The bonds of friendship in a bitter war

Seeds of Peace now has more than 2,000 graduates, Ms. Gottschalk says. If just a few of them hang on to what they've learned – and eventually become leaders in their region – they could have a big impact.

"We're just trying to get people to think for themselves," she says. "And to care about people who are not like them. If we can expand the circle of their concern to go beyond people who are not exactly like them, then we've gone a long way toward building a citizen of the world."

No one can say what makes the camp's message stick with one person and fizzle with another. All that's certain is that it will be tested back home, one reason the camp has created a year-round center in Jerusalem to continue work with former campers.

Saja is excited to have made Israeli friends. But she hesitates when asked what life will be like when she returns to Ramallah. "Here, I can do everything I want," she says. "But [in Palestine] I can't move.... To go to school from Ramallah to Jerusalem, I have to pass three checkpoints. When I stand there I think that I want to kill these soldiers, and I don't want peace with them."

Adar insists the bonds she has formed in three weeks, with Palestinians as well as Israelis, are stronger than those she's formed over three years back home. She still feels her country is "falling apart," but she takes heart from something Tim Wilson, the camp director, told her. "Tim [who is African-American] asked his father when segregation will end. And his father said, 'When this generation dies.' " She and her fellow campers, Adar hopes, will form a new generation.

Sami, however, finds it harder to imagine how Palestinians his age, pushed to a boiling point, might respond to a message of tolerance. "They're going to tell me, 'Can't you see what's happening? Aren't you living in this country? You still want peace after all you can see?' "

To a point, Sami shares their rage. He is furious when he thinks of Israeli tanks and guns overpowering unarmed Palestinians. Still, he has thought carefully about the situation. "There is no way but peace for Palestinians. The Israelis have power. They can manage with peace or without peace. We Palestinians have rocks. We have nothing. So, of course, I will keep trying."

A few days after he returns home to Jerusalem, Sami is already thinking about contacting the Israeli friends he made and visiting the Seeds of Peace center. Recent events have changed one plan, though: He no longer wants to attend Hebrew University, shattered last month by a cafeteria suicide bombing. The Technion, in Haifa, he reasons, is as good a school – and less of a potential target.

From what Ariel suggests, much of what Sami, Saja, Adar, and other new campers learned at Seeds of Peace this summer has yet to sink in. He has learned that the emotional highs campers take with them from Maine can quickly crash to devastating lows. Only then can they begin to decide whether what they experienced was illusion or truth. "The experience is different [for each one]," says Ariel. "Camp is a bubble."

Ariel, who toyed with the idea of vengeance after the suicide bombing he saw in December, is now firm in his own path.

"I got to a conclusion that we have no other way [but to work for peace]," he says. "We can do this. We can't do anything else."

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