The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
October 27, 2000
Remarks by the President on the Fiscal Year 2001 Budget
Q: One more on the Middle East. How can you have peace in the Middle East until you train the younger generations of both Palestinians and Israelis to stop hating each other?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you know, that’s—I must say, that’s what the Seeds of Peace program was about. And a lot of these young Palestinian and young Israelis, along with other young Middle Easterners I’ve met—young Jordanians, young Egyptians, in the Seeds of Peace program, young people from other Arab countries.
I think, obviously, a big part of what is driving these demonstrations is a profound alienation of young people in the Palestinian community who have not seen any economic benefits from peace over the last eight years, and who despair that it will ever actually be completed. I think finding a way to reach out to the young and give them some more positive contact with each other across the lines that divide them is very important.
I think one of the best thing’s I’ve seen in the whole region over the last eight years is the Seeds of Peace program and what these young people have done together. And that kind of dialogue is what has to replace the bullets and the rocks.
December 2, 2000
White House Conference on Culture and Education
THE PRESIDENT: If I could just follow up a little bit on the Middle East to illustrate your point. One of the most successful things that’s been done in the Middle East in the last 10 years is this Seeds of Peace program, which brings together Israeli children with children from all the Arab societies surrounding it. And they do things together, they work together. And if you talk to these kids, the sea change in their attitudes that have been affected about each other, and their understandings of one another because of the way they have lived and worked together, even for brief periods of time—often, I might add, in the United States, they come here a lot and spend time here—is really stunning.
And the flip side of that, to make a particular cultural point, is the profound alienation which occurs when people believe that their cultural symbols are off limits, one to the other, and when even sometimes in the case of the Palestinian textbooks, what they say about the Israelis is almost designed to create a cultural divide that will maintain solidarity within the society, but the makes it harder and harder to create peace, and also maximizes misunderstanding.
The one thing that I think ought to be thought about in view of all these cultural conflicts that I mentioned earlier around the world is that the most dangerous thing that can happen in trying to—if you’re trying to preserve peace and get people to make progress, is when both sides feel like perfect victims, and therefore, every bad thing that happens they believe happened on purpose. They cannot ever admit the possibility of accidents. People do screw up in politics. So bad things sometime happen not by design. But if you believe—but if you see this, you realize how desperately we need some cultural coming together, some means of reaffirmation. And so, anyway, the Middle East is a classic example in both good and bad ways—the point you just made.