SUSAN DOMOWITZ | OTISFIELD, MAINE You’re never too old to go to camp, at least not when the camp is Seeds of Peace, in Otisfield, Maine. Seeds of Peace, founded by American journalist John Wallach in 1993, provides a peaceful place for teens from conflict areas to learn how to coexist. Every summer some 450 young people from conflict areas around the world, including the Middle East, the Balkans, and South Asia, come to Maine to participate in Seeds of Peace. They are accompanied by adult delegation leaders who come to Maine with them, and who share many of their camp experiences.
The young campers do all the usual things that kids at any summer camp do—sailing, tennis, swimming, and getting to know each other. But at Seeds of Peace, summer camp also includes sessions on learning to coexist and resolve conflicts, and both campers and delegation leaders participate in this process.
For the delegation leaders, who are appointed by their governments, the encounter with the enemy is an uncomfortable, but ultimately transforming experience—much as it is for the teen campers. Two delegation leaders—one Palestinian and one Israeli—readily agreed to talk to the Washington File about their experiences at Seeds of Peace. But because the delegation leaders have professional and family responsibilities in their home countries in the conflict region, they said they prefer not to have their names used when sharing their experiences.
“I was scared about coming to camp,” admits an Israeli delegation leader, “and I didn’t really know what to expect. But meeting Arabs was a good experience. This was a great opportunity to talk with each other.”
To the Palestinian delegation leader, Seeds of Peace is a unique experience. The conflict is still there, he says, but he now sees possibilities. “The walls are still there, but now they’re a little lower.”
“Look,” he says, “fifty-five years of fighting have brought no solution. It’s time to try another way.”
While the teen campers are learning to share a bunkhouse, meals, and activities with “the enemy,” the adult delegation leaders are going through much the same process. They share meals and cabins with the delegation leaders from the other side of the conflict. They participate in coexistence sessions. They learn to trust and help each other through the grueling group challenge of the Outward Bound program on Hurricane Island. And at the end of their three weeks in Maine, like their teen charges, they must cope with the return to a region in conflict.
“We live with a lot of tension and fear,” says one of the Israeli delegation leaders. “This (coexistence) is not going to be easy. But we’ve been breaking down stereotypes at camp, and I hope we can spread these new insights to the people around us.”
During the three-week camp session, in addition to their own coexistence activities, the delegation leaders are also serving as advisers to the teens, and liaisons to their governments. The adults hold bi-weekly delegation meetings with the campers from their country. These meetings are the only occasions at camp where English is replaced by the campers’ own languages, and they provide an occasion for the teens to air their concerns within their own country delegation. The delegation leaders also provide a helpful reality check to the teens, who will confront very difficult and dangerous situations when they return to their home communities.
The coexistence sessions, they say, are difficult. But they agree that the results are worth it. One of the Palestinian delegation leaders says he would like to tell both sides in the Middle East that “we can have a dialogue. There is another way to resolve this conflict.”
The delegation leaders’ program is coordinated by Dr. Barbara Zasloff, a clinical psychologist who specialized in child custody issues for 25 years before becoming full-time Vice-President of Seeds of Peace. Zasloff sees similarities between child custody battles and the hard issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians. “For these parties (Israelis and Palestinians), the fighting is as intimate as a family fighting over the children. And in a sense, the adversaries in these conflicts are ‘family,’ too.”
The Outward Bound survival course on Hurricane Island, which teaches trust and team building to the delegation leaders, is really an opportunity for the adults to realize that “you can do things you never thought you could do,” Zasloff explains.
At the end of the three-week camp session, Zasloff says, the delegation leaders are ready to discuss the most difficult issues. During the course of these discussions, they must explain to the other side why it is so difficult for them to compromise on a given issue. Each side gains an understanding of the other’s view of the situation. Delegation leaders are given a specific topic to work on during camp.
As an example, a Palestinian and an Israeli delegation leader described a project in which all the delegation leaders were asked to see if they could agree on “what is needed for a safe, decent life in the Middle East.” Arab and Israeli delegation leaders found that they agreed on 20 of their 24 requirements for “a decent life.” These 20 common points included such things as open borders, democracy, the rule of law, free access to holy sites for all religions, safety and security. The four points on which they differed included—to no one’s surprise—some of the major sticking points in the Middle East conflict, among them the status of Jerusalem, and the right of return.
The delegation leaders say that because they realized that they already agreed on so much, they could begin to discuss the more difficult issues. And while they did not come to any final agreement on these hard issues, they felt they had learned to understand the other side’s point of view.
Delegation leaders have a role to play after camp, too. They help develop an infrastructure of support for the teen “graduates” of Seeds of Peace, and they stay in touch with each other through workshops at the Seeds of Peace center in Jerusalem, and through annual delegation leaders conferences.
An Israeli delegation leader said that staying in touch with delegation leaders from the other side was important, and that she hoped Seeds of Peace would support their efforts to maintain contact. Her Palestinian counterpart agreed, and said he hoped Seeds of Peace could support follow-up in neighborhoods and local associations on both sides of the conflict.
“You have to have hope,” he said. “We hope we can eventually get our political leaders to follow us.”