BY NORA BOUSTANY | Aaron D. Miller remains focused—all 6-foot-3 of this disappointed but not dispirited Middle East peacemaker.
Earlier this month, Miller became the latest retiree among the cadre of State Department officers who’ve spent careers trying to resolve the conflict between Jews and Arabs. But he didn’t abandon the quest. His new life, he announced, would be as president of Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit organization that pursues conciliation on a personal level.
For the last 10 years, the U.S.-based group has brought Palestinian and Arab teenagers from various countries together with Israeli counterparts at a summer camp in Maine and in follow-up seminars. The goal is to overcome inhibitions and prejudices among the young people, and to work out common understandings.
Just back from Jerusalem, Miller said in a conversation at his home in Chevy Chase this week that he’d never encountered such despair and lack of direction on both sides of the conflict there.
As the skies outside were icy gray, Miller maintained a sense of serenity. With brown eyes intense, he spelled out his philosophy. “Without changing the attitudes of the [Middle East] public, we are going to have agreements, not peace agreements,” he said.
When the Seeds of Peace president, John Wallach, died last summer, the group’s board approached Miller to replace him. Miller said the offer made him look long and hard at the last decade, its successes and lost opportunities. In the end he said yes.
Miller’s real fear was that a whole generation of young Palestinians and Israelis was going to be lost to the hatreds and violence of the last 21/2 years. But getting to them would be no easy task.
Miller recalls what Shawk Tarawneh, a Jordanian who had taken part in a Seeds camp, once told him: “In order to make peace with your enemy, you have to make war with yourself.”
“This is not about a bunch of kids singing ‘Kumbaya’ in the woods—it involves enormous risks,” said Miller, 53, as he sat in the foyer of his home, decorated with inlaid boxes from Damascus and cushions embroidered by Yemeni Jews, Jordanian Arabs and Palestinians. “This is not some kind of morality play, with good and bad guys. It is a question of competing injustices where real people with real needs are in conflict.”
Born to well-to-do Jewish parents in Cleveland, Miller could have opted for a life of ease and convention.
As a student, he had a passion for 19th-century American history and for years thought he would become a professor. But in 1972, enrolled at the University of Michigan, he began questioning his choices, wondering if they were relevant. He switched to Middle East studies, got married the following year and took off for the region with his wife, Lindsey, and 200 books.
He was already versed in the Jewish experience in the region. His introduction to the other side’s perception began with a friendship the couple formed with a Palestinian from the village of Batir, who worked in the snack shop of a youth hostel. On Fridays, they would all take long hikes to other Palestinian townships. Such carefree pursuits were possible in those days.
Then came the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. It was a transformative experience for Miller.
Until then, he’d seen himself as an analyst, dealing in probabilities. After the war, “I wanted to deal with possibilities. I wanted to become part of an active process.” Two of his professors, the late Richard Mitchell and Gerald F. Linderman, both retired Foreign Service officers, helped persuade him to make the switch.
The third person who influenced him, he said, was his mother, whose life had demonstrated that once you come to the end of it, you had better say the world was a better place because you were there.
He went into the Foreign Service and figured again and again over the years in U.S. efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. Today, there is no shortage of praise for him from both sides.
“He never allowed failure to have him change course,” said Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmi.
Former secretary of state James A. Baker III said he relied heavily on experts such as Miller who knew the nuances of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And former national security adviser Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger described Miller as “the Energizer bunny” of the peace process, who brought “extraordinary institutional memory, creativity and commitment.”
His old professor, Linderman, who remained in touch over the years, noted that Miller always rejected history as “the biography of great men.” Instead, Linderman said, Miller saw “a broader panorama of the problems of all people’s history. He approached problems from the perspective of a shared humanity.”
Palestinian teenagers such as Tarawneh who go through the Seeds program expose themselves to criticism and scorn in their communities, as do Israeli teenagers, at a time when bloodshed and killings are the order of the day. Miller knows the kind of pressure these young people feel, because he has been there.
He and former peace negotiators Daniel Kurzer and Dennis Ross were once accused by other Jews of being “Jewish Benedict Arnolds.” At the same time, many Arabs assumed their heritage made them biased in favor of Israel.
“Seeds of Peace brings people together on a level so that they see each other as human beings while they are surrounded by carnage,” Berger said. “And if there is ever to be a resurrection of some kind of reconciliation, it will build on those ties, person-to-person, kid-to-kid, built by John Wallach and now by Aaron. He is the perfect man for that job.”