BY HARRIET B. SCHULTZ | FALMOUTH “I can’t think of anyone who makes us prouder to be Mainers. He’s a man of decency, integrity and patience,” said Merle Nelson last week from the porch of her waterfront Falmouth Foreside home as she introduced former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to a group of 200 people.
They came to hear Mitchell talk about a six-year-old camp in Otisfield that is appropriately called Seeds of Peace. Nelson invited them to her home in hopes that some of them might make financial contributions to the camp.
Mitchell, who has devoted much of his post-Senate years to peace efforts, recalled asking a mayor in a war-torn Bosnian town in 1992 when he thought the opposing factions that had destroyed the town would live there together peacefully.
“We will repair our structures long before we rebuild our souls,” the mayor told him.
“I learned the truth of that statement in Northern Ireland,” said Mitchell, who was instrumental in negotiating what has now become a tenuous peace among Ireland’s Protestants and Catholics.
“What’s more important is what’s in the hearts and minds of the people. We must look to the young people for a real and durable peace,” he said.
Gathered in green T-shirts behind Mitchell on the balmy summer afternoon were Israeli and Arab teenagers, along with Turks and Greeks from the divided island nation of Cyprus.
They had come to Maine for three weeks to “send a message that the next generation wants the violence to stop,” said Seeds of Peace founder John Wallach, a former White House correspondent, and foreign editor for the Hearst newspapers.
Three hundred youngsters, along with an adult delegation, are at the camp during two sessions this summer, learning about each other and forming deep bonds of friendship that they will take back with them to their native lands.
More than 1,000 teens from the Middle East, Bosnia, Cyprus and American inner cities have worked on resolving their conflicts at the camp.
Bushra Jawabri, 17, a Palestinian, and Shira Kaplan, 15, an Israeli, confidently and in fluent English, spoke to the crowd, their arms around each other’s shoulders. The two dark-haired girls, now friends, would have had little to do with each other before coming to Maine.
“I came filled with fear,” said Bushra. “But I feel safe here and can say my ideas freely.”
“This utopia is the reality that we can make,” said Shira. A repeat camper, Shira told a story about asking her father to take her to Jordan last year to visit a friend from camp. The two rode a bus from Israel for seven hours, stayed with her friend for two days and then returned home, something that would have been unthinkable before camp.
“This is what real peace is for me,” she said.
Mitchell beamed as he listened to the teenagers.
“This camp is as important as anything being done by statesmen or politicians,” declared Mitchell, “because it creates hope.
“Without that understanding—that love—conflict is created.”
Wallach presented Mitchell with a Seeds of Peace necktie depicting three youngsters holding an olive branch. Wallach said that King Hussein of Jordan wears the tie as well.
“If it’s good enough for a king, it’s good enough for me,” quipped Mitchell.
Hussein and Queen Noor were honored for their support of the Seeds of Peace program at a dinner in New York last year at which Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, “No one has a greater stake in the Middle East’s future than the young, and it is by the young that the choice between conflict and reconciliation will ultimately be made.”
In the three and a half years Mitchell spent in negotiations in Ireland, he learned “that there’s no such thing as a conflict that can’t be resolved,” although he admitted that “it’s easy to become discouraged.”
He found in Ireland, as in other parts of the world where there is long-standing animosity, “people come to accept conflict as an inevitable part of their lives.”
But by bringing together young people from opposing factions, who will grow up to be the future leaders of their countries, Mitchell continued, there is more of a chance for a lasting peace.
“I believe with my heart and soul that there will be a resolution of the conflict in the Middle East,” said Mitchell. “It is important to not despair and always, always to hope.”