Group brings Mideast kids together in USA
BY BARBARA HALL | This is the season of peace and yet there is conflict, most unsettlingly perhaps, in the Holy Land.
Against this backdrop, an international organization, Seeds of Peace, stands out for its message of hope. Founded in 1993, it is a not-for-profit endeavor dedicated to teaching the art of peacemaking to some 2,000 young people representing 20 nations.
With headquarters in New York City, Seeds of Peace is best known for summer sessions at a camp in Maine. There, as its literature explains, pioneering efforts in people-to-people diplomacy, the cornerstone of lasting peace, occur in bucolic setting.
In addition, the organization in 1999 opened its Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem. At the center, teenagers can find a safe haven where art and drama workshops and peacemaking skills are taught. Also, young people can communicate via the Internet and they produce a publication, The Olive Branch.
Leen Al-Alami, a freshman at Harvard University, is a Seed—an activist with the organization. A Palestinian, she was born and raised in Jordan where strife has been a given.
“Jordan was allied with Iraq during the Gulf War,” says Al-Alami.
“There was a lot of controversy then,” she says. “We just wanted things to be peaceful.”
And that same feeling among Jordanians extends to the Middle East War today.
“… I heard about Seeds of Peace through a family friend,” she says. “I got involved in 1996 and then again in 1997. It really helped me grow. It changed my view of things. Sometimes it was hard, especially in the beginning. It was the most moving experience for me because I had never really encountered an Israeli civilian. My idea of an Israeli was the one I’d typically see on TV, usually a soldier. I was very scared at first, but you have to learn how to distinguish between someone’s nationality and someone’s individuality. Once you learn how to do that, you can talk.”
Al-Alami attributes failures in peace efforts to a lack of a personal knowledge of each other.
“Once you learn about other people’s cultures, their points of view, you really can reach a compromise,” she says. “That’s what I’ve learned from Seeds of Peace. What the Arabs learn from their history books is very different from what Israelis have learned in theirs, so it’s useless to discuss the past. What we need to do is discuss the present and, from there, go on to the future. We need a peace that belongs to the people. After all, the people who are really suffering are the civilians, the children.”
Al-Alami says she has called on her knowledge of peacemaking often at school, from soothing relations with her roommates to contributing in courses that focus on world events.
“A skill I have acquired is that of listening, which has helped me at Harvard because there’s so much diversity here,” she says. “I use it every day.”
John Wallach created Seeds of Peace to address conditions he had witnessed during a 30-year career in journalism. Wallach was a syndicated writer for The New York Times News service and a reporter for Hearst newspapers. His prize-winning work included assignments on the Middle East peace negotiations in the 1960s and 1970s.
Wallach describes the group’s start: “In 1993, I was at a dinner party in Washington with Shimon Peres, who was then Israeli foreign minister; with the Egyptian ambassador; and a representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. I asked if I could make a toast, so I stood up and said I thought it was high time that the next generation should be given a chance to break the cycles of violence; and, if I found a place, would they be willing to ask their governments to send 15 or 20 kids to a summer camp in the US where they could live together and learn about conflict resolution? They all said yes. So, the next day, without waiting for them to backtrack or change their minds, I announced it publicly. I put out a press release saying that the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the Egyptians had agreed to send youngsters to a summer camp in the US for the cause of peace.”
“Those first 45 young participants who gathered in Washington had a surprise in store,” says Wallach. While on a private White House tour arranged by then-Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, the group met Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“It was on a Friday,” Wallach says. “She met them and listened to some of their stories. We’ve always had kids who’ve lost fathers or brothers fighting, as we do now. Mrs. Clinton was very moved. She excused herself and said, ‘I’ll be back in 5 or 10 minutes.’
We later found out that she’d called her husband, who was on an Air Force One flights over San Antonio, Texas,” Wallach says.
“She’d said something like, ‘Bill, I’ve just met the most amazing bunch of kids. They should be honored front and center in a ceremony on Monday.’ She came back and said, ‘Can you all stay until Monday, because we want you to be our honored guests at the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord [the Israeli Palestinian declaration of principles signed by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin].”
“It all worked out well. And, our kids were really the stars of the event, because they are the future.”
A decade from now, Wallach says, young people like Al-Alami will assume decision-making positions around the globe.
“Our dream,” he says, “is that our kids will be in leadership positions. The whole point of Seeds of Peace is to try to educate a new generation to break that cycle of violence.”