A Summer Camp Unites Kids from the Middle East

Tall pine trees, a fresh water lake, hundreds of kids in green T-shirts playing soccer, canoeing and singing together: It looks just like another summer camp, but the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Maine is more than that. Some people call it the “Miracle in the Maine Woods” because here 14- to 17-year-old teenagers from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Qatar, Turkish and Greek Cyprus live together in peace—a thing their countries’ leaders just achieve on paper. As founder John Wallach points out, “it’s a conflict resolution program.”

“Inna is my best friend. She is more my friend than the other Palestinian girls,” says 15-year-old Rahman from Palestine and gives her blonde Israeli friend Inna a big hug.

“Two troublemakers found each other,” the bunk counselors comment, laughing. Both girls live in bunk nine with Amani from Palestine, Mais from Jordan, Marilena from Greek Cyprus, Fatos, a Turkish Cypriot, and the two counselors Suzanne from Canada and Amanda from Maine. They all got along from the first day of camp two weeks ago. With one week left they already started thinking how they could keep in touch with each other after they get back home. “We want to stay friends forever,” the girls all agree.

You can feel the spirit when the kids sing the Seeds of Peace song at line-up in front of the Great Hall. One Friday night they had a big party where everybody danced. “Those kids have rhythm and soul,” counselor Amanda laughs.

There is a unique atmosphere in the summer camp which was founded by journalist John Wallach in 1993. The former employee of the Hearst Corporation says: “Nothing was done to make real peace in the real world. It’s one thing for leaders to sign peace agreements, but an organization was missing that makes peace in the peoples’ hearts.” Since then more than 1,000 Israeli and Arab teenagers have stayed at the camp. This summers’ program consists of three consecutive sessions of three weeks with some 160 teenagers in each session. The cost for every participant is around $3,000; however, the participant’s family is only obligated to pay up to half the actual cost.

Seeds of Peace is an internationally acclaimed non-profit organization—mostly funded by corporate, foundation, and individual donors—receiving worldwide press coverage and international attention and support. US President Bill Clinton visited the camp, as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Former Israeli presidents Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Queen Noor of Jordan as well as Sa’ab Erekat, Chief Palestinian negotiator, support the concept. “However,” stresses Vice President Bobbie Gottschalk who is a psychiatric social worker with thirty years experience, “the governments just support us morally, not financially. We are an independent organization and we want to stay independent.”

Tamer from Egypt, now 19 years old, was one of the 46 participants from Israel, Palestine and Egypt in the first Seeds of Peace summer camp has since then been involved in the program. After just being a camper, then a peer supporter, junior counselor and youth leader, he is now a staff member.

To him, his first session was a great adventure, says Tamer. “When I first got here it was quite a new experience. The only thing I knew was that I was going to meet Israelis for the first time. We were brought up to learn that they are our enemies.”

Hence, he didn’t expect to become friends with the Israeli kids. “But once we starting sharing bunks and toilets,” he laughs, “I learned that I can get along with an Israeli teenager like he was a friend of mine back home in Egypt.” He still keeps in contact with the friends he met via email, telephone, the written word and even visits.

The Seeds of Peace program has the blessing of each of the ten governments who send a delegation. Through its Ministry of Education or Foreign Ministry, each nation conducts the selection process. Tamer, like all the other kids, had to go through a long and difficult procedure including several interviews and an essay on ‘Peace in the Middle East’ to come to the program. The aim is to find teenagers who have leadership skills and who are fluent in English because in the camp, English becomes the language they communicate in. Very seldom you hear a word in another tongue. Bobbie Gottschalk, a petite lady with short dark hair who was on Wallach’s side from the beginning, explains that this common language helps to build a community.

But at camp there are also moments when tensions arise. Counselor Suzanne tries to explain: “This camp has worked like a progression. There is the first stage where everyone comes and no one really knows each other. So, everyone is having a good time and meeting new people. But you don’t really know them.”

After the kids get to know each other on a personal level without being forced to think about the others as Israelis or Palestinians, the heart of the program—the daily coexistence sessions—starts.

The success of the program depends on these workshops. Here the teenagers are placed in small groups of approximately twelve which are lead by professional facilitators. Says Bobbie Gottschalk, “Here they begin to trust their own experiences and comprehend with an insightful new perspective the old voices of hostility.”

Friday night all the kids from the Israeli delegation put together a Shabbat service dressed up wearing white shirts. But a girl of the delegation, an Arab-Israeli, didn’t want to be a part of the ceremony because it was a Jewish service. So she asked to sit with the other children. The rest of the Israeli delegation accepted that yet they became quite upset when they saw her laughing during the ceremony. In one of the co-existence sessions the Arab-Israeli girls brought up the subject, initiating an intense discussion, during which one Israeli boy began shouting overwhelmed with anger.

Fortunately, the two facilitators Liz and Olga were around to steer the conversation in the right direction. “We were just so hurt because we love you and we care about you. And we know that it is very difficult for you and that you try really hard,” said another Jewish girl from Israel to the Arab-Israeli girl. When the latter asked shyly at the end of the session, “So, are we still friends?” and the Israeli boy answered hesitantly, “Yes,” everybody in the circle witnessed a touching moment.

In another co-existence workshop in a tent on a tennis court Suzan and Reuven, a Palestinian and Israeli facilitation team, uses photographs to work with the teenagers. The teenagers in this session have reached an important point in their progression. The word they mention the most in the discussion is ‘understanding.’ One girl puts the meaning of the word very nicely: “It means putting yourself in the other person’s shoes.” Looking at the two photographs, ‘understanding’ becomes quite difficult because in one picture there is an Israeli soldier aiming his gun at a group of Palestinian demonstrators, in the other one there is a Palestinian throwing a rock. The Palestinian kids have a particularly difficult time attempting to understand the Israeli soldier. When the bell rings they haven’t solved the problem yet, but they have made significant progress.

In bunk nine, counselor Suzanne talks to her kids about the co-existence sessions. Rahman recalls, “When we go to the coexistence sessions we look like enemies. Everyone attacks each other. We fight, shout and become angry. I don’t like that. I cant remember that we are friends in those sessions. But when we start singing the Seeds of Peace song, we’re friends again.” Suzanne explains, “You are probably at the third stage. In the second stage, once co-existence starts, people begin to realize, ‘this person thinks a lot different than I, maybe I don’t like them as much as I thought,’ but then in the next stage people begin to realize, ‘Hey, I have to open up my mind and realize that not everyone thinks the same way I do.’ And that’s when people start to like each other again.” Inna, Rahman’s friend, brings it to a point: “Your friend is not the government of his or her country; he or she is a person.” In the woods of Maine there is peace. Yet how will they cope with life at home?

As they grow up, Arabs and Israelis learn that the other side is the enemy. They’re still being taught from textbooks that were made when the countries were at war with one another. “One kid believed that the Holocaust was when the rich Jews killed the poor Jews,” says Wallach. This is because many Arabs only see the state of Israel as a threat and do not realize how much the Jews actually suffered. Therefore, John Wallach finds it very important to take the kids to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., at the end of the program.

When they go home to their respective countries, they arrive with new, liberal ideas which most of their friends have never heard of. Inna doubts that the program will really help the peace process in the Middle East. She says, “We don’t have much of a voice in our countries, we’re too young, we don’t get to vote. We can weep, cry, it wont get through to them.”

But Seeds of Peace looks further ahead. The camp brochure informs: “By teaching teenagers to develop trust and empathy for one another, Seeds of Peace is changing the landscape of conflict. It is equipping the next generation with the tools to end violence and become leaders of tomorrow.”

Tamer is already going this way. “When I went back to Egypt in 1993,” he recalls, “I didn’t find a lot of agreement from a lot of my friends. Even though Israel and Egypt have a peace agreement since 1979, we didn’t have real peace; it was just peace on paper. Some of my friends liked what I told them and came to Seeds of Peace the following year, but some of them didn’t agree and some even stopped talking to me at all.” Tamer’s example shows that Seeds of Peace doesn’t just end after the summer camp.

It also shows the difficulties the teenagers face when they go back to their home country. “We’re putting the children at risk because Seeds of Peace causes dissonance with their immediate environment if they choose to think differently,” facilitator Reuven says. One former participant, Moran from Israel, writes in an email about a conversation she had with her friends back home: “I defended the Arab side, thinking that I was in for a nice long political discussion. But what did happen was my best friend got up and started shouting at me. He said that ever since I got back from camp I’ve been acting differently, that I forgot where I came from and where I returned.”

Luckily, those kids still get the support from Seeds of Peace after they return home. SeedsNet, the online website and chat room, enables the participants to stay in touch despite borders and checkpoints.

In October a Seeds of Peace center, the headquarters of the Jerusalem outreach project, will open its doors. Here the alumni will be able to participate in workshops and educational outreach programs in order to continue their commitment to peacemaking. The bi-monthly newspaper The Olive Branch written and edited by Arab and Israeli graduates already reaches thousands of teenagers beyond the alumni network.

New initiatives include graduates’ conflict-resolution training such as the Middle East Youth Summit. Slowly but surely, Seeds of Peace and the children involved are making a difference.