OTISFIELD – Celebrating the second session of the summer of the Seeds of Peace International Camp, campers, counselors and administrators gathered Wednesday morning at the camp’s entrance for a ceremony attended by a small gathering of onlookers and several Maine media outlets.
Flags were raised and anthems were sung for Canada, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Israel and the United States recognizing the homes of campers attending the famous peace camp. Maine’s state flag was also raised in ceremony.
“Some of you came from the darkness of night,” President Janet Wallach said to the crowd. “From a world of death and destruction, to this place where words can mean hope. You came from the desert of despair to an oasis of hope.”
Seeds of Peace was founded 14 years ago by Wallach’s late husband, John Wallach. He was a journalist who decided one way to stop the violence rocking the Middle East was to bring future leaders, Israeli and Arab children, together. Since then, students from other troubled regions around the world have also attended the camp.
The ceremony ended with an upbeat performance by several guitar- and drum-strapped counselors playing the Seeds of Peace anthem. As they jammed, 180 campers linked arms and sang, swaying along with and occasionally shouting the lyrics.
“I am a seed of peace,” the song starts. “People of peace rejoice, rejoice, for we have united into one voice, a voice of peace and hate of war,” the song goes on.
The camp started its second three-week session as the war between Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel continued into its 15th day, with mounting casualties. Fighting is also intense in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is battling Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier.
More than ever, peace seems to be a distant prospect for this region.
But some campers expressed optimism.
“It will end,” Palestinian Rabab Khoury, 16, said of the violence.
“It is never too late,” Leen Halawani, 15, of Jordan, followed.
“Lots of things can happen,” Khoury said.
“Already I have many friends from all over the places people come from,” Halawani said. “In the future, it will make a difference.”
Halawani and Khoury attended camp last year as campers and have returned this year to be peer supports. They said the camp’s process, of getting young people from both sides of a conflict to play together, and then to talk in mediated group discussions about political situations, works well.
“When we have fun with the other side, it helps with the dialogue sessions,” Halawani said.
While the two teenagers are interested in careers other than politics or diplomacy, they said that the perspectives they gain at camp can improve the situation back home.
“You can be a leader for peace in whatever you do,” Khoury said, who expressed a predilection for studying computers and information technology. Halawani said she wants to study Chinese medicine and “help all people live a pleasant life.” As pleasant as the life at Seeds of Peace, she added.
“When you come here, it’s like a totally different world,” Khoury said after describing a sleepless night of listening to gun fire before she left for Maine. “To breathe another air, to get to know more people.”
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