At Maine camp, Arab and Israeli youths hurdle barriers
BY CINDY RODRIGUEZ | OTISFIELD, MAINE Manal Abbas, 15, slipped into her sleeping bag, her heart booming in her chest. She stared at the wood-plank roof, scared of what the girls—the Israelis—sleeping next to her might do if she closed her eyes.
Manal, a Palestinian, lives in the crowded West Bank, where Arabs encounter Uzi-toting Israeli soldiers. She had never before met an Israeli girl. She only knew what family, friends, and Arab media pounded into her: Israelis are evil.
“What if one of them tries to stab me?” she thought.
Fear is common the first night at Seeds of Peace, a camp that brings Jewish and Arab teens from the cauldron of their Middle East homelands to an idyllic New England camp for a three-week odyssey of self-discovery and enlightenment. But the next morning when the sun shimmers through the tall pines here, and they are alive to feel its warmth, they open their eyes to a jolting reality: Not all Arabs are terrorists. Not all Israelis want to destroy Arabs.
And through the emotional 90-minute “coexistence sessions” where they scream “You stole my land!” and “Your people are terrorists!” they begin a process of transformation that directors here hope lasts a lifetime.
“I was skeptical coming here to meet Palestinians and Arabs in general,” said Yair Rachmani, a 15-year-old Israeli from Jerusalem. “But now I understand how they feel.”
After letting out their rage then teens eventually figure out that they cannot make progress without listening. As they see people they have viewed all their lives as enemies crying and shaking, they learn to empathize and realize they are not the only ones who have suffered. Both sides are victims.
“This may seem like a simple thing, but you have to understand that many of these boys and girls have never heard the other side,” said John Wallach, the camp’s founder and an American journalist who covered the Middle East for 20 years. Wallach calls the process detoxification. He said the teens are young enough, 13 to 16, where “hatred that is learned can be flushed out of their system.”
He says it is nearly impossible to do the same with adults.
“They have too much baggage,” he said.
Many of the adults who accompany the teens, serving as chaperones, cling to their own: Jew with Jew, Arab with Arab. It takes an intensive two-day program for the adults on Hurricane Island off Maine’s coast just to break the ice.
That is why, in 1992, Wallach founded this program centered on young people who would return to their homelands as “ambassadors of peace.” They arrive from Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and other countries; about 450 teens divided among three sessions this summer.
On this sprawling camp overlooking Pleasant Lake northwest of Portland, the teens are full of energy during the day, enjoying the kinds of activities common to most camps. They spend their days on tennis, basketball, baseball, volleyball, archery, canoeing, and swimming. When they are playing, the only visible difference at this camp is that the Muslim girls cover their hair and that, in keeping with Islamic custom, the boys and girls swim separately.
At night, they tumble into their bunks, sometimes giggling as they recount their day’s memories. Other times, they keep debates alive well past midnight.
On Tuesday night, as the rest of the girls in their bunk slept, Manal and her Israeli friend, Adi Fassler, set a flashlight on the floor, illuminating their faces. Curled on their beds in their pajamas, they began debating who Arabs or Jews should get Jerusalem, a question that bitterly divides the region.
Manal: “If I had the power, I would take all of Jerusalem, especially East Jerusalem because it belongs to the Palestinians.”
Adi: “If I had the power, I would, too, but that’s not going to make peace.”
“But I’m just saying that if I …” Manal started.
Adi cut in: “I can’t agree with this. East Jerusalem is the most important place to Jewish people.”
Manal: “Just because they have holy places there, doesn’t mean they can’t come pray, just like the Christians.”
Manal and Adi never resolved their argument, which they say will continue for years. But they walk away from Seeds of Peace with a lesson in great demand back home: the ability to respect each other’s opinions.
“Agreeing is not the point. Agreeing to disagree is,” said Ramy Nagy, a 15-year-old Arab from Egypt who attended the camp for a second time. “This year, I am not screaming at all. Last year, I couldn’t stop screaming.”
The program has so impressed agencies in other countries that Wallach has been asked to create similar programs for Greek and Turkish Cypriot youths and one for youngsters from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia.
This year the program cost $1.5 million, or $2,500 a youngster, all of it donated. Their parents help pay air fare. The program’s success is borne out by its expanding enrollment. The number of campers has grown tenfold since the 40 teens at the inaugural summer.
Today, the teens leave camp full of hope. They will head to Washington, D.C., to meet with US Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright tomorrow and Vice President Al Gore Tuesday, then return home.
There most will face criticism from those, including friends, who say they have been brainwashed. They will keep in touch with their newfound friends via e-mail and will try to visit each other. For some that will mean travelling in secret.
Manal says she will keep in touch with her close friend, Adi, the Israeli girl who lives just a few miles beyond the security checkpoints of the West Bank.
“I never though I could have a close friend like Manal,” Adi said.
Adi says now she knows why building peace is so difficult. She believes if adults and government leaders went through the same camp, they would learn to accept each other.
Linda Carole-Pierce, the director of the program, is realistic about what the camp can accomplish. No teen, she says, walks away dramatically altered.
“You dont change overnight,” she said. “But you can get confused. Confusion is good because it means you’re curious, that you want to know more.”
And that, she says, puts them leaps and bounds ahead of their governments.