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Lewiston students try to raise their voices, but protest interrupted
Portland Press Herald

A poster inscribed with #blacklivesmatter—echoing a national movement to talk about race and justice—is ordered removed at Lewiston High School.

LEWISTON | A group of Lewiston High School students say school officials infringed on their right to free speech by ordering them to remove a poster they put up in school to protest grand jury decisions in two states not to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men.

The students said they had initially considered joining a nationwide protest during school last week by walking out of class. They had alerted school officials about the walkout so the administration wouldn’t be blindsided.

One of the leaders of the effort, Muna Mohamed, who is also senior class president and student representative to the Lewiston School Committee, said she was told that if the students walked out, they could face “unintended consequences,” including possible suspensions.

“We were told that other students might feel uncomfortable and it could lead to other demonstrations,” Mohamed said. Instead, she said, the students were encouraged to express their position in an educational way, such as creating a poster.

But after the poster went up in school, with the hashtag “#blacklivesmatter” on it, school officials told them to take it down.

“#blacklivesmatter” has been used by many on Twitter as part of the nationwide conversation over racial justice and the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, in which unarmed black men died at the hands of police officers. Grand juries in both cases declined to indict the officers, leading to protests—and in some cases, violence—over racial profiling and violence by police.

Chandler Clothier, a junior who designed the poster, said she was told Monday morning by Principal Linda MacKenzie to take the poster down. She said MacKenzie objected to the #blacklivesmatter hashtag and told her she would have to change it to “all lives matter” if she wanted the poster to stay.

The students said the poster they created was intended to stimulate discussion about race and justice.

“They keep saying they want students to raise their voices, but they want to define the students’ voices, and I feel that’s unfair,” Clothier said.

In addition to the headline, Clothier’s poster included displays with the last words of several black men killed by police, such as “I can’t breathe,” the final words said by Eric Garner in New York. A medical examiner ruled his death was caused by a chokehold used by a police officer.

High school officials said the students didn’t follow procedures requiring that posters be approved by school officials before they are put up.

The students admit they didn’t submit their poster for approval, but said that policy often isn’t followed.

However, in an email Tuesday, MacKenzie said she hadn’t seen the poster, telling the Portland Press Herald that “we have not seen nor approved any information and/or posters from students, due in part to the snow day today (Tuesday).”

MacKenzie did not respond to follow-up emails seeking to clarify the discrepancy between the students’ account and MacKenzie’s statement Tuesday that she hadn’t seen the poster. MacKenzie also did not respond to an emailed question asking if her objection was to the “black lives matter” message.

Superintendent Bill Webster said that failing to get prior approval by school officials is the issue, and that the matter was handled by officials at the high school.

“This isn’t the first poster that’s come down because it was put up before being vetted,” Webster said.

Students should be involved in national events, including the ongoing debate over race and police actions, he said.

“These events are unfortunate, but they are also tremendous activities for discussion and fostering student involvement in democracy,” he said.

Mohamed and her friends believe the poster could have sparked a conversation about race that should take place at the school. One of the other students involved with putting up the poster, senior Kalgaal Issa, said the Ferguson and New York City deaths haven’t come up when students discuss current events in class.

“There should be more awareness about it,” Issa said. “It’s like this really didn’t happen. That’s unbelievable.”

Webster said the high school doesn’t have racial problems, and that students of all backgrounds take part in school and after-school activities. Lewiston has attracted thousands of Somali immigrants fleeing strife in their homeland, which has boosted the presence of racial minorities in the schools.

Linda Scott, a member of the School Committee, said she couldn’t comment on the poster because she hadn’t heard about the matter until Tuesday. However, she did say it’s not unusual for high school students to protest and she generally doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

But another school board member, Jama Mohamed—no relation to Muna Mohamed—said he draws the line at using school property for protests.

Raymond Clothier, Chandler Clothier’s father, said he supports his daughter taking a stand and he backed the sentiment in her poster.

“I’m astounded that something as simple as ‘black lives matter’ is causing all this,” he said.

Read Edward D. Murphy’s article in The Portland Press Herald »

Ray of hope in our dark tunnel of violence
Huffington Post

OTISFIELD, MAINE | At water’s edge of the aptly-named Pleasant Lake in Otisfield, Maine, about an hour outside Portland, I found a refreshing cause for optimism — a respite from our wearisome ordeal of witnessing repeated eruptions of hatred and heartless violence.

The idyllic scene in Maine is the Seeds of Peace summer camp, where hundreds of teenagers from some of the world’s most bitterly polarized conflict regions, including the Middle East and South Asia, converge each year for a remarkable experience.

They meet kids from “the other side” for the first time. They take the risk of crossing lines of ethnicity, nationality and religion. They begin a tentative dance of getting to know each other (all campers are asked to speak English, the one language they have in common). They play on the same sports teams, they eat at the same tables, they swim and boat in the same sparkling lake and they sleep calmly in integrated bunks.

For the latest episode of our Humankind public radio documentary project The Power of Nonviolence released this summer (you can hear Part 5, our segment on the camp, now available online), I paid a visit to Seeds of Peace.

It’s a kind of magical setting, where the normal rules of hostility, the entrenched histories of resentment and revenge, the reflexive stereotypes of the enemy are suspended for a moment of time in the sun.

It’s a place, maybe the only kind of place, where a future of peace based on trying to understand and listen to an “adversary” might be built, where someone else from a different group might become your personal friend.

As one young male camper told me: “It’s really amazing what we’re doing here. I mean, where else in the world are you going to get Israelis and Palestinians sitting in a room together? And just to have that dialogue, and then afterwards to go out and play soccer together, and do activities. At the end of the day what you realize is that we’re not so different – the same interests, the same coming of age struggles. And it’s our future. You know, our parents, and their generations before them didn’t get things right. So it’s our turn to get things right. It’s our future, and it’s what we make of it.”

It’s not all tension-free, though. The kids are grounded by attending regular, structured dialogue groups. In one session, the day before my visit, they asked each other how terrorism had affected their lives.

The first camper, recalled Lulu Perault, a conflict mediatior who was present, “shared a story about being kidnapped by the Taliban, and how difficult it was, at the age of eight, to be alone in a room for two weeks, and not knowing what happened to him. And so this kind of created a cascade of participation. All the kids shared their experiences with terrorism, and violence. And so by the end of our session yesterday, kids from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and America were hugging each other, and crying, and left feeling quite connected. So they come, they sit down, they see each other. They realize they’re only human, that they have the same challenges, the same joys.”

I don’t know what’s more amazing — that the kids enter this wondrous zone of truce or that, to comply with camp rules, they actually put down their cell phones and abandon internet access for the full month they’re at Seeds of Peace. Isolating the campers from the information crossfire online gives them all a chance to reflect on the power of information, both electronic and print, in the hyper-mediated culture they’re being raised in.

“Sadly, people are not going to question what is said in a textbook,” commented Phiroze Parasnis, a poised, intelligent 16-year-old from Mumbai, India. “Who makes the history textbooks? Essential facts are taken out. So many facts are changed. And I’m not only blaming my country, I’m blaming all the countries for this. And, I mean, it’s so shocking when you say, ‘Oh, my God. Is that the way this event is portrayed in your country?’ You wonder like, who controls what we believe is true?”

A common complaint from the campers on all sides was that the local media culture, often influenced by governments, spreads propaganda whose effect is to fan the flames of discord. And this echoed an insight by Bobbie Gottschalk, who in 1993 co-founded Seeds of Peace (with the late John Wallach).

She harkened to her experience as a 20-year-old student at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana. It was in 1962, the same year as the Cuban Missile Crisis standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States. Bobbie and other students had accompanied a professor for a field trip to Russia, where they would break down barriers and get to know Soviet kids of the same age — a daring project at the height of the Cold War.

“Well,” Bobbie told me in an interview, “it taught me that people are people, and although their governments make pronouncements and threats against other people, the people living in the country are just the same as us, and just as vulnerable to being threatened, and to being made fearful as us. So we actually had a lot in common…

“And the other thing I realized while I was there was it was very handy for the government to have an enemy, because so many troublesome things were going on in that country, but it took the focus away from that, and put it all the way across the world to an enemy.

“And I wondered if the same was true for the United States, at that time.”

Read David Freudberg’s article on The Huffington Post »

On a Day for Making Peace, Politicians Regained Luster
The Boston Globe

BY MICHAEL KRANISH | WASHINGTON A Secret Service agent raced into the White House’s Palm Room just before yesterday’s signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. “Make a little hole!” the agent shouted as he parted the crowd in the room. “It’s the president!”

Suddenly, a tanned, smiling George Bush raced by on his way to meet with President Clinton. “Ex!” Bush corrected the agent. “Ex! Ex!”

Nearby, on the North Portico of the White House, Yasser Arafat was arriving. Until four days ago, US officials weren’t allowed to talk to the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, much less receive him as an honored guest.

Now, they merely noted that he wasn’t wearing his trademark pistol and welcomed him to the White House, where the former guerrilla leader signed the guest book.

It was that kind of extraordinary day in Washington yesterday, a day when former campaign foes could meet and praise each other, when ancient enemies could shake hands and make peace with each other. It was a day when it really seemed, in this era of antipolitics, that politicians could make a difference after all.

When Clinton walked onto the South Lawn side-by-side with Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, many in the crowd of 3,000 politicians, diplomats, and Middle East activists gasped. For many minutes, the crowd noticed that Arafat and Rabin were not looking at each other and had not shaken hands. The tension mounted: Would they shake hands?

When Clinton finally appeared to nudge Rabin to shake Arafat’s outstretched hand, the crowd spontaneously said, “Ooohh!” when Arafat and Rabin clasped hands, many in the crowd stood and applauded. Some appeared to be crying.

Leonard Zakim, the Boston director of the New England Anti-Defamation League, watched trancelike as the scene unfolded, not quite believing it was happening after all these years. It was, Zakim said, a day of “somber exuberance,” a celebration of the moment and a cause for concern about what lay ahead.

“This is really an earthquake in the region,” he said. “The aftershocks, like the murder of Israelis in Gaza yesterday, are going to be serious.”

The ceremony was also one hot ticket.

“It was like getting a ticket to Bruce Springsteen,” Zakim said, clearly thrilled to be there.

The politicians who signed the peace accord on this sun-scorched day were the stars of the show. They stood behind an ornate desk that had been used in the signing of the 1978 Camp David accord, the old enemies Arafat and Rabin promising peace even as extremists on both sides vowed to undo the agreement. Arafat, wearing thick glasses, a traditional keffiyeh headdress and olive military suit, waved and smiled exuberantly wherever he went. On Sunday night, Bush—who in 1990 broke off a dialogue with the PLO over a terrorist attack—flew in from his summer home in Kennebunkport and met privately with the PLO chairman for an hour.

Yesterday morning, Arafat met with Bush’s secretary of state, James A. Baker 3d. Arafat also met privately with former President Jimmy Carter, who also attended yesterday’s ceremony.

Bush and Carter planned to attend a dinner with Clinton last night and then stay overnight in their old home, the White House, so that they could be present today at a ceremony kicking off a campaign to sell the North American Free Trade Agreement to Congress.

At the end of a day of ceremonies that were witnessed by millions on television around the world, Arafat planned to appear on the Larry King show, eating into the long-scheduled air time of the US Gulf War commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

It was Arafat’s decision to side with Iraq that led the Persian Gulf states to cut off financial aid to the PLO, and that helped spur Arafat’s decision to sign the agreement with Israel yesterday.

While the Clinton administration had little to do with the secret Norway negotiations that led to the accord, the president was eager to make the most of the movement. Clinton gave what many believed was his best speech since he took office, tapping his campaign theme of hop without sounding corny and trumpeting what he called “one of history’s defining dramas.”

Overseeing it all was a man known in the White House as the Rabbi.

Steve Rabinowitz, who got the nickname during the campaign, remembers hearing about the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and Camp David peace agreement when he was going to Hebrew school and attending his bar mitzvah. Now, as the White House director of production, Rabinowitz had set up everything from the placement of Arafat and Rabin on stage to the numbers of seats on the lawn. He gave instructions in Hebrew and English, attending to every detail like a doting parent.

“I have always looked forward to the time when something like this could happen,” Rabinowitz said. “It is an extraordinary thing, and to be a part of it is pretty unbelievable.”

Perhaps the most eloquent statement came from a group of Israeli and Palestinian children that Clinton had invited. The children had just finished attending a “Seeds of Peace” camp in Otisfield, Maine.

“Before I came to camp, I thought they were very bad,” a 15-year-old Palestinian named Fadi said of the Israelis. “Now I feel happy that I have friendships with them. And today I shook hands with Clinton, Arafat, Bush. It is good.”

But things are not yet good enough. Even after the signing of yesterday’s agreement, for which he had a choice seat, Fadi did not want his last name used. He was still unsure whether the killing would really stop now in the Holy Land, and he feared retaliation back home for having spent a peaceful summer in Maine with Jewish children.

Peace on Cyprus could start in Maine
The Greek American Magazine

BY GEORGE SARRINIKOLAOU | NEW YORK Having taken on the task of “Preparing Tomorrow’s Leaders,” a private, not-for-profit organization in the United States is preparing to offer its services for the first time to 40 Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot teenagers later this summer.

Founded in 1993, the organization, Seeds of Peace, brings together teenagers from conflict-ridden areas, such as the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia, at a summer camp in Otisfield, Maine. The camp, described in the organization’s literature as a total coexistence experience, tries to get kids to “develop listening/negotiation skills, empathy, respect, confidence and hope.” Representatives from the organization said their goal is to dispel hatred and stereotypes among kids and develop a sense of trust from which peace can emerge. The teenagers from Cyprus, ages 13-16, are scheduled to spend two weeks at the camp beginning July 2, 1998.

Although Seeds of Peace has depended on private support for its programs, the camp for Cypriot teenagers has drawn strong US government backing. Vice President Al Gore first suggested the idea for such a camp at a meeting with the then Greek Minister of Education George Papandreou, at a meeting in the White House three years ago. Mr. Papandreou, who ended up sending his son to the summer camp in 1995, began promoting the program among Greeks. But Seeds of Peace did not become widely known in Cyprus until the spring of 1997, when John Wallach, the founder of Seeds of Peace, spoke about the organization during a television interview that aired throughout the Middle East. The broadcast aired on WorldNet, a network funded by the US Information Agency, an arm of the State Department.

Mr. Wallach said that, after his interview, it was the American ambassador to Cyprus, Kenneth C. Brill, who proposed to the Cyprus Fulbright Commission that it fund a Seeds of Peace camp for Cypriot teenagers. Despite the role that various US officials played in making camp for Cypriot teenagers a reality, there is only a “marginal amount of involvement” by the US government in the actual running of the camp, said Christine Covey, vice president of Seeds of Peace. When her organization submitted the proposal for this camp, said Ms. Covey, the program was described as it would be, free of official interference. “We wouldn’t run it any other way,” Ms. Covey said.

But in the highly polarized conflict on Cyprus, the United States is not a disinterested player. The United States has been actively involved in mediating between the Greek and Turkish communities and has proposed ways to resolve the Cyprus problem. Seeds of Peace is honoring the US official currently heading those efforts, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, at a fundraising event on April 26. Not unlike the Seeds of Peace approach, the United States has been trying to get both sides in Cyprus to get over past differences and focus on a peaceful future.

“We don’t tell children what the history is or what they should believe,” said Ms. Covey. Children come to the program, she explained, with different perceptions of reality. The camp tires to find the small space where those two perceptions overlap and tries to build on that common ground.

“We don’t get into the politics,” said Mr. Wallach. “We try to give them some tools, so that when they get older they can resolve conflict without resorting to violence.”

Those tools emerge, said Seeds of Peace representatives, during shared living and eating, sports and performance activities at the camp. For the kids, those activities, Ms. Covey explained, “humanize” their perceived adversaries. Each day ends with a so called “coexistence meeting,” run by professional facilitators, during which participants discuss the issues that separate them back home. The camp culminates with the “Color Games,” a kind of mini-Olympics made up of two mixed teams. By the end of the competition, explained Ms. Covey, kids come to identify not with their ethnic group but with their team’s color.

Seeds of Peace tries to sustain the progress made at camp by establishing programs in the areas where the teenagers live. The organization has not yet determined how it will follow up on this summer’s camp. But in the case of Arab and Israeli teenagers, Seeds of Peace has helped establish an email network among camp participants and has helped organize a high school newspaper that is jointly published by Israeli and Palestinian students. We are “not turning them into peaceniks, but developing a culture of peace,” said Ms. Covey.

Seeds of Peace UK holds launch party

LONDON | Seeds of Peace UK hosted a Launch Party on July 12th at the Mayfair Hotel in London. The evening was a success, with over 150 people attending and a short but powerful program about Seeds of Peace.

Sahar, an Israeli Seed, addressed the group via video, while Palestinian Seed Loai spoke in person. In the fall, Sahar will be drafted into the IDF and Loai will head back to Gaza after completing his studies in London.

LAUNCH PARTY PHOTOS

After their speeches and a few short videos, Launch Partyers took some time to chat with other Seeds in attendance: Iskra (Macedonia, 2000), Shyam (India, 2000), Amal (Pakistan, 2000), Shabbir (India, 2002), Loizos (Cyprus, 2001) and Nada (Egypt, 2001).

The group discussed three ways to help our Seeds of Peace/UK community:

  • Join SUN for Seeds, an informal professional support network. The goal if this network is to match the incredible potential of our Seeds with the incredible potential of the successful, talented, and influential people of the city of London. SUN for Seeds members will provide practical career support—advice, expertise, networking opportunities—for Seeds who aspire for successful careers in their relevant industries. Sign up today!
  • Help with future fund-raising events. Our goal is to support Seeds of Peace with the capacity to offer our Seeds one program a month when they return home from Camp. E-mail london@seedsofpeace.org if you would like to help with event logistics, planning, marketing, or if you can help with our Peace Market UK event in 2011, which will include an fund-raising auction. Also, feel free to contribute personally to our efforts to empower young leaders around the globe to employ better leadership and dialogue in their quest for a more peaceful word.
  • Keep our Seeds of Peace/UK community growing. Connect us to foundations that work for peacemaking, leadership or youth empowerment. Invite people who are interested in our work to join our community. London is a transient place and talented people come and go—we have to keep our community growing, so spread the word about Seeds of Peace.

As always, e-mail london@seedsofpeace.org with questions, comments and ideas.

Bonds of Friendship in a bitter war
The Christian Science Monitor

OTISFIELD, MAINE | In the end, Ariel Tal came back and Saja Abuhigleh stayed.

Simple acts, perhaps. But also acts of courage and hope at this wooded Maine camp, a refuge from the devastating daily violence of the Middle East, a place where teenagers from Israel and Palestine meet in an effort to find solutions rather than propagate hatred.

Ariel had twice before attended Seeds of Peace, as the camp is named. But that was before a suicide bomber in Jerusalem last December blew up his friend just 20 feet from the ice cream store where Ariel was sprinkling jimmies onto a cone. Had he not lingered a few seconds, he knew, it could have been his funeral for which the neighborhood turned out.

Amid the carnage, he looked down and realized he was wearing his green Seeds of Peace sweatshirt. “I got really confused,” Ariel says. “I didn’t know what I was looking for here, and why I was chasing it so hard.”

Even before arriving for her first year at camp, Saja had her doubts about sharing a bunkhouse and breaking bread with Israelis. On her second day, she called home and learned Israeli soldiers had occupied Ramallah, her hometown. They had detained her great-uncle’s son and struck the elderly man when he asked why.

“When [my family] told me, I started crying, and I said, ‘I want to go to my home in Palestine right now! I can’t stay here,’ ” Saja says, stumbling over her words in the rush to get them out.

But Saja stayed and Ariel shed short-lived thoughts of vengeance and came back, one of the small group of returning campers who offer support and mentoring to new arrivals each year.

Their experiences, however, attest to the challenges facing a camp that some call naively idealistic and others see as the only sane response to a world situation that seems to have lost all reason. Journalist John Wallach founded Seeds of Peace in 1993, prompted in part by the first bombing of the World Trade Center. He invited 46 teenagers that year, hoping to teach young people from this bitterly divided region how to listen to one another.

But the camp has never faced a summer quite like this one. Working for peace in the Middle East has always been a courageous choice. Doing it amid the horrific violence of the current intifada, and Israel’s brutal backlash, is practically inconceivable. It is a violence that has become personal, even for teenagers, even for children.

And if the camp is to succeed, if the three weeks teenagers from each side spend laughing, arguing, and living together is to mean anything, it is a violence they somehow must find the strength to look beyond.

Getting acquainted

On June 24, the same day President Bush called for the ouster of Yasser Arafat in a much-anticipated Middle East policy speech, 166 teenagers arrived at this sleepy lakeside retreat 30 miles northwest of Portland, where only the names of the campers and the constant presence of police cars at the gate indicate that this is any different from the dozens of other camps nearby.

Almost all the campers are sponsored by Seeds of Peace; all went through a lengthy, competitive application process to get here, and all were selected by their education ministries in part for their potential to lead.

Their mission: to get to know one another as individuals rather than as the enemy, in a place removed from the hatred back home. Though Seeds of Peace has expanded over its first decade—it now accepts young people from other regions of conflict and has established a year-round Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem—it still rests on the same simple premise: that interaction breeds understanding.

You don’t have to like each other, camp director Tim Wilson reminds the campers at the opening ceremony, just recognize that each individual is a human being deserving of respect.

“You can go home, and yes, there are things there we have no control over,” Mr. Wilson tells them. “But here, we do have control. You have the right to sit down and talk to someone you normally would not talk to.”

The campers listen eagerly, applauding vigorously. When it comes time to sing the Seeds of Peace song, they belt it out: “People of peace, rejoice, rejoice/ For we have united into one voice….”

When the gathering ends, however, they cluster with others like them, finding comfort in a shared language and traditions. It takes a few days, or more, says Wilson, before many start branching out. When he sees girls from different sides “sitting around talking about P. Diddy,” or boys discussing the World Cup, he knows they’ve reached common ground.

The camp is designed for informal interaction. Six to nine campers, grouped by conflict region, share each of the well-kept bunkhouses that line the shore of Pleasant Lake. Campers eat with a second group and join a third for the daily 90-minute “coexistence session.” With this third group, they also play sports and participate in activities intended to build cooperation and trust, from a ropes course to a dance exercise in which they mimic each other’s movements.

One of this year’s new campers is Sami Habash, an articulate, blond Palestinian from Jerusalem who plans to attend Israel’s prestigious Hebrew University next year although he’s only 16. An intense young man, he’s pleased to be in an environment where everyone wants peace. But his first interest is in scoring political points.

“I want to tell [the Israelis] that we don’t have water at night. I go up to drink, and no water.” During debate, Sami hopes “to see Israelis themselves freely admitting their country’s mistakes.”

Adar Ziegel, an Israeli from Haifa who for as long as she can remember has dreamed of being her country’s prime minister, has less formulated plans. She’s heard great things about the camp from her boyfriend and is excited to see whether teens on opposite sides of the checkpoints can find solutions. Adar shares her bunkhouse and her coexistence session with Saja. Sami will be in a coexistence session with Ariel. The Monitor chose to focus on these four teens two Israelis and two Palestinians to gain some insight into the small triumphs, epiphanies, and setbacks that occur in these weeks of typical camp fun mixed with not-so-typical discussion and debate.

All four arrived with hope, but also a degree of skepticism their homeland, after all, is in tatters. Saja, who has never met an Israeli before, came armed with photos, downloaded from the Internet, that graphically portray Israeli soldiers’ abuse of Palestinians. She cannot forget the day she saw a soldier strike a small boy on the head, causing blood to spurt out.

And Sami, though ready to listen, has a long list of grievances from life under occupation to share with his Israeli counterparts.

In past years, says Ariel, discussions focused mainly on policy. “We just argued about the past and whether or not we want Jerusalem to be united.” This year, “the new kids have personal experiences. I have experiences of my own.”

Trying to win

In a nondescript one-room cabin, words and allegations fly. Facilitator Marieke Van-woerkom had eased into the coexistence session with a rather vague question: “What does it take to have peace?”

But after a few predictable, detached responses—”Stop war,” “End the bombs,” “Both sides have to trust each other”—the campers switch gears to get at specific gripes, often using a “we-you” phrasing.

“We can’t trust you,” says one Israeli. “We gave you weapons in Oslo. Today, we see those weapons being used on us.” And, he asks, why did Arafat reject Israel’s offer at Camp David two years ago?

“It wasn’t enough,” responds a frustrated Palestinian. “We want our land, but also to be free in this land. We want borders like other countries. A government, like other countries.”

“What do you want us to build a government for you?” the Israeli shoots back.

“When you give us the land, you must trust us.”

Saja objects when one Israeli refers to suicide bombers as terrorists. A fellow Palestinian likens them to messengers, delivering a message from a people who have no other resources.

“Do you think the message is being delivered in the way you want it delivered?” an Israeli girl wants to know.

After about 90 minutes, Ms. Vanwoerkom brings the session to a close with a final suggestion: “What I’d like for you to think about is, what it is inside of us that makes it so hard to truly listen and understand each other? You feel you’re not being listened to, but where are you not listening?”

Ariel, in his third year, has seen campers doggedly stake out their own positions before: “They come to win.” So did he, when he first arrived, a camper with right-wing politics and the view that the best solution was to remove all Arabs and “put them somewhere else.”

“It changes,” he says. “They face the reality and say, ‘OK, we can’t win. What next?’ You realize understanding is the important part.”

Still, even during this particular heated session, the teenagers have accomplished what many of their compatriots back home seem incapable of. They’ve carried on a debate without violence or, for the most part, raised voices.

Besides, reaching consensus is not really the goal. Vanwoerkom says she’s wary of pushing campers too far, too fast. The “brick wall” they hit when they get back home will be that much harder, especially this year. “I’m trying to find that balance,” she says, “between learning, development, growth and going back home and being able to build on those lessons.”

Facing challenges

Midway through camp, Adar finds her political foundations shaken.

She considers herself progressive, even pro-Palestinian.

But when Saja compares the Israeli occupation of Palestine to the Holocaust, Adar loses her composure. Her grandparents narrowly escaped Poland and Germany. Many of her relatives died in concentration camps.

“[Saja] said that from their point of view, we can just go back to Germany and Italy and stuff,” says Adar angrily. “I myself would never go back to a place that put numbers on my grandparents’ arms.”

Still, she thinks carefully about how to teach as well as react, giving Saja a copy of “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.” “She’s actually reading it,” Adar says a few days later. “I feel that once she reads that book she’ll have a much more wise understanding.” For Sami, facts have been the primary source of tension.

The Israelis in his coexistence session, he says, get them all wrong. “When I’m talking to [one Israeli settler], I’m counting on some facts that I know. When he changes the facts, I say I’m sure my facts are correct. He’s changing my facts just to make it more difficult for me to talk!”

Like Saja, Sami in his session pressed the point that Israelis should leave Palestine. He remains baffled by the outburst his comment provoked.

“They got really crazy about it,” the normally mild-mannered Palestinian says resentfully. “They said they were offended because some of them understood it as ‘Go back to Hitler.’ Others understood it as, ‘I don’t agree with the idea of a Jewish state.'”

Neither is true, Sami insists. What he wants is for Israelis to acknowledge they took land that wasn’t theirs. Finally, he lets it drop. But the experience leaves a bad taste in his mouth. “At the beginning of camp, I had some more positive ideas about the people I was negotiating with. But now some of [those opinions] have changed.”

Final days

If the informal mingling of Israeli and Palestinian teens signals success, then camp this year could get high marks.

The camp’s color games—three days of athletic competition—further erode national allegiances. The competition here is between blue and green, not Israel and Palestine.

“My team won!” says Saja brightly. She played baseball and canoed for the first time. Now she’s running around like a senior before graduation, asking everyone she knows to write indelible-ink messages on her T-shirt.

Adar, meanwhile, eagerly recounts tales of the talent show, for which she coached a boys’ bunkhouse in a ballet routine.

Now, with a teenager’s bent for melodrama, she says she’s heartbroken at the thought of leaving. “I’m going to hug a tree and carve myself into it,” she sighs. She’s already making plans to visit Nada, an Egyptian girl in her cabin, and says she’s even forgiven Saja.

“We have the best bunk ever,” Adar says firmly.

But all hasn’t been perfect.

In the middle of color games, John Wallach, the camp’s founder, died in New York.

“I didn’t want to continue any more,” says Ariel, who knew Wallach. “I was unable to think. But I realized the kids are looking up to me, and if I were to leave color games, they would do the same. [So] I kept on going.”

Just days after Wallach’s death, Dateline NBC runs an hour-long special about the camp, focusing on five teenagers from its first summer. One Israeli is now a right-wing settler, and a Palestinian he befriended at the time is active in promoting nationalist causes. The other three also seem to have drifted a long way from the idealistic teenagers who shook hands with Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat 10 years ago.

The camp may create an aura of hope, Dateline implies, but the dreams the teens walk away with will likely wither in the heat of the violence back home.

It’s a charge the camp’s leaders are familiar with. They accept that some campers will lose the lessons of peace.

Still, Bobbie Gottschalk, the camp’s executive vice president, says she’s heard from most of those original campers since Wallach’s death. One, an Egyptian named Tamer Nagy, is this year’s program coordinator. Koby Sadan, who attended Seeds of Peace in 1994 and ’95 and just finished his three-year stint in the Israeli army, is also working as a counselor this summer.

Seeds of Peace now has more than 2,000 graduates, Ms. Gottschalk says. If just a few of them hang on to what they’ve learned and eventually become leaders in their region they could have a big impact.

“We’re just trying to get people to think for themselves,” she says. “And to care about people who are not like them. If we can expand the circle of their concern to go beyond people who are not exactly like them, then we’ve gone a long way toward building a citizen of the world.”

Heading home

No one can say what makes the camp’s message stick with one person and fizzle with another. All that’s certain is that it will be tested back home, one reason the camp has created a year-round center in Jerusalem to continue work with former campers.

Saja is excited to have made Israeli friends. But she hesitates when asked what life will be like when she returns to Ramallah. “Here, I can do everything I want,” she says. “But [in Palestine] I can’t move … To go to school from Ramallah to Jerusalem, I have to pass three checkpoints. When I stand there I think that I want to kill these soldiers, and I don’t want peace with them.”

Adar insists the bonds she has formed in three weeks, with Palestinians as well as Israelis, are stronger than those she’s formed over three years back home. She still feels her country is “falling apart,” but she takes heart from something Tim Wilson, the camp director, told her. “Tim [who is African-American] asked his father when segregation will end. And his father said, ‘When this generation dies.'” She and her fellow campers, Adar hopes, will form a new generation. Sami, however, finds it harder to imagine how Palestinians his age, pushed to a boiling point, might respond to a message of tolerance. “They’re going to tell me, ‘Can’t you see what’s happening? Aren’t you living in this country? You still want peace after all you can see?’ ”

To a point, Sami shares their rage. He is furious when he thinks of Israeli tanks and guns overpowering unarmed Palestinians. Still, he has thought carefully about the situation. “There is no way but peace for Palestinians. The Israelis have power. They can manage with peace or without peace. We Palestinians have rocks. We have nothing. So, of course, I will keep trying.”

A few days after he returns home to Jerusalem, Sami is already thinking about contacting the Israeli friends he made and visiting the Seeds of Peace center. Recent events have changed one plan, though: He no longer wants to attend Hebrew University, shattered last month by a cafeteria suicide bombing. The Technion, in Haifa, he reasons, is as good a school and less of a potential target.

From what Ariel suggests, much of what Sami, Saja, Adar, and other new campers learned at Seeds of Peace this summer has yet to sink in. He has learned that the emotional highs campers take with them from Maine can quickly crash to devastating lows. Only then can they begin to decide whether what they experienced was illusion or truth. “The experience is different [for each one],” says Ariel. “Camp is a bubble.”

Ariel, who toyed with the idea of vengeance after the suicide bombing he saw in December, is now firm in his own path.

“I got to a conclusion that we have no other way [but to work for peace],” he says. “We can do this. We can’t do anything else.”

Read Amanda Paulson’s follow-up 2003 Christian Science Monitor story »

Indian children return with warmth for Pakistan
The International News (Pakistan)

LAHORE | Indian children belonging to the Seeds of Peace family returned home on Saturday by Dosti Bus with tons of warmth, hospitality and sweet memories. There were 21 boys and girls aged between 15-17 with two delegation leaders, Monica Wahi and Feruzun Mehta from India.

The US representative of Seeds of Peace organisation, Marieke van Woerkom, accompanied Indian children along with two Harvard University students, Anila (Pakistani) and Meenakshi (Indian). All the children hailed from Mumbai’s middle and upper society. They travelled by air to New Delhi from where they came to Lahore by Dosti Bus.

Seeds of Peace (SOP) is an American NGO which facilitates friendships among children of conflicting nations of the world. The idea of SOP was envisioned by John Wallach, a journalist who was moved by Mideast violence. The great luminary of world peace died of cancer in July 2002 among his worldwide family of Seeds of Peace children. He founded Seeds of Peace in 1993 and kept organising their get-together sessions in the idyllic haunts of Otisfield, Maine. In each session, he invited about 360 children in batches from rival nations including Pakistan and India.

Seeds of Peace is now being run by Aaron Miller, a friend of John Wallach, who shared his vision also.

The event of Indian children visiting Lahore was a low-key, off-media affair mainly because of security reasons and fear of ticklish questions of newsmen. All Indian children lived here with families of host children, the first ever free-will interaction between Indian Hindu families and Pakistani Muslim families after Partition. In that respect, it meant much more than sheer lip service to the cause of peace.

Asked what they enjoyed most in Pakistan, Indian children just had one word, “Hospitality” on their lips.

In the absence of any government level efforts, the children became true harbingers of peace, love and fraternity. The Indian children brought dainty gifts of choice and letters from their parents for host families. Indian parents used “Asalam-o-Alaikum” and “Insha Allah” in their letters for the first peace harvest after more than half a century.

Enthusiastic host children also pooled in funds for making organised visits to some of the best places of the city. In a chartered bus, they were taken to Government College University, Gurdawara adjacent to Badshahi Mosque, Gymkhana Club, Lahore Fort and Minar-e-Pakistan. They were feted at Village Restaurant, Cafe Zouk and Cocoo’s Cafe. Host families also served special dinners for the guests, keeping in view that many were pure vegetarians or half vegetarians.

Apart from hospitality, they said foods of Lahore were the most enjoyable part of their trip. Host boys took care of boy guests and host girls looked after Indian girls. They played together, ate together and lived together despite limited availability of time as a first experience of its kind.

The children had already been together in the SOP camps in the US, knew each other well and had been keeping their friendship alive on Internet. In their casual chats, India and Pakistan children discussed many of the big issues including Kashmir without getting embroiled, sending a silent message to their national leaders to emulate them.

Seeds of Peace had requested both Governor, Punjab Lt. Gen. Khalid Maqbool and Chief Minister, Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, for a photo session with SOP children. Ironically, however, both of them failed to respond.

Indian children were interesting observers as well. On August 14 they went round the town. They noted that Pakistanis celebrate Independence Day with a greater joy and spirit.

‘The Enemy Has A Face’
The Jewish Week

As I write this, it is hours before Tisha b’Av, the day of Jewish mourning when we read the haunting words of Lamentations, of how Jerusalem “weepeth sore in the night.”

As I write this, the grieving continues for more recent tragedies, in Israel, and in Gaza too. For too many, the crying won’t ever truly cease. But when there’s a lull in the violence, I hope more of us can begin to think like Yaala Muller.

Muller, an Israeli who grew up in the town of Modi’in, has opted to take the “road less traveled.” She considered that phrase from Robert Frost’s poetry during another summer, a few years back, when she was a teenage camper at Seeds of Peace in Maine. The unlikely path she now traverses has brought her to a place where she feels the pain of both sides in this war, a place from which she has been reaching out to Palestinian friends.

“I want to be there for them, and show them that I care,” she says in a phone interview, adding that, “friendships can still exist despite the fact that our countries are at war.”

And no, Muller does not support Hamas. And no, Muller is not among those on her campus at Washington University in St. Louis, where she will be a sophomore this fall, who carry posters that exhort the world to “Free Palestine.” When she sees those signs, she feels as if they were protesting her very existence.

And yet, she’s horrified and angry that “Palestinians are losing children like they’re flies.” And when college friends speak critically of Palestinians, she rebukes them, saying, “You have no idea what the Palestinians are going through.”

“If I choose a side, I’m resigning myself to war, and war is awful,” says Muller, who is 20. Muller says she has no clear plan for how the conflict can be resolved, but believes that active listening is the first step.

The Seeds of Peace program, which radically shifted Muller’s perspective during her two sessions there in 2009 and 2011, has welcomed scores of teenagers from regions of conflict. For 21 summers, it has been offering traditional camp activities on its serene waterfront and grassy fields as well as daily doses of intense dialogue for nearly two hours at a stretch. Even last week, some 95 Palestinian and Israeli campers descended on this idyllic setting in Maine. This summer, Eric Kapenga, the communications director, reports that “the campers are getting into the heavier discussions a bit sooner than normal.”

At Seeds, Muller learned, “It’s not about convincing each other of who is right. It’s about acknowledging that everyone is allowed to have their experience.” Siwar Mansour, a Palestinian living in central Israel, and a Seeds alumna, says the camp reinforces the idea that “the enemy has a face.”

At Seeds that first year, Muller met a boy named Hamzeh who seemed to understand her better than even her high school classmates. Together they traded stories about family and shared future dreams; together, they laughed and laughed. Except for those occasions in dialogue, when, as Muller remembers, “we argued A LOT.” But she also recalls how Hamzeh, who identifies as a Palestinian, and who grew up in East Jerusalem, was paired with her for a physical challenge, and how they trusted one another as they walked across two ropes strung up high in the trees. And how at a certain point she knew that even if they argued they would still be friends.

Imagine if the Seeds program could sprout beyond this one site in Maine. Perhaps we would see more examples like the Aboulafia Bakery, an Arab bakery in Jaffa, where last week the employees wore New York taxi-yellow T-shirts, blaring out: “Jews And Arabs Refuse To Be Enemies.” Or perhaps there might be more collaborations, like the one between two religious women living in Israel, who together wrote a peace prayer (http://labshul.org/?p=3613).

Imagine if the crying in Jerusalem and beyond could be the kind that Siwar Mansour recalls from her final moments of camp. Color War formed the only battleground, and the entire camp was separated not by ethnicity, but by team: blue and green. As the winner was announced, everyone jumped into the lake, and in those quiet waters, Mansour experienced a shared moment of “the fear, the love, the hate, the worry, the tiredness,” and soon enough, the sadness over camp’s end, and “everybody was crying.”

Imagine, as John Lennon sang, all the people living life in peace.

Read Elicia Brown’s article at The Jewish Week â€șâ€ș

15 Minutes: Aaron David Miller
Social Innovation Review (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

Read this as a PDF »

In 2003, Aaron David Miller left his State Department post as a top Middle East peace negotiator and adviser to six secretaries of state to take the helm at Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit that brings together teenagers whose societies are in conflict. Seeds attempts, over the course of a summer at an unusual camp in Maine and through follow-up programming in conflict regions, to transform them into eventual leaders capable of seeking reconciliation. Since 1993, Seeds of Peace has developed a network of nearly 3,000 potential leaders from 25 nations.

You have spent your career focused on the most seemingly intractable issues facing mankind. What have you learned about the pursuit of peace, and how does it help you guide your organization?

The Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved. What led me to resign from the State Department was my conviction that it has become a generational conflict. We are in great danger of losing an entire generation of young Arabs, Israelis, and Palestinians to a kind of hopelessness and despair that has characterized the situation over the last four years. I left the State Department not because I’d lost faith in what I call transactional diplomacy, which is the business of diplomats that I did for 25 years. But that is not enough. Transactional diplomacy has to be married to something else, and that something else is what I describe as transformational diplomacy—creating personal relationships between future leaders.

You really believe in achieving peace one person—one teenager—at a time?

While saving the world one person at a time is not the most ideal way to proceed, it’s critical if we’re ever going to move beyond peace as the purview of diplomats to the kind of reconciliation and peacemaking that needs to be shared by broader constituencies. Contacts and relationships must be forged between young leaders who will emerge as journalists, attorneys, legislators, sports figures, scientists. This is the stuff of which relationships between nations are built. If there’s a sense of sharing a common destiny and there are practical ways of cooperating, people see they’re part of the same structure. One person’s floor really is another person’s ceiling.

Can you truly be nonpolitical with so much politics involved?

We’re a nonpolitical organization in the sense that we don’t take positions on discrete issues. I was asked to take a position on the Iraq war, and I wasn’t going to because I’ve got George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton on my advisory committee. We need the support of Democrats and Republicans in this country. We need the support of Labour prime ministers and Likud prime ministers in Israel. So it involves a degree of diplomacy and very careful management. It’s a nonprofit where there are all kinds of minefields.

Minefields?

We brought [Israeli Labour leader] Shimon Peres and [Palestinian university president] Sari Nusseibeh to Detroit, where we have a very large and very active friends committee. On the part of the Arab-American community, there were demonstrations against Peres outside the Ritz- Carlton where this event was held. I brought Queen Noor to Orlando, where we have another support group. There was great unhappiness among some elements in the Jewish community over things she had written in her book about her husband [King Hussein of Jordan]. So we’re constantly sitting on top of a political volcano. It goes off occasionally.

How do you keep the volcano from blowing?

I focus on the compelling nature of this work. I believe that only the forces of individuals through their own sense of courage and purpose can defeat the forces of history. And if we abandon the field to those impersonal forces of history, we have abandoned the future. If Israelis and Palestinians, 14, 15, 16 years old, who have lost friends and relatives to this conflict, can make the physical and psychological journey to living with one another and developing mutual respect—and sometimes even affection—for one another, it seems to me no obstacle is insurmountable, and I’m not going to indulge myself in thinking otherwise.

What enables you to achieve success with these teenagers?

We’ve created an environment which provides four basic freedoms that these kids simply cannot get at home – freedom of association without stigma, which is absolutely critical to building any kind of trust; freedom of movement, which they do not have at home; freedom to think critically and independently, tough to do while caught up in these conflicts; and freedom from fear of mortal harm. Their parents cannot guarantee them 24 hours of absolute security. For three and a half weeks, we can.

That creates big changes in them?

This environment sets the stage for a phenomenal transformation. That first night, you’ll find Israelis and Palestinians who won’t sleep. Not because they are homesick, which they are, or have jet lag, which they do, but because they’re terrified that during the course of the night physical harm will come to them from the other side. At the end of three and a half weeks, they are in mourning over perhaps never seeing each other again or being unable to have contact.

Specifically, what do you do to foster this change?

It happens because of the combination of the abnormal—90 minutes every day with facilitators who use all kinds of techniques—with the normal. We used to call them coexistence sessions. We now call them dialogue sessions. Coexistence implies simply allowing the other side to be. Real reconciliation is more than that. They’re really detoxification sessions in which hatred and poison from years of conflict come out.

Do they really change their outlook, ceasing all antagonism?

Can we claim the Israelis and Palestinians have resolved their conflict? No. Can we claim that the Arabs and Israelis will never again think ill thoughts of one another? No. But we can claim this: For the first time in their lives, they hear the narrative of the so-called other—the enemy—not from a rabbi or an imam or a priest or a politician or a journalist or a parent. They hear the story of the so-called other from a friend, a peer whose humanity and decency they simply can no longer deny. One Palestinian said to me, during the worst of the confrontation in summer 2002, “I come for one reason, to hear and be heard.” So with this transformative experience—and a decade of follow-up that we do—you end up creating authentic leaders who not only understand the needs and requirements of their own constituency, but they truly appreciate the requirements of the other. That is the essence of conflict resolution. It’s also the essence of leadership.

What makes for an effective leader of a nonprofit? What makes you effective?

You have to believe in it and convey that passion. And because I come from a world that is the opposite of nongovernmental organizations, it may well be that people pay more attention. I mean, why would somebody who was an adviser to six secretaries of state want to work with young people? The reason is that being part of something bigger than yourself, particularly on historic issues, is an honor and a privilege.

What did you learn at the bargaining table that enables you to do this?

It’s the way I define my own life: “The perfect should not be allowed to become the enemy of the good.” That phrase should be emblazoned over the portal of every negotiating room and boardroom in the world. The insistence on the pursuit of 100 percent in conflicts will get you nothing. Or worse than nothing. Life is all about finding a balance between the real and the ideal. The negotiation of real peace will not be the property of the margins; it will not be the property of the right or left. It will be at the center, where Seeds is.

What is the biggest challenge you face?

Other than managing politics? Fundraising. We accept money from corporate sponsors and foundations, but most comes from individuals and event-driven development, which is not the most effective way to marshal resources.

Why is it a challenge? Because of the time involved?

No. Because of what we try to do. Hamas is running 5,000 young people each summer through their camps. They’re not coexistence camps. We’re running 500. Those numbers don’t make any sense There is no greater challenge that this country faces than the challenge that is brewing in South Asia and the Arabic and Muslim world, and it’s a generational challenge. Except for resources, there’s no reason why Seeds couldn’t bring 5,000 each summer to two or three camps and have a significant multiplier effect by doing follow-up in the regions.

What’s the greatest difficulty in setting the budget?

The unpredictability of what we’re able to raise against what we’re spending. And making sure the budgets are real and that we can raise resources to cover it. This is the problem with any nonprofit—the need for some sort of financial cushion so chasing dollars isn’t the single most important act in the organization. We’re also putting a lot of resources now into evaluation.

So you go back later and see whether your program works?

Exactly. Zogby International has looked at a portion of our young people from camp sessions in 2003. The degree to which their attitudes—even in these circumstances—have been constant is encouraging. We are now doing a long-term study so we can see over a decade what a difference this program has made.

Why did you commission those studies? Can data bolster fundraising?

There had never been an effort to measure success and that was unacceptable. We need independent, credible evaluation to determine whether our program is working. Yes, of course it’s driven by our donors, foundations, corporate sponsors who want to know. And they have a right to know. The fact that you’re a nonprofit doesn’t free you from the kinds of standards all other credible organizations have to measure themselves by, and be measured by others. We also want to know whether programs work. We can adjust or modify them if they’re not.

What’s the structure of your organization?

I have a diverse board of 25 committed people and a smaller executive committee. Both help with fundraising. We’re now doing a strategic plan, and that brings up many issues.

Such as?

A second camp. Should we concentrate on one conflict or continue to deal with two or three? Is event-driven development the best way to go? Should the focus of our activities be in the regions [where conflict occurs] or in the United States? I feel the region is where success or failure lies. Historically, we started with the camp in Maine.

So there’s tension over deviating from your original mission?

Remember, this organization was created in 1993 by a Hearst journalist, John Wallach. Forty-five of the first Seeds grads—Israeli, Palestinian, and Egyptian teens—were on the White House lawn on Sept. 13, 1993 [when Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords]. In 2000, everything broke down. We’ve got to go to regional or even uninational approaches, not as a substitute for dialogue, but to empower these young people within their communities so they don’t become delegitimized.

So you have to manage a transition?

Some small nonprofits never survive the deaths of their charismatic founders. That whole process of transition—how you move from an entrepreneurial phase of a nonprofit with a founder beloved by all to the institutional phase, there’s dislocation in that.

How do all these changes—enlarging operations, disagreements internally, a polarized world—affect your organization and outlook?

It is all infinitely more complicated. But it is also incredibly exciting and challenging. The opportunities to present a very compelling mission and a model for how to deal with these conflicts have expanded exponentially. I went down to talk to the ExxonMobil corporate board last month for possible support. They understand not only from the corporate public relations perspective but from also the global reality and substance that organizations like this one are worth supporting. So I believe political circumstances have broadened potential constituencies.

So you feel more hopeful?

I think 2005 will bring a break in the Israel-Palestinian stalemate. But if you ask me when you can see anything remotely resembling peaceful normal relations between nations, I think it will be a couple of decades. That’s right about the time our oldest graduates will be coming into their own.

Sowing seeds of Mid-East peace
The Sun (UK)

JERUSALEM | Violence, hatred and tension rage on in the Middle East, with at least 13 killed in the latest fighting between feuding factions in the Gaza Strip.

Yet one organisation is breaking down barriers. Seeds of Peace was founded in 1993 by US journalist John Wallach and is supported by UK charity World Vision.

It aims to secure lasting peace by bringing together Arab and Israeli teenagers in month-long camps in the US to dispel fear and prejudices of the “enemy”.

Here we meet a generation who could provide an answer to the hatred and deaths.

Noa and Sara

Noa and SaraIsraeli Noa Epstein, 24, met Palestinian Sara Jabari at a Seeds of Peace camp in 1997. They became pals and even made the dangerous trip to one another’s homes—risking jail in the occupied territories.

English teacher Sara, 24, is married to businessman Izzeden and is mum to Yumna, four, and Dawood, one.

She lives in Beit-Hannina, a suburb of north Jerusalem. Noa, a co-ordinator for pressure group Peace Now, lives in Jerusalem’s Mevasseret Zion suburb.

NOA SAYS: “When I was 14 my teacher offered me the chance to go to a summer camp with Israeli and Arab kids. It sounded intriguing and was an opportunity to get to know people who live nearby but who I would otherwise never get to meet.

“At the time I first went to camp, in 1997, terror attacks here were escalating and I felt a little nervous. Then I met Sara.

“We spent hours talking and soon realised the other was not the monster stereotype which is too often portrayed.

“It was important for me to travel to Sara’s home in Hebron, which is around one hour away.

“It was the first time I had been in the West Bank, former Arab territory now occupied by Israel.

“Soon after, Sara came to my home. Since she moved to Jerusalem we have been able to see more of each other. The only way this conflict can be resolved is by educating people to break down the walls of hate.”

SARA SAYS: “Before I went to the camp, I always thought Israelis were the enemy and was very afraid of them.

“My family and friends would tell me, ‘Even when you are sleeping you must take care’.

“When I discovered I’d be sharing a bunk with two Israeli girls I stayed awake all night in case they attacked me—and later they told me they did the same. But day by day the animosity broke down.

“Noa and I developed a very close friendship quickly. We were not an Israeli and a Palestinian ? simply two friends.

“I was afraid of going to Noa’s home the first time, particularly when a woman entered the house in army uniform. I thought I would be arrested or even shot but Noa said it was her sister. [Israeli girls are conscripted at 18.]

“Noa’s family made me very welcome.

“I try not to be too optimistic, but I want a future for my kids which is free from crossing army checkpoints and being divided by walls. At least they are growing up with a role model of a friendship which refuses to be broken by war.”

Hamutal and Amani

Hamutal and AmaniISRAELI Hamutal Blanc, 16, from Haifa formed a firm friendship with Palestinian Amani Ermelia, 17, at a Seeds of Peace camp in June 2005. Amani lives in a refugee camp in Jericho.

HAMUTAL SAYS: “In many Israeli minds all Palestinians are terrorists. But luckily my parents have brought me up to think more liberally. Nevertheless, I wanted to meet Palestinians and see the situation with my own eyes.

“Amani and I slept in the same room at camp and formed a strong bond. We discussed lots of things, including the politics of our countries.

“I can try to understand a lot of things but I could never agree with suicide bombing. I was shocked to discover that most intelligent Palestinians do. I’d like to go to Amani’s home but it’s dangerous for me.”

AMANI SAYS: “To get to my school, five miles from my home, I have to pass through Israeli army checkpoints. I often feel scared because the soldiers can be hostile and even open fire.

“I wanted to go to Seeds of Peace to tell how I feel. I am like a bird in a cage, I can’t move freely in my own country. Just because I wear a scarf, Israelis think I am a terrorist.

“I respect Hamutal because she has made the effort to listen and understand me.”

Mahmoud and Amos

Mahmoud and AmosPALESTINIAN Mahmoud Massalha, 16, is from north Jerusalem. He made friends with Israeli Amos Atzmon, 16, of west Jerusalem, at a Seeds of Peace camp last year.

MAHMOUD SAYS: “Amos and I became friends because we both love football.

“The thing I admire most about him is that he is learning to speak Arabic. I am learning to speak Hebrew.

“That really helps because if we are going to make peace with the other side we need to know their language.”

AMOS SAYS: “It was the first time I had got to know Palestinian kids, rather than just seeing them as the enemy.

“I knew Mahmoud and I were going to be friends. We discovered we liked hip-hop music, particularly Eminem. I’d love to go to Mahmoud’s house but I’m a bit afraid. But if you don’t know the other side, you can never make things better.”

Read Sharon Hendry’s article at the The Sun (UK) »