BY G.M. ECKEL IV | OTISFIELD There is a tangible sense of idealism, purpose, and emotion in the words of the Seeds of Peace camp founder and president John Wallach as he welcomes the diverse group of blue jeans, sneakers, foreign tongues, and green t-shirts on Tuesday morning:
“You have a right to be proud, to be very proud of your flag, your culture, your heritage… But here, now, when we all walk through these gates, we are all part of this new nation.”
With that dedication, some 164 school-aged children from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar and Tunisia cheer and smile nervously at one another at the official opening of Wallach’s grand “experiment,” the Seeds of Peace International Camp for Conflict Resolution, now in its fifth year.
These campers come from diverse backgrounds, chosen by their respective governments to participate in this program. They have experienced first hand the casualties of Middle Eastern conflicts with fathers, brothers, and relatives killed fighting for one cause or another. A cousin of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is participating this year, along with a nephew of Palestinian president Yassar Arafat.
“I’m excited,” says Alia Abdel Rahman, a half Palestinian and half Lebanese girl from Washington, DC whose father is the chief negotiator for the Palestinian National Authority, second only to Yassir Arafat himself. “It was very touching when an Israeli boy came up and put his arm around my shoulder as we were singing the camp’s anthem. Hopefully, [camp] will be good.”
The Seeds of Peace program, whose existence predates the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, has brought nearly 600 teenage campers from the Middle East region to Maine over the years to participate in its unique program whose accolades to date include the 1996 UNESCO Peace prize.
“It’s a sensitizing process here for the kids. We teach them how to listen, how to respect one another. It’s back to basics, almost like a detoxification process,” Wallach explains after the ceremony.
Central to the Seeds of Peace program are “coexistence” sessions where Arab and Israeli campers come together in small groups twice a day to discuss the deep set issues of cultural, political, and ethnic conflict endemic in the Middle East.
In these professionally-facilitated sessions, “there is a real catharsis for these kids. This is where the tears are shed. We get the kids to really listen to each other,” Wallach says. “They really bring a lot of pent-up hatred with them.”
The coexistence sessions are an essential part of the experience, Wallach says, but not the most important part. For the three weeks that the campers are here on the shores of Pleasant Lake, Arab and Israeli campers sleep in the same cabins, they eat together, they swim together, they play sports together. This, Wallach says, is where the real seeds of friendship are sown.
The morning sun trickles down through the pines and oaks at the camp’s gates as applause, cheering, and quintessentially American whooping punctuates the flag-raising ceremony. In turn, each of the eight delegations sings their respective national anthem as the flags are raised, culminating with a guitar-accompanied rendition of the camp’s anthem whose lyrics were written by an 18-year-old Egyptian camper.
“It’s exciting to see this going on,” Tim Wilson, the camp director says, smiling. “John and the Board have worked real hard to make this happen and to continue the legacy of this camp.”
“This is a model for building peace here,” continues Wallach. “We’re getting people to talk to one another, starting with the young people, working with the next generation.”
In future summers, Wallach hopes to expand the program to offer different sessions for youth from troubled regions of the world; among them, a session for Northern Ireland Protestant and Catholic campers, one for Bosnian Muslim and Serbian campers, and perhaps even, one for inner-city American teens.
With the end of the ceremony, the delegations break up into different camp groups, and friends and compatriots are reluctantly separated from one another in a scene reminiscent of so many other summer camp moments. These are only kids, after all, notes Wallach as the dust settles.
“Maine is so perfect,” he says gesturing upwards. “I mean, look around and you’ll see the way the world was when it was created.”