Program Unites Children from War-Torn Region
BY VERENA DOBNIK | NEW YORK Assaf, a Jewish teen-ager, lost his father to a bomb planted by Palestinian guerillas in the heart of Jerusalem. Fadi, a Palestinian who lives in Jerusalem has relatives in jail for protesting Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
The two boys’ families are part of the violent saga of the Middle East. But for three weeks in America, they are among 46 Jews, Muslims and Christians who will get to know each other.
They arrived in New York last week for the Seeds of Peace program, which will take them to a two-week summer camp in Maine and to Washington, D.C.
The program’s founder, John Wallach, said he is “bringing the next generation together, before they have been poisoned by the hostility of their region.”
But can a summer camp in America make a difference against a backdrop of age-old violence on another continent?
Fadi, 15, a Palestinian Muslim from Jerusalem, said he has demonstrated against Israeli occupation of Nablus in the West Bank.
Some of his relatives “got 100-year Prison terms,” he said in a quiet, resigned voice as he emerged Saturday from his hotel in midtown Manhattan.
“We want our land,” the tall, dark youth said firmly, adding that “Israel should leave Gaza and the West Bank,” occupied by the Jewish state in 1967.
“But basically, I disagree with both sides doing the killing,” he added.
The latest came on Thursday, when nine Israeli soldiers were killed by bombings in southern Lebanon. Last month, an Israeli blitz killed 147 Lebanese people in that area.
Assaf lost his father in the 1980s to a bomb planted by Palestinians on King George Street in Jerusalem, said Hadara Rosenblum, a counselor for the Israeli delegation who works for her country’s Education Ministry.
“But he still wants to turn hatred into peace,” Ms. Rosenblum said.
The boys’ last names were not released. Program organizers said they want the kids to speak freely here, without facing anger when they go home.
Terry Anderson, formerly of Batavia, told the children Friday over lunch that as a result of the bonds forged here, the people their parents call enemies now “will have a face.”
“It’s difficult to hate somebody you know,” said Anderson, who was held captive in Beirut for seven years when he was chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press.
“But it’s going to be very hard for you,” Anderson told the 11-to-15-year-old youths a day after the Israeli soldiers died.
Twenty of the boys are Israelis, including four Arabs—a Druze and three Muslims. Eleven are Palestinian from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and 15 are from Egypt.
After being chosen for the program, two 14-year-old Arab boys, Iyas and Nidal, invited the other 18 Israelis to a big party in their village, Baka El-Garbia, near Hadera in central Israel.
And when the children gathered in Tel Aviv to go to the United States, she said, “the Arab and Jewish parents were all hugging and kissing. Their sons were friends, after all.”
Tamer, a 13-year-old native of Cairo, said meeting Jewish and Palestinian boys “is very great. I love this.”
In the Middle East, Tamer said, there is “a lot of war. And we’ve had enough.” But, he said, “it’s not our fault. It’s the fault of our great-grandparents. And we must fix it. We’re not old enough yet, but in the future …”
The words are only a start, a drop in an ocean of bullets.
“There will be a lot of people pushing at you to continue the road of violence, bitterness, talking about revenge, talking about the wrongs your people have suffered,” Anderson warned the children, urging them to “resist that pressure.”
In New York, the boys visited the United Nations, and they watched Anderson and Mayor David Dinkins receive the first annual Seeds of Peace awards at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence.
Also present were the Israeli consul general, Colette Avital; her Egyptian counterpart, Handy Hussein; and Radwan Abu Ayyash, a leader of the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied territories and a delegate to the Mideast peace talks in Washington.
The first annual peace program, based in the U.S. capital, is funded by private contributions, with participants chosen by the government of their respective countries.
This year’s program is limited to boys because Camp Powhatan in Oxford, Maine, which donated its facilities and its staff, is for boys only. Next year, organizers hope to include girls as well.
Seeds of Peace will succeed, Wallach said, “if the Israeli boys pinch themselves and say, ‘We had a great time with the Arabs,’ and if the Arab boys pinch themselves and say, ‘We had a great time with the Israelis.’”