Israeli/Palestinian Peace Camp
the Early Edition, CBC Radio, August 25, 2004

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to spread waves of conflict and hatred throughout the world.

But a group of Canadians is getting young people to talk about solutions. They brought five Palestinian and five Israeli teenagers to Vancouver for a program called Peace It Together.

The program is meant to build relationships between Israelis and Palestinians. But not everyone supports it. Freelance journalist Sarah Efron met with the participants as they went through the program.

(sound: airport noise)

Five Israeli teenagers and a handful of adult volunteers wait at the airport. They hold up signs saying ‘Welcome to Vancouver’ in English and Arabic. They’re meeting the rest of the participants in “Peace it Together”.

Even the trip to Canada is an example of how different the lives of Israeli and Palestinian teens can be. The Israelis flew from the Tel Aviv airport the day before, but it was too difficult for the Palestinians to pass through the checkpoints to get to there. They had to take a separate plane from Jordan.

“I’m Noam Tobias, I’m from Israel, from Jerusalem and I’m 16 years old…We’re just waiting for the Palestinians to come. They’re gonna arrive in a few minutes…I hope everything is going to go alright.”

Yuval Maduel is one of the organizers of Peace It Together. He came to Canada from Israel. Like most Israelis, he had almost no contact with Palestinians. But last year he met Adri Hamael, a Canadian of Palestinian descent. The two have become good friends, based on their mutual love of soccer and their desire for peace in their homeland. Hamael and Maduel are hoping these teens will connect the way they have.

Adri Hamael: We hope to provide them with a safe space to express their feelings in a respectful manner with each other.

Yuval Maduel: They will really get chance to see, talk, communicate on a humanitarian basis…and to bring this message to their family and relatives and we call that the seeds of peace.

The next day, the kids participate in an art workshop together. Over the next two weeks, they’ll camp, hike, and play sports. It sounds like a typical summer camp, but organizers hope the teens will grow comfortable with each other and talk about the more serious issues that divide them. Not everyone agrees with the strategy.

(Palestinian music fades out. Hanna Kawas: “That was Palestinian folksinger with a song, my Homeland is Precious ”.)

The Vancouver community radio show, the Voice of Palestine is giving updates on the Middle East. The host is Bethlehem native Hanna Kawas. He announces the death of four Palestinians from an Israeli missile strike and he talks about Israel’s plans to build a thousand new settler homes in the West Bank.

Kawas says the peace camp isn’t helping the situation because it doesn’t openly denounce the Israeli government’s actions.

“As long as there is no equality, dialogue is nice but doesn’t lead anywhere. Sometimes it is misleading, it covers up, gives Israeli brutality a white face a nice fact and that’s not the issue. Our objective is to show that there are war crimes, and people of good will, it’s their duty to denounce these war crimes. In a way, if you are whitewashing Israeli brutality, you are helping perpetuate the war crimes and in a sense you are part of it.”

However, the local Jewish Community Centre is supporting the camp. They even hosted a lunch for the participants. Rhonda Schwenk is the Assistant Executive Director.

“We felt this was an important initiative and we wanted to approach it with no political agenda, to offer a warm welcome….The road to peace has to start somewhere. I think anything like this is worth the effort.”

Camp organizer Yuval Maduel says the goal of the camp wasn’t to take a political stance on the Middle Eastern Conflict. He says they aren’t an advocacy group….And in fact they wanted to put politics aside and look at the humanitarian face of the conflict.

However, during the camp, the kids didn’t shy away from the bigger problems in the Middle East. They had discussions without the adults where they talked about the suicide bombings, the separation wall and possible solutions for the conflict. Abdalla Kamel is a tenth grader from Bethlehem.

“There was some hard discussion between us and Israeli students about political cases. They told us to discuss anything you want so we discussed very sensitive things, make some bad feelings, some shouting there.”

Kamel spent a lot of time with one of the Israeli teens, Ben and they got to know each others’ opinions. He says he will tell people back home what he learned here in Canada.

“When we arrive I will tell my society there is people like us in Israel who want peace, we can sit with him at same table, talk peacefully without quarrelling or arguing. And also to tell them that not all Israelis agree with what the government and military and what they do.”

Noam Tobias agrees that some of the discussions were difficult. They didn’t always reach an agreement, but they at least they gained some understanding of the other side.

“I think its important to start with little things, little relationships and grow from there and continue on…But just to wait because its gonna take time, you’re not going to feel it right now or when we get home. Maybe years. We’ll see.”

Tobias says it will be harder when they go back home. They won’t be as open as they were when they were in Canada, far away from their normal environment.

They’ll be separated from each other by military checkpoints and the security wall. But these teenagers have decided to make an effort to meet with each other and continue building their relationship together.

In Vancouver, I’m Sarah Efron.