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SEEDS OF PEACE
Negotiating For Peace
Is
Eternal Job Security
By Tim Boxer
 OR
two decades Aaron Miller toiled in vain as a negotiator on
Arab-Israeli affairs at the State Department. Two years ago he
shifted career course to take the reins of Seeds of Peace, an
organization that promotes coexistence.
Miller brings young people out of the
Mideast
maelstrom to engage in conflict resolution at summer camps in the
U.S.
and the Seeds center in
Jerusalem
.
“My former employer at the State Department
envies me,” Miller remarked. “James Baker says
in his next life he’d also like to be a
Middle East
negotiator because he’d be guaranteed a job for life.”
That brought knowing smiles from 1,152 people
who jammed the Copacabana club in
Manhattan
for the organization’s seventh annual Bid for Peace Celebrity
Auction.
“The last four years [of the intifada] was
hell for Seeds for Peace,” said Richard Holbrooke,
former
U.S.
ambassador to the UN. “If Aaron succeeds to resolve all these
conflicts, he could put Seeds out of business.”
Christine Baranski and Billy Crudup
added a bit of showbiz pizzazz to the party as they introduced
several of the speakers.
CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour,
who said she’s half-Iranian, endorsed the work of Seeds for
Peace because “from friendship comes tolerance and from
tolerance comes peace.”
Her husband, James Rubin, a former
assistant secretary of state, told of the time he and Miller had a
meeting with the Saudi crown prince. Instead of going to a grand
palace, they were taken to a huge tent out of town.
Standing outside on the biggest carpet he
ever saw, Rubin asked, “Why did he pick this spot in the middle
of the desert?”
“See that little patch of grass?” Miller
answered. “He likes to sit here and look at it and think big
thoughts.”
Liav Hertsman, a 24-year-old from Tel
Aviv, said after she attended a Seeds for Peace international
camp, she refused to enter the intelligence unit of the IDF.
Instead she served as a media officer.
“Working in intelligence,” she said, “I
would not have been able to keep my Arab friends.”
Eias Khatib, a 16-year-old Arab,
talked about living in an Orthodox section of
Jerusalem
. Neighbors offered to buy his house for a lot of money but his
family refused to sell.
“I used to play soccer with the other
kids,” he said. “Once when we played there was a bombing. The
mothers came and took their children home. They didn’t want
their children playing with a Palestinian.”
Having graduated from a Seeds of Peace camp,
Khatib wants to prove that coexistence can work and “you can
have Palestinian friends.”
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