunion, part professional development and part renewal of their commitment to peace.
The days include workshop tracks organized along four areas of professional interest—business, media, politics and conflict resolution—and a daily lecture on one of those areas. At the end of the week, each workshop group will present a project idea that can benefit Seeds of Peace. The goal is to help these young adults be leaders in their societies.
“What are we going to do with these graduates?” said Tim Wilson, director of the camp and the Jerusalem center. “They’re going to tell us.”
Leena Yahia, 24, thinks the beauty of the organization is that it grows with the participants. Yahia, who was a camper in 1996, started volunteering with the Jerusalem center in 2001 and now works there full time as a program coordinator. Some of her fellow Palestinians don’t understand. Some think she’s devoting herself to a hopeless cause. Others can’t accept that she would choose to work with Israelis.
“I do have friends who think the only bad thing about me is that I work at Seeds of Peace,” she said Sunday. “They didn’t go through what I went through. They didn’t experience what I experienced.”
Among those experiences are ice-breaker and trust games with Israelis and a dialogue session that left her speechless with emotion and another that ended with tears and shouting. Her greatest Seeds lesson has been to question assumptions, she said.
“I hope this week will be a chance for people to reunite,” Yahia said. “Just to remind them they are part of something great and wonderful.”
Mandeel said he cut his Seeds ties in 1996, two years before he entered the military, because of the difficulty of leading a dual life. He reconnected with Seeds this year. Mandeel didn’t want to go into the specifics about his army service.
No one asks the Israelis about what they did in the military, he said, just as he would not ask Palestinians what they did against the occupation. The gossip mill quickly spread the word that he had been an officer, however, and Mandeel feels that although the Palestinian alumni do talk to him, it doesn’t feel the same. He, in turn, knows who worked with Palestinian security forces.
“That’s my life. That’s their life. I wish it were different, but that’s a fact,” he said.
These difficult realities make him more appreciative of the chance to meet and work with Palestinians who can be colleagues in peacemaking. He believes they can work together to change the reality.
“We’re just trying to find common ground,” he said. “I think that’s the strength of Seeds of Peace.”