When Eleazer Shmueli, director general of Israel’s Ministry of Education, was in Nairobi, Kenya, for the UNESCO general conference last month, Israeli delegates could not even get a “hello” from the Arab representatives. But last week at Harvard University, Shmueli was able to engage his Egyptian counterpart in informal talks about professional and personal matters, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview here.
The occasion was a week-long seminar with three representatives each from Israel, Egypt, Iran and Turkey to discuss plans for a seven-week seminar at Harvard’s Summer School next year in which educators was discuss youth, society and general education.
Shmueli was accompanied to Harvard by Baruch Levi, advisor on social services to Premier Yitzhak Rabin, and Prof. David Chen, dean of Tel Aviv University’s School of Education. The Egyptian group was beaded by Mansour Hussein, first undersecretary in the Egyptian Ministry of Education.
The atmosphere between the Israelis and Egyptians was friendly and stimulating, Shmueli reported. He said they discussed common problems such as teacher training, vocational education, curriculum development and exchanged pamphlets and other information on how these matters are handled in their countries.
Shmueli said the Israelis and Egyptians also talked to each other about their personal lives and life in their countries. But, he noted, the conversations were conducted with “tact.” “We refrained deliberately from political talks,” Shmueli explained.
The cordiality extended to the representatives’ wives. Shmueli’s wife, Geula, said that she and two of the Egyptian women found themselves with time on their hands while their husbands were discussing the business of the conference and so went shopping together in the Harvard area of Cambridge. “I speak Arabic,” Mrs. Shmueli said. “We had a good time.”
Shmueli said he has no delusions that the meeting at Harvard was a major breakthrough in Israeli-Egyptian relations. “But it was a step forward to better understanding,” he said.
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