BY NORA BOUSTANY | So India turned 50 this August, the Virginia Military Institute admitted women and a volcano erupted in the Caribbean, but nothing changed in the Middle East and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has to face that music soon.
She started with some real music at a pep rally Wednesday in a State Department auditorium by Seeds of Peace, 170 Arab and Israeli Jewish teenagers between 13 and 15 who spent 4 ½ weeks together at a “coexistence” camp in Maine.
Using an inside joke from a sit at camp, Albright joked that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had not only agreed to swap land for peace, but they were also exchanging wives and mothers-in-law. “I am glad I wasn’t there, as I may have been part of the bargain,” she confided to her young audience, betraying doubts about the costs of Middle East diplomacy.
The campers tried their hand at the fabric of peacemaking, a clot that diplomats and politicians have not been able to weave. With a new repertoire of songs, poetry and accounts of shared experiences, they told Albright what peace is really all about: “the friendships we make between us.”
Noa Epstein, an Israeli girl comforted by a Palestinian friend on the day of the July 30 bombings in Jerusalem, said “a spark was lit inside my heart, a spark that makes me see things in a different light.” Hani, a Palestinian, said peace is like canoeing: “You cannot do it alone” if you want to reach your destination.
Albright sang and swayed with her guests, pledging that the builders of peace have an unshakable ally in the United States. “Our happiness rests not on the misery of others. This is not only knowledge but wisdom,” she said. “No one’s blood is less or more precious than others.’”
Aaron D. Milller, deputy to Dennis Ross, the U.S. Middle East coordinator, confessed that diplomats are not doing as well as the teenagers, but he said: “Don’t let anybody fool you. In the end, peace does not depend on diplomats, it depends on people. Peace will come when there will be change in the quality of people’s lives, and conditions will allow them to relate to one another as friends based on mutual trust and dignity.”
“You are going home, back into the past,” Miller said, urging the group not to forget the milestones achieved together. “Alone, you are seeds of peace. Together, you represent the promise of a Middle East at peace.” His wife, Lindsay Miller, vice president of Seeds of Peace, is putting her bets on the younger generation. “They are the real diplomats,” she said.
Meanwhile, with Israel having closed off access to areas under Palestinian control, a planned collaboration between Palestinian and Israeli “Sesame Street” productions is hitting a few snags, according to Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab. “How can you expect our puppets to meet on TV if we humans cannot meet?” he asked Israeli colleagues who will not travel to Palestinian areas.
Kuttab is visiting Washington to thank State Department officials for their help in securing his release after Arafat ordered his imprisonment earlier this year. In a meeting with Washington Post editors and reporters, he said he urged Ross to put an end to forced Israeli closures. “If you can get this collective punishment to end, it would change the way people think,” Kuttab said he advised Ross.