BY MANDY TERC | One rainy rest hour at a summer camp in Maine, 15-year-old Noor from the Palestinian West Bank was learning to write her name.
She squinted her eyes in concentration and glanced back quickly at the example that 16-year-old Shirlee, a Jewish Israeli from a seaside town, had provided.
After a few more seconds of intense writing, Noor triumphantly handed the piece of paper to me, her bank counselor. Parading across the top of the paper in large, careful print were the Hebrew letters that spelled her Arabic name.
A spontaneous lesson on the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets probably does not dominate the rest hours at most summer camp banks. But the Seeds of Peace International Camp, where I spent last summer as a counselor, challenges the traditional definition of what teenagers can learn and accomplish at a summer camp.
Seed of Peace brings Middle Eastern Teenagers from Israel, the Palestinian National Authority, Jordan, Egypt and other countries to Maine to help them confront the conflict and violence that has defined their region for more than 50 years.
Every moment of camp is intentional; things like table and bunk assignments, sport teams and seating are never accidental. Part of encouraging the different sides to interact is each camper’s strategic placement in a bunk. Here, Israelis and Arabs not only meet the “other side” for the first time but also sleep side by side, share a sink and participate in group games. In the close quarters of tiny cabins and bunk beds, bunk counselors encourage the campers to ignore national and ethnic boundaries as the make friends with their immediate neighbors.
The three weeks spent in Maine combine ordinary camp activities with a daily two-hour coexistence session, during which trained facilitator’s structure intense explorations of political and personal issues. However, the remainder of the day retains the structure and atmosphere of a traditional Maine camp during dining hall cheers, daily bunk inspection, spirited basketball games.
Like life in the bunk, this is where the comforting ordinariness of camp life weaves together with the specific issues of the Middle Eastern conflict-an area, which bunk counselors must negotiate carefully, and thoughtfully. At a camp where teenagers are asked to analyze questions that have perplexed world leaders, even bedtime can become a political forum. In my bunk, I asked the girls to name one “rose” and burn one “thorn” every night before sleeping. Forcing my campers to summarize one positive and negative aspect of their day allowed them to recognize the widespread spectrum of emotions that each day brought.
Sometimes, the thorns and roses were quite ordinary and uncontroversial. The girls lamented bad dinners or lost sporting events and praised a helpful counselor or a particularly fun day of swimming. On one occasion, the girls’ choices for thorns and roses reflected the complexity and difficulties of their immersion into a bunk with their perceived enemies.
Adar, a gregarious Israeli teenager with strong nationalistic pride, began her turn as the other girls settled into their beds. She quickly offered that her thorn was her coexistence session when a Palestinian girl had accused Israel of unjustly occupying Jerusalem—a domain that truly belonged to the Palestinian people.
Instantly, eight bodies snapped from snug sleeping positions to tense, upright postures, their alert eyes attempting to discern facial expression in the bunk’s semi-darkness. Jerusalem is the most contentious issue between the Arab and Israeli campers, and each girl in the bunk was poised to take this opportunity to articulate and defend her opinion about the disputed city.
Adar continued by asking, to no one in particular, if all Palestinians refused to recognize Israelis as the legitimate residents of the city. Almost before Adar could finish articulating her question, Aman was ready to express her passionate views.
Aman is a strong, athletic Palestinian who does not waste her words, preferring to listen intently. When she does begin to speak, she is both intimidating and impressive as she defends her opinions. Her confidence and steadfastness seem precocious for her 15 years.
Calm and composed, she explained to Adar that any acceptable peace agreement would have to recognize not just the Arab inhabited East Jerusalem, but also all of Jerusalem, as the Capital of the Palestinian State. Aman insisted that the presence of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem meant that the Palestinians were the rightful proprietors of the city.
With an equally rapid response, Adar reminded her that Jerusalem also contained Jewish holy sites. Aman seemed prepared for such a protest.
“We would be very nice to you (the Jewish people). We would always let you come visit your sites, just like all the other tourists,” she replied.
Adar had no intention of allowing her people to become theoretical tourists in this debate: “Well, we have the city now,” Adar said. “You can’t just make us leave, because it’s ours. We might decide to give some of it to the Palestinians, but it belongs to us now.”
As an American counselor in the midst of issues that neither directly impacted nor pertained to me, I spent such times in the bunk listening. As the conversation progressed, I only sporadically interjected my voice, reminding them not to hold each other, as individuals, responsible for the actions of their governments.
Aside from my attempts at mediation, I, like most of the other bunk counselors at camp, stayed silent during political debates. It is critical that the campers view us as neutral, universally supportive authority figures.
The conversation generated by Adar’s thorn eventually wound down. As the girls drifted to sleep, I let out my breath and leaned back on my own bed. As much as I want the girls in my bunk to express all their concerns and thoughts, any conversation about such a sensitive keeps me tense throughout its duration. The bunk must feel like a safe home but not a superficial one in which all the issues of the conflict are either ignored or downplayed.
As a bunk counselor, it is my job to provide my campers with the safety and security they need to continue the process of breaking down barriers.