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Iranian Jew and Palestinian Muslim go to 'summer camp' in West Bank
By Rod Solaimani and Hammad Hammad
Tags: Israel News, West Bank 

The patio greeted us with a coolness and calm that seemed anything but natural in Deheisheh refugee camp, near Bethlehem in the West Bank, where the sheer density of people has eroded any notion of private space. Above us, grape vines curled around the rafters of an unfinished ceiling. It's strange that since 1948, the visual reminder of a refugee's transience seems to have evolved from temporary tents to constant construction.

What exactly were two recent American college grads (Hammad, a Palestinian Muslim, and Rod, an Iranian Jew) doing when they chose to spend their summer living and working in a refugee camp? What started as an idea born over Red Bulls at 2 A.M. one night last spring at Georgetown University, evolved into summer camps in the Deheisheh, Jalazun and Al-Azzeh refugee camps last July.

As idealistic college students, we aspired to inspire refugee youth to become agents of change in Palestinian society, so they could proactively take steps (using the arts, media and sports) to make peace and stability a day-to-day reality in their lives.
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When our camp first opened on a hot day last July, no students showed up, perhaps because late the night before there had been a shooting by a local resident at a neighboring summer campsite. At 8 A.M. the following morning, however, 30 students (who looked like children, but were in fact malnourished teenagers) lined up outside the Deheisheh community center, eager to do something other than watch reruns of the popular Turkish TV soap opera "Noor."

When American president-elect Barack Obama visited the West Bank for an hour in July, one of our student campers, Qusay, a 15-year-old Palestinian refugee, told us: "No one cares how we live, or what we think. Things will never change; there will never be a peace that takes into account my experience, my family's suffering." He, for one, was skeptical of world leaders and their promises, having been let down so many times before.

While both presidential candidates were competing to prove their unwavering support for Israel, we were reminded of our experiences in the West Bank, living and working among typical Palestinians, who must travel through checkpoints and are torn from their families and land by the separation barrier. We feel a duty to amplify the voices of those who are working peacefully to improve their lot, but feel that attention is more often focused on those committed to violence.

What we learned working with refugee youth is that for a long-term peace agreement to even be practical, there must be a focus on creating a socially and economically viable society for young Palestinians; one that guarantees their justified yearning for stable lives. Many of the students confessed that it was the first time anyone had given them a chance to focus on practical skills or asked them what they wanted, and didn't treat them as burdens or beat them when they misbehaved. They finally felt like they had the power to improve their lives.

It became increasingly clear to us that, if the past retains a hold on these children, it is at least in part because they have no hope for the future. Their dreams are bound by ghosts of villages that no longer exist and by camps where hope is trumped by hunger. At first they are hesitant to discuss what resides in their heart of hearts. Some even rejected the notion of a "dream," embracing a fatalism that made us question the purpose of our project. But with persistent prodding, you'll find that they want to be lawyers in a land of lawlessness. They dream of being doctors, though they have no regular access to one. They want to be pilots in a region where they can rarely travel. They list swimming as their favorite hobby, though there are few public swimming pools in the West Bank. None of the hundred teenagers we worked with said they dreamed of becoming suicide bombers.

A Manichean battle of ideas will not sway them from thoughts of martyrdom. Perhaps a primary education uninterrupted by violence and a walk to school that doesn't require a bus, a cab, three checkpoints, and 20 minutes on foot will. Because of the intifada, our campers had attended only 275 days worth of classes in five years, acquiring a reading level that could be attained with merely a single semester of introductory Arabic at a U.S. university. These educational deficiencies can be fatal.

Policy makers seem to be trapped in the mid-term, just beyond the dire needs of the present, but just short of considering reconciliation efforts that must follow any future deal.

What we're suggesting is far simpler than an argument of "institutions preceding statehood." It's a call to balanced action. We spent a summer teaching refugee youth to embrace the idea of agency, emphasizing that they can exercise a measure of control over their lives, regardless of the stark reality that they are embroiled in a conflict that they did not choose, that they face bleak job opportunities, and that they have a relative who has been in an Israeli prison or killed in the conflict.

We can't begin to explain the exasperated sighs we would receive from non-refugee Palestinians in the West Bank, who couldn't understand why we'd ever spend a summer working with refugees, or the barrage of criticism Rod's parents faced at their synagogue back home, where community members accused their son of "betrayal" and of "helping the Arabs."

Ever the diplomat, his mother answered with the words of the 13th-century Persian poet Saadi:

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain.

We are our mothers' sons.

Rod Solaimani and Hammad Hammad are recent graduates of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Solaimani is an analyst at Merrill Lynch and Hammad is a Fulbright scholar in the Netherlands.
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  1.   The Iranian Jew might face it from both sides 17:37  |  x-ray 14/12/08
  2.   Summer Camp in the West Bank 19:04  |  Yacoub 14/12/08
  3.   You See Salaam, I See Shalom, But The Militants Still See Shahids 19:31  |  Lavi 14/12/08
  4.   Rod Solaimani 19:35  |  Raad 14/12/08
  5.   What a GREAT DUO 22:12  |  Ben Lollo 14/12/08
  6.   #1 Iranians do not see anybody as "lowly" 23:03  |  kia 14/12/08
  7.   TRY your best 00:07  |  someone 15/12/08
  8.   Kia 00:38  |  Persian Kitty 15/12/08
  9.   a visit to Dheishe camp 01:24  |  Bobby 15/12/08
  10.   thank you to Rod and Hammad 02:04  |  David 15/12/08
  11.   Yacoub, they are not who you should direct your contempt towards 02:11  |  Allison 15/12/08
  12.   Humans 02:18  |  Sarah 15/12/08
  13.   Commendable Tikkun Olam 03:56  |  mona 15/12/08
  14.   A story which will outrage both extremes 05:21  |  Mark Lincoln 15/12/08
  15.   Put blame where it belongs, on the arab league 05:47  |  Great White North 15/12/08
  16.   Where are the billions that have been given to the Palestinians? 05:51  |  Great White North 15/12/08
  17.   # 9 to mona re: sderot 07:59  |  eric 15/12/08
  18.   # 16 to the white north re: billions? 13:46  |  eric 15/12/08
  19.   Congratulations to two brave young ones 17:58  |  Ralph is back 15/12/08
  20.   Outdated ideas need discarding 22:05  |  Yaman Salahi 15/12/08
  21.   This article is... 00:42  |  Nasser 16/12/08
  22.   inspiring 03:09  |  Paul 16/12/08
  23.   Summer Camp 07:03  |  Lenny F 16/12/08
  24.   Visit mepeace.org to talk to Palestinians 08:34  |  Eyal 16/12/08
  25.   Where the money went 13:00  |  Ehud 18/12/08
  26.   here`s a question for the two kids... 21:57  |  nathan 19/12/08
  27.   #20 Not Really Yaman Salahi 23:33  |  Yaman Salahi 12/02/09
  28.   What refugee? 13:15  |  john Abraham 01/03/09
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