Members of Israel-Arab youth group at odds over fighting in southern Lebanon, but they’re still friends.
BY ADAM DICKTER | Shouq Tarawneh, a 15-year-old Arab, was deeply upset by the deaths of at least 75 Lebanese refugees during an Israeli artillery barrage last week.
But there was no reason to hold it against her Israeli friend, Yehoyada Mandeel. After all, Yoyo, as his friends call him, would never have carried out such an attack, she says.
But Yoyo held up his hand in a cautionary gesture. “You’d be surprised,” said the 17-year-old Jerusalemite, who will enter the Israeli army next year.
Yoyo said he supported Israel’s retaliation against Hezbollah rocket attacks on its northern towns from Lebanon. “I feel very bad for those casualties, but we had to fight fire with fire.”
“You have no right to kill all those people,” countered Shouq, who lives in Amman, Jordan. “Kill the Hezbollah, but don’t kill those innocent people.”
Shouq and Yoyo argued while Mohamed Adileh, 14, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, tried to get a word in edgewise. Shouq soon put her head down on a conference table as Yoyo, making a lengthy point, refused to yield.
The trio are alumni of Seeds of Peace, a program designed to foster amity between Israeli and Arab teenagers. But there was little amity as they sat in the organization’s Midtown offices for an interview Monday. The three could not agree on who should answer questions first, much less how to bring peace to the Middle East.
But according to Seeds of Peace founder and President John Wallach, arguments are not only allowed during Seeds of Peace sessions, they are encouraged.
“The point is to learn how to disagree civilly and respectfully, and to listen to the other side’s point of view so that conflicts can be resolved without war,” says Wallach. “Nobody is saying they have to agree with the other side. The minute you begin to hear the other side you examine your own views, and then there’s the basis for understanding and trust and mutual respect.”
In three summers, Seeds of Peace has brought 300 teenagers, selected by their schools, to the United States for tours of New York and Washington D.C., followed by several days at a Maine retreat where they play sports and undergo intensive conflict-resolution seminars. Participants have included Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, and Jordanians.
Shouq, Yoyo and Mohammad, with six other Seeds of Peace veterans, were in New York this week to attend the organization’s annual dinner, which was held Sunday at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. The dinner was attended by 275 supporters, including diplomats from Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and the Gulf state of Qatar. This summer, Wallach says there will be Qatari children as well as, he hopes, Serbs and Croats.
Yoyo Mandeel has attended all three previous Seeds of Peace programs, and is contemplating coming to the fourth. As a veteran, he had no reservations about voicing his opinions, rather than avoid an argument. In Yoyo’s view, Israel began its peace process with the Palestinians only when Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was willing to renounce terrorism and negotiate with Israel.
“In Lebanon, we couldn’t find someone like that,” said Yoyo, dressed in a jacket and tie, to Shouq, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. “Nobody knows who rules and who sets the terms. In order to make peace … you need first a leader who is ready to negotiate and take responsibility.”
Both Shouq and Mohamed argued that Israel should negotiate with the Lebanese government, despite the widely held contention that Syrian President Hafez Assad is the de facto ruler of Lebanon.
“The Israelis have negotiations with Syria,” said Mohamed. “If you are going to Syria you are denying the government of Lebanon. Like the Palestinians, the need support.”
The kids did agree on one point: that terrorism and war against civilians was their common enemy.
“We generally agree that Israeli civilians have been killed, Palestinian civilians have been killed and civilians …”
“… are the victims,” Yoyo finished.
Of the three, Shouq carried the least emotional baggage. Although she knows children in her school from families who fled the West Bank after Israel’s victory in 1967, she says, “I’m pure Jordanian, my roots are in Jordan.”
Mohamed, though, has relatives who were arrested for activism during the intifada. Yoyo’s father was injured during the Six-Day War, and twice in February he woke to the sound of bomb blasts on the Jerusalem No. 18 bus line, which passes near his home.
But Shouq said the beauty of Seeds of Peace was the lesson of identifying fellow participants simply as peers, not as future enemies. “The atmosphere is all about helping us see each other as individuals, without caring who they belonged to. I deal with Yoyo as an individual. We don’t [agree on everything], but he’s my friend.”