John Wallach reports on the unique ‘Seeds of Peace’ initiative which brings together Arab and Israeli children to build friendship and communication in the place of hate and mistrust

Making peace

‘Before I came here, I felt like I was walking in a dark room, I had opinions without pictures. Seeds of Peace is like a door out of the dark, I’ve learned there are fences of superstition among all of us. We have old opinions of each other and we’re here to destroy those fences. The bravery peace needs is not any less than the bravery war needs.’ (Shouq Tarawneh, Jordanian student aged 15)

The same theme was echoed by Laith Aafeh, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian who noted that ‘making peace is much harder than making war. It takes time. It takes care. It takes patience.”

Laith and Shouq had just spent their summer living, eating and sleeping in wooden bunks with the first Israelis that either of them had ever met. Laith was among the initial group of forty-six Arabs and Israelis who became a footnote to history on September 13 1993 when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yasser Arafat signed, in their presence, the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles on the South Lawn of the White House. President Clinton told the distinguished audience that included Presidents George Bush and Jimmy Carter and former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker: ‘In this entire assembly, no one is more important than the group of Israeli and Arab children who are seated with us today.’

Indeed, these children have succeeded where their elders have failed for generations before them: they spent a month making peace with each other, real peace, at a summer camp in Maine. But the task was not easy for them. It had been an emotional roller coaster that was at times painful but ultimately exhilarating.

The Seeds of Peace programme

Seeds of Peace, now in its fourth year, brings thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old teenagers from opposing sides of the conflict in the Middle East and the Balkans to a summer camp in Maine where they get to know one another in a relaxed and supportive environment. The aim is a simple one: to build friendships between teenagers who have been taught all their lives to hate and distrust one another, and to use these new friendships to foster communication, negotiation and interchange so that they can better understand each other’s perspectives on the important issues that divide them.

Seeds of Peace takes up where governments leave off, attempting to fulfil the hope of peace treaties that are signed but that remain essentially pieces of paper. Seeds of Peace carries out a task that governments are neither equipped for nor very interested in: transforming the hopes for peace into a new reality on the ground among populations that have been taught for decades to distrust and hate on another.

The programme fosters education, discussion and emotional growth through both competitive and co-operative activities and emphasizes the importance of developing non-violent mechanisms of resolving conflict. Int he three years of its operation over three hundred male and female teenagers have come from Israel, Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), Egypt, Jordan, Morocoo, and, for the first time last summer, from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Campers are selected in a competitive process; the only prerequisite is that they must have a working knowledge of English. Initially each candidate is recommended by his or her school and then asked to write an essay on the following subject: ‘Why I Want to Make Peace with the Enemy.’ In Israel, Jordan and Morocco, the essays are judged by the Ministry of Education. In Egypt, Palestine, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are judged by a mixed panel of officials and private citizens.

The final step of the selection process is a personal interview. Candidates are awarded extra points if they demonstrate skill in speaking English. Points are also awarded to children from refugee camps or other underprivileged backgrounds.

The programme begins with a two-day orientation at The John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. There, Dr Leonard Hausman, the director of the Centre for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East, conducts a seminar with the youngsters. Each of them is asked to speak about the ‘bad things that have happened to the good people they know’. One after another, the youngsters tell tales of friends or even relatives who have been killed in the Arab-Israeli or Bosnian conflict. The stories are harrowing, often producing tears among the participants themselves and from the invited audience.

In the evening a cruise takes the youngsters on a three-hour trip around Boston Harbour. Last summer a folk music group entertained on board.

The aim in these first forty-eight hours together is to strike a balance between the serious emotional baggage the youngsters share and the need to let them get acquainted and begin fostering friendships across national lines.

On their third day in the United States, the one hundred and thirty youngsters travel by bus to Camp Androscoggin in the tiny hamlet of Wayne, Maine. On this neutral playing field, thousands of miles from home, Laith and his Palestinian friends, who for years were accustomed to throwing rocks at their Israeli adversaries, are coached in the new skills of throwing an American baseball and football. The stones they used to hurl at home are used here to establish footholds in the steep climbing wall where an Israeli is taught to hold the rope for a Palestinian and vice versa.

Here, on the shores of a freshwater lake, amid sun-filled days and starry nights, they play tennis and soccer together. They paint their own peace posters. They make beaded jewellery and, of course, swim, dive and learn how to water-ski. And as their two weeks draw to an end, all of the campers cheer wildly for their team-mates on ‘colour war’, the two-day camp-wide Olympics that pits a team of Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Moroccans, Egyptians, Serbians and Bosnians wearing ‘black’ tee-shirts against a similar, mixed group of nationalities wearing ‘red’ tee-shirts. There are no gold, silver or bronze medals for these winners. Instead, the victorious team gets to jump in the lake first. The losers have to wait their turn.

Children realizing their potential

Dr Stanley Walzer, a Professor Emeritus of child psychiatry at Harvard University’s Medical School and former Chief of Psychiatry at Children’s Hospital in Boston, observes that it is important to select mid-adolescent teenagers to participate in this programme because

‘the central theme of adolescence is finding an identity, a sense of self, in relation to the world. Although chronic exposure to war may constitute a significant interference with a child’s social development, his or her adaptive capacities may mute the more pronounced effects of the stresses. The Seeds of Peace Programme builds on the natural resiliency of teenagers to overcome adversity and realize their full developmental potentials.’

Walzer, who is the resident psychiatrist at the Seeds of Peace Camp and can often be seen strolling with his arm around a homesick camper, notes that the athletic programme is important because of the ‘central role of athletics in the adolescent development of both boys and girls.’ He explains:

‘Adolescents are physically active and they frequently find themselves in school and community settings tat place a high value on athletics. Sports are a “language” that they all understand; they offer a sense of the familiar in the new and strange environment of the camping situation. Furthermore, they allow the teenagers to participate as members of a team, or individually, on the basis of interests and abilities rather than on political beliefs or ethnic backgrounds. Highly senior coaches are provided to facilitate the development of skills.’

But these daytime activities, which also include an advanced computer programme designed to teach these youngsters how to stay in touch with each other when they return home, set the stage for daily ‘coexistence sessions’ at night. These are the meat and potatoes of the Seeds of Peace Programme and are deliberately scheduled at a time when the youngsters return exhilarated from a full day of sports but are also relaxed enough to share their innermost feelings with others they previously regarded as adversaries. In their own vernacular, they ‘let it all hang out’, opening up to each other and confronting their own fears and prejudices for the first time in their lives. Campers are assigned to ‘coexistence groups’, which include boys and girls from several delegations and are constant for the duration of the camp. Nine different workshops are offered, each one having a different theme, approach and set of activities. One group may head off into the night for a hike into the woods and then be challenged to find their way back. When they return, they discuss the strategies they used: holding hands, singing, cautioning those behind them of the dangers ahead. Another group may participate in an theatre improvisation exercise in which they are asked to resolve racist tensions that erupt between African-Americans and Caucasians in an American ‘inner city’.

Learning the skills of peace

Conducted under the supervision of professional American, Middle Eastern and Balkan facilitators, the sessions focus on teaching the tools of making peace—listening skills, empathy, respect, effective negotiating skills, self confidence and hope. Listening and reason replace shouting and accusation. Walzer notes:

‘The growth of conflict resolution skills has been impressive in the teenagers who participated in the programme for one or two years and then return as “peer support” or as junior counsellors.’

He tells of a group of fifteen adolescents who spontaneously started to argue under a tree near their cabin about the most explosive issue of all, Jerusalem.

‘The interchange rapidly became loud and accusatory, with several children shouting at the same time. A second-year teenager who emerged as the discussion leader produced a ball-point fountain pen from his pocket and introduced the “rule of the pen”. Only the person holding the pen could talk and the others must listen. When another child wished to talk he or she must have the pen in hand. Although the pen received rough treatment as a result of the children’s eagerness to talk, the technique worked. I might add that they arrived at an interesting agreement on how to solve the problem of Jerusalem.’

Explains Executive Director Barbara Gottschalk:

‘The goal of “winning” is usually seen as the main objective in conflicts between people. Yet, what that means is usually subjective and short-sighted. At Seeds of Peace we change the objective from “winning” to “being understood and understanding the other’s point of view”. This short-term objective change makes all the difference in the way people deal with conflict. Each participant has to present his or her side in a non-threatening and forthright was so that the other side can listen non-defensively. The “winners” are those who have made their points understandable to the other side and have been able to understand the arguments presented by the opposing side. The goal is to end with both sides being “winners”. It is the combination of the “team-building” athletic activities, the arts, communal living and the coexistence programmes, all conducted in an atmosphere of acceptance and understanding, that ultimately permits the children to bond and become “seeds of peace”.’

Returning home

The real test, of course, occurs when they return home to their friends and family. The ultimate success of Seeds of Peace depends on how committed these youngsters remain to an agenda that is far more difficult to implement in the slowly changing yet continuing hostile environment at home. Yeyoyoda ‘Yoyo’ Mande’el, an Israeli, recalls that whenever Laith, his new Palestinian friend, visits his Jerusalem home, Yoyo’s father says ‘hello’ but nothing more. ‘My father fought in the 1948 war and in 1956 and 1959. He has no reason to trust them,’ he explains. Laith feels hurt by the silence, particularly since his own father often welcomes Yoyo to their East Jerusalem home, but says softly, “I can understand it’.

Leen El-Wari, a Palestinian girl, says her friends were simply incredulous when she told them about the co-existence sessions. ‘They asked, “What? You sat with Israelis? How did you talk to them and stay in the camp with them?”, Leen says she laughed and told them:

‘My idea before the trip was not to hate someone before knowing them. The Israelis are very nice and friendly people. It isn’t difficult. Just forget for a moment that they are your enemies, and you will be friendly with them.’

Leen admits however that she changed few minds. ‘We talked and talked but I couldn’t change any of their ideas. They need to meet Israeli children and talk with them to understand my point of view.’

Ra’yd Aby Ayyash, a Jordanian boy, agrees that ‘telling people about the camp is not always easy. Some do not want to listen, and for other it is impossible to even talk with a Jew. But I can understand them,’ he says, because

‘that is the way they were raised, and they did not have the chance I had. Still, many listen. Especially my good friends do. They know that judging a person based on nationality or religion is prejudice. Others do not. But I will never give up the mission that my heart found best to follow.’

Pioneers for peace

Perhaps the most important lessons that Seeds of Peace has taught everyone, children and adults alike, is never to underestimate what a human being, regardless of his or her age, is capable of. When the delegations arrive, I tell them on their first day in the country hat each of them is like Charles Lindbergh or Amelia Earhart. They are pioneers on a course that few have been privileged to travel before: the first of their generation who have been given the opportunity to make peace with those their parents, school systems, media and societies have condemned as ‘enemies’. I also tell each of them that I expect that among the more than three hundred Seeds of Peace graduates are the future presidents and prime ministers of the Middle East and the Balkans.

So far, they have vindicated my dreams. In February 1994, when more than two dozen Arabs were brutally murdered by a Jewish fanatic while they were praying in the mosque at Hebron, our youngsters drafted a two-page letter to both Rabin and Arafat calling on them to redouble their peace efforts and never give in to terrorism of any kind. A few weeks later, a group of Israeli youngsters invited Ruba, a Palestinian girl from Jericho, to visit Ein Kerem, a suburb of Jerusalem, so she could see the house where her father was born. He had not been allowed to return since leaving in 1948 and thus had never had the opportunity to show Ruba the town and home where he spent his own childhood. The Israelis took Ruba and a few of her friends to visit Ein Kerem and amid a few tears and much laughter went back to one of the Israeli’s homes for dinner.

Peace between peoples

But my favourite story is the one about another Israeli who was invited by his Palestinian friend to see Jericho, the first area in the West Bank from which Israeli troops withdrew and turned over to the Palestinian Authority. The father of the Palestinian, who was driving the two of them through Jericho, was stopped by the Palestinian police. They were suspicious that an Israeli might be up to something. Rolling down the window, the father told the policemen not to worry. ‘I’m just showing Jericho to my two sons,’ he said.

The Bible says that ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and the little child shall lead them.’ Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all: after all these years, the emotional and moral power of children can still be harnessed to point the way for adults. In September 1994, Tamer Nagy, an Egyptian member of the original group of forty-six youngsters who has returned for the last two years as ‘peer support’ and as a junior counsellor, presented President Clinton with a memento on behalf of all the youngsters who have graduated from Seeds of Peace. He told the President eloquently, “peace between people is more important than peace between governments.’ It was a line that both Clinton and Vice President Al Gore subsequently incorporated into their own speeches.

On a recent trip to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Warren Christopher even took time out of his busy schedule to meet with Laith and Yoyo. When the second Israeli-Palestinian accord was signed in the East Room of the White House in September 1995, Christopher remembered that encounter. ‘Three months ago in Jerusalem and again three weeks ago in Washington, I met with Israeli and Arab children who spent the summer together in a programme called Seeds of Peace,’ he said, as Arafat and Rabin were about to sign the new agreement. Behind them stood Jordan’s King Hussein, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and President Clinton. ‘By developing new friendships, they are demolishing old prejudices,’ Christopher told them. ‘By reaching across communities, they are resolving a conflict that for too long has divided their peoples. It is their spirit that brings us here today. Their lives. Their dreams. Their future. Let us not betray them.’