Dina Ezzat encounters a group of young people who, despite the harrowing images of the conflict in Lebanon, still have faith in the cause of peace "You know what I think when I see the images of killing and death in south Lebanon? I think international legitimacy is dead. I think that the UN is almost not there," says Maha, a 19-year-old Egyptian student of mass communication. Maha is angry that Israel gets away not just with killing people in Gaza and Lebanon but is also undermining hopes for peace in the Middle East. "The reason that this is happening is simple, we are living in a unipolar world. The US and those supported by the US can do whatever they want." Maha was among the more than 100 young men and women from nine Arab and six other countries who participated this week in a camp co-hosted in Cairo by the National Sports Council and the Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement which took as its theme "culture as the language of peace". At a time when Israeli aggression against Arabs becomes ever more bloody and against the backdrop of a regional set-up in which Israel commits war crimes with impunity, blocking the access of humanitarian relief agencies in Lebanon and precipitating a catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, the word peace has acquired a negative connotation on the Egyptian street. "Peace. What peace? Can you make peace with a butcher like [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert? Can you make peace when Israel invades and destroys an Arab country without other Arab countries lifting a finger?" asks Atef, a Cairo taxi driver. He is convinced that there can be no peace with Israel. "You can either be strong and keep them away or be weak and succumb to them, but this is not peace. We should not lie to ourselves. We should accept that we are weaker than Israel and that we need to be stronger," he said before turning on to the radio to hear what he says will be "the latest news of Arab weakness". Atef is not alone in stressing that peace can only occur between equals and his belief that peace requires strength appears to be shared by many of the youth camp participants. "I remember a song from the early 1970s that began with the line I would rather be a hammer than a nail," recalls musician and composer Ammar El-Shere'i. "There is the peace of the hammer that knocks and there is the peace of the nail that is knocked. I would prefer that you be the hammer and not the nail," he told Thursday's closing seminar of the youth camp. The young men and women from Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar, Oman, Palestine, Jordan, Mali, South Korea, Pakistan, Eritrea, Indonesia and Gabon applauded El-Shere'i's words. They also applauded repeatedly when other participants in the seminar, including the playwrite and chairman of the Egyptian Writers' Union Mohamed Salmawy, and Ismail Serageldin, director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina argued that peace can never be equated with submission and that only strong nations enjoy real peace. The seminar offered an opportunity for panelists and participants alike to debate the concepts of culture and peace. Irrespective of nationality or age, those who spoke rejected the current Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon as well as the self-proclaimed supremacy of Western culture. "It is very obvious that we have a group of energetic and smart people who really have faith in peace but who also believe that without equality peace will always be difficult to attain," said Mrs Mubarak, founder and chair of the peace movement that carries her name. Speaking to the press on the fringe of the seminar, Mrs Mubarak asserted that, "it is simply impossible to have peace, at any level, without fairness, justice and stability." In a short speech addressed to the participants, Mrs Mubarak said she was aware of the concern expressed in certain quarters over the timing of the camp. "I know that some are wondering if it is possible for us to talk about peace when every day we see images of continued aggression against innocent civilians, including children. Some ask how we can talk about peace when we see hundreds of thousands of people being displaced in Lebanon and Palestine," said Mrs Mubarak. But current events furnish an even greater "reason for further commitment to peace". "No matter how angry or hurt we feel, we cannot give up our belief in justice and human rights, we cannot stop our tireless calls for equality and fairness, we cannot afford to lose faith in peace." Some of the young men and women participating in the camp argued that the fact it was held at a particularly complex time in the Middle East provided its Arab participants with an opportunity to explain to others what is going on in the region. "Many of the people who came have very little knowledge of what exactly is happening in the Middle East and many had confused or wrong ideas. The camp gave us the opportunity to talk to them and explain," said Mohamed, a graduate of the English literature department at Beni Sweif University. Others argued that Americans and Israelis should have participated in the camp so that they could talk to them about the consequences of aggression and occupation on the chances of co- existence in a place like the Middle East. "I really believe that there should have been some Israeli participants so that we could debate with them," said Mahmoud, a student of medicine. And for many, the camp allowed them to focus on the situation beyond the Middle East, offering, they said, an opportunity to talk about peace between cultures, particularly the West and the Muslim world.
