BY RUTH SNOW | Hassan Halta and Elie Shteinberg hated each other before their participation in Seeds of Peace.
They never had met, or even heard the other’s name, but the Palestinian and Israeli youth knew the other was an enemy.
The two Seeds of Peace graduates met for the first time Monday morning when they woke up in the same Moscow hotel room and started to prepare for a panel discussion at the University of Idaho’s Borah Symposium. More than 350 people attended Monday’s forum at the UI Student Union Building, the first of four scheduled this week.
Seeds of Peace promotes peace by enabling children of war to break the cycle of violence during a summer camp environment. Since the organization started in 1993, 1,600 youth have completed the program.
Co-founder Barbara Gottschalk said the type of meeting between Halta and Shteinberg is unheard of in the Middle East. Most Palestinian and Israeli youth assume the other is a faceless enemy, not a human being.
Halta, 20, recalled the 1996 summer camp when he met an Israeli, his new bunkmate.
“I had never met an Israeli before,” he said.
The boys started talking with each other and, in time, Halta said he forgot the other boy was Israeli. “I started to see a human face,” he said. He soon realized the boy and other Israelis were not responsible for the region’s conflict.
The conflict, which has escalated in the past few months, is due to an unwillingness on the part of the older generation of both countries to work together to find a reasonable solution, Halta said.
Shteinberg, 18, said when he first sat down and talked with the “enemy” at a Seeds of Peace summer camp in 1999, he realized they had watched the same movies, listened to the same music and played the same games.
“I was amazed,” he said.
Even after the camp concluded, he and a few of the Palestinian youth remained friends.
“We’ve gotten to the point in our relationships that politics just don’t matter,” he said. “I really feel like I’ve got a true friend on the other side.”
Gottschalk said it’s easy to blame and threaten people when angry, rather than listen to the other side’s reasoning.
“Enemies are made, they are manufactured for certain reasons,” Gottschalk said.
Shteinberg said peace in the region will begin when residents of both countries can start saying they have friends on the other side.
Since the escalation of violence in the two countries, Shteinberg said he and his Palestinian friends worry each time a violent act occurs.
“For us, any person who is injured or dies can be a friend,” he said. “It’s really hard for me to look at the news and see what happens.”
For peace ever to become a reality, regular citizens – not government officials – must realize the other side consists of human beings, not faceless enemies, Halta said.
It is hard to know what long-term results the organization may have in the region, but Gottschalk said peace likely will occur through the youth.
Shteinberg and Halta agreed the older generation is responsible for the continuing conflict, but their generation must be willing to find lasting solutions.
“It’s easy to say the old guys messed up, but we have to fix that,” Shteinberg said. “Obviously, today’s leaders are not going to live forever and that is good.”