BY JOHNATHAN RIEHL | Almost 10 years ago on the White House lawn, President Bill Clinton looked on proudly as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, signaling what many hoped would be the beginning of a new era of peace in the Middle East. But with the collapse of what became known as the Oslo accords three years ago, virtually everything from those optimistic days has been swept under a resurgent tide of communal warfare.
Everything except for one innovative program that brings together Israeli, Palestinian and Arab children for a summer of rare personal contact and understanding.
Thanks to strong bipartisan congressional support and some $1.5 million in funding over the past three years, the Seeds of Peace program is still going strong. The money supplements private donations to help meet the program’s $5.4 million annual budget.
This year, the program will host about 450 young Israelis and Arabs at its camp facilities in Otisfield, Maine, and Jerusalem, where they get to know their enemies up close and then return to their respective communities as ambassadors for peaceful coexistence. The Middle East youngsters spend three and a half weeks at the Maine camp, where trained facilitators put them through leadership courses, discussions and activities that foster mutual trust and teamwork. The campers also spend three days in Washington, D.C., where they meet the president, the secretary of State and congressional leaders.
While most of the campers use English as their common language, the facilitators speak Arabic and Hebrew to clear up any misunderstandings of language.
The program is especially important these days as President Bush tries to revive the peace process with a new approach, known as the Middle East “road map,” said Aaron D. Miller, a former State Department diplomat who specialized in the Middle East peace process and who now heads the Seeds of Peace program.
“For an American organization to have bipartisan support on the Hill is extremely important,” Miller said. “It’s important domestically to navigate the land mines that are strewn all over the Arab-Israeli issue, and it’s important overseas.”
Congress, he notes, carries an “enormous influence and image abroad.”
Those land mines have been exploding recently both with renewed violence in the region and with pro-Israel lawmakers challenging Bush’s commitment to the road map. Israel’s supporters view the plan as unfair to the Jewish state.
‘Makes a Big Difference’
“Seeds of Peace makes a big difference up here on the Hill,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., one of five Arab-American lawmakers in the House. Issa says the program is especially important for members who support Israel but who do not necessarily fall in line behind the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby that hews to the hard-line views of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., who has supported Seeds of Peace from his seat on the House Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee, says Bush’s renewed interest in the peace process should spur more interest in the program.
“As the effort to bring peace to the Middle East continues, the importance of programs like Seeds of Peace becomes ever greater,” Knollenberg said. “True peace will not be possible with just a treaty, but will require changed attitudes as well. That’s what Seeds of Peace offers.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, agrees. “Many of these teenagers will grow up to become political and intellectual leaders in their home countries,” she said.
Collins is among 35 senators from both parties who signed a “Dear Colleague” letter this March urging the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee to support the program in its fiscal 2004 appropriations. A similar House letter has garnered the signatures of 73 lawmakers.
Founded in 1993 by the late John Wallach, a journalist and author, Seeds of Peace has cultivated an influential contingent of congressional supporters who have circulated similar letters each year since 1999 to get specific language for the program inserted in official appropriations reports. Before that, the program was funded by private donations.
“This was an initiative that Seeds undertook in particular,” said Miller. He adds that “dealing with Congress and interesting the Hill in an issue takes enormous time and energy.”
In this case, it appears to have paid off.
“They make a really compelling case,” said one Democratic aide. “This is a situation where a good group comes to Congress with a good program. This is a case where the process works.”
In the House, funding for Seeds of Peace has come about through soft earmarks in the Foreign Operations appropriations bill, supplemented by language in the committee’s report. E
Each fiscal year since 2000, the report has commended Seeds of Peace for its “commitment to helping future leaders of the Middle East and other regions … to overcome prejudice, fear, and other obstacles to peace.”
Funding, however, has not fully met the committee’s recommendations of $1 million annually. Over the past three years, the program received a total of about $1.5 million.
Total Still Unclear
This year’s conference report on the budget resolution contains similar language citing Seeds of Peace as one of several international conflict resolution programs for which a total of $5 million has been recommended. The exact amount that Seeds of Peace will receive is not yet clear, in part because soft-earmarked funding often takes months to be delivered to recipients. But with Bush’s renewed focus on the Middle East, Andrew J. Natsios, administrator for the Agency for International Development (AID), said there is an increased interest in the type of leadership training promoted by Seeds of Peace, and therefore an increase in funding is warranted.
“AID has been taking a strong interest in conflict resolution in general,” Natsios said. “It is an issue that the agency as a whole is looking at very closely.”
Adds Miller: “One thing I can tell you is that as I look at the wreckage of Oslo in the past few years, one of the reasons we did not have more success is that our government did not invest more in these critically important people-to-people programs.
“I’m not talking about pie-in-the-sky, ‘kumbaya’ programs, but programs that call for a tremendous amount of work at involving people,” he said.
New Violence in Israel
However, incidents such as the Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem Wednesday that killed at least 16 people make the Seeds of Peace program seem powerless to effect an end to the communal violence.
“It is clear there are people in the Middle East who hate peace,” said Bush after the bombing.
But Seeds of Peace supporters in Congress see the program as the only symbol of hope in an otherwise grim Middle East landscape.
Said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., a longtime champion of the program: “In a world torn apart by racial and ethnic strife, the success of Seeds of Peace reminds us that the hatred and divisions of the past do not have to shape our future.”