Transforming Hatred:
Sowing the Seeds of Peace in the Middle East
On March 5, 1998, the Office of Jewish Affairs presented a panel discussion featuring four students from the Middle East—Palestinian Abdasalam al-Khayyat, 15, from Nablus, in the West Bank; Israeli Shani Raz-Silbiger, 14, from Jerusalem; Shouq Tarawneh, 17, from Amman, Jordan; and Samir el-Samman, 19, from Cairo, Egypt. In a rare public appearance, these graduates of the Seeds of Peace summer camp also spoke about how the Arab-Israeli conflict has affected them personally, and about their peace-making efforts after returning to their home communities of Nablus, Jerusalem, Amman, and Cairo.
Larry Goldbaum, director of the Office of Jewish Affairs, introduced the program;
his remarks are reprinted below.
The Camp David Accords marked a turning point in Arab/Israeli relations—which until then had been characterized only by bloodshed. It is a ray of hope—but a hope which soon dimmed. Two and a half years later, on November 6, 1981, President Sadat was assassinated in Cairo. The assassin, like Sadat, is Egyptian.
September 13, 1993—Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, and Yasir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, shake hands on the White House lawn. The New York Times calls it "a triumph of hope over history." During the brief ceremony, Rabin remarks:
"We the soldiers who have returned from the battle stained with blood, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears, enough!"
But it is not enough. On November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated after speaking at a massive peace rally in Tel Aviv. The assassin is a right-wing Israeli Jew.
Seven months later, amidst the devastation of numerous suicide bombings carried out by Hamas, the Israeli Labor Party was narrowly defeated. The new government, a Likud coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was more concerned with Israel’s security than with implementing the Oslo accords.
Today, the peace process symbolized by the Arafat-Rabin handshake four and a half years ago, and the Camp David Accords 15 years earlier, seems all but dead.
It’s easy to point fingers and to assign blame. But that is the path of further bloodshed—the path taken all too often in the past. It is far more difficult to acknowledge the blood on our own hands, to admit our own culpability—the pain that we ourselves have inflicted.
It is hard to listen to the painful stories of those who have been our enemies—those who have killed our brothers and sisters, our parents and children—and whose brothers and sisters, parents and children we have killed. But that is the path to peace. That is the path we are walking tonight.
Whether or not the current generation of Israeli and Palestinian leaders can salvage the Oslo peace process—which seems more unlikely with every passing day—it will ultimately fall to these young people, and others like them, to forge a lasting peace, a peace that is more than a paper agreement between enemies, a peace which surpasses and transforms the hatred born of so many generations of bloodshed.
For more information...
Seeds of Peace website
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