Daniel Lubetzky

The Israeli Government has just announced its agreement to procure the "release" Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, in exchange for releasing several Lebanese prisoners including Samir Kuntar, the man who in 1979 murdered 3 Israelis in their home, including a 4-year old, and who caused the hiding mother to suffocate her 2-year-old daughter as she tried to quiet her crying.

What is the problem?

• Sheikh Nasrallah ordered the attacks and incursions that brought about the Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006 with the stated goal of releasing Kuntar; Nasrallah outlined how he would capture Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips to bring about the release of Kuntar; now, 2 years after such devastating war and a month after having turned his guns on Lebanese people that supported the Lebanese government, he is being rewarded;
• Goldwasser and Regev are apparently dead, so the Israeli government is inviting terrorists not just to try to capture Israeli soldiers, but to kill them if they so please, as Israel will be willing to exchange their bodies anyway, for precisely the objectives that terrorists wish to attain.

I feel horrible for the families that lost Ehud and Eldad. But besides the perverse and ominous incentives this deal creates, it is also going to turn Hezbollah’s Nasrallah from a formidable hero into a mythic legend in the eyes of many in the Arab world.

The timing is particularly regrettable because for the first time in 20+ years, Nasrallah had lost a little of his luster when he showed his color and attacked fellow Lebanese civilians.  This will restore his stature and more.

Unless there is a secret grand bargain in the making that, with Lebanese/Shaba farms, Syrian, and Palestinian negotiations will settle the Israeli-Arab conflict and distance Israel’s neighbors from Iran, today is as tragic a day for civil society as it is a cause for celebration for those who espouse violence as a tool for political leverage.

Below is the text of the Israeli government’s outline for the agreement on releasing the abducted soldiers in Lebanon:

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This article from the Christian Science Monitor summarizes pretty well the political developments that have for now kept the current Israeli parliamentary coalition afloat.

Instead of recriminations and fights for personal political advancement, for once these considerations were borne in mind:

…it’s not as if we don’t have a few other things to keep us busy… …Israel’s shaky truce with Hamas, which is just six days old and already being tested by militants who fired rockets into Israel Tuesday; possible negotiations with Hezbollah over Israel’s captured soldiers; indirect talks with Syria; and nuclear tensions with Iran.

…not to mention the little detail about Olmert’s commitment to achieve a framework agreement with Abbas within 2008.

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Tony Blair Meets With OneVoice Palestinian and Israeli Youth Leaders in Jerusalem

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Full Transcript here.  Some excerpts:

Q151 Hugh Bayley: I agree, from my visits to the region, that a majority on both sides want peace, and the only prospect for that is to have a two-state solution, but the majority who want peace are marginalised time and again by acts of violence, whether it is a missile being fired over the border into Israel or the use of violence by the Israeli security forces. You can take the parallels with Northern Ireland too far, but it was undoubtedly the case in Northern Ireland that community groups on both sides – the Falls Road and the Shankhill – started saying, "We want peace", and they reduced the political space within which the terrorists operated. You have talked about a series of high-level talks you are involved with, but I think there is a need to nurture and strengthen community organisations of moderate Palestinians and moderate Israelis to try and nurture that space for discussing a future of co-existence. To what extent would you like to see DFID and other donors working in this area and what should they be doing?

Mr Blair: I think it is a very worthwhile exercise for them to work on. If you take an organisation, for example, like One Voice, which is for the young people, who are lovely young people, if that is the future on both sides it would be bright. I think it is very important to encourage a sort of civil society exchange at the same time, and I think that those are things that are easy to do and very worthwhile.

IDF To Remove West Bank Roadblocks as ‘Reward’ for Efforts to Clamp Down on Militants

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I thought I’d share the letter I shared with our Honorary Board and Trustee Advisory Council members on the occasion of OneVoice‘s 6^th Annual Board Meeting in Jerusalem this last month..

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My friend Ian Fisher pointed me to this hopeful story about Amal Carmiya, Arab-Muslim who was accepted as a new member of an Israeli Kibbutz.

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Gerald Seib wrote a straightforward, clear, and to-the-point column in the Wall Street Journal on the "would you meet with leaders of rogue states" question haunting Barack Obama – using Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s approach towards Syria as a very good example of how to do things.

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David Ricardo introduced the theory of "comparative advantage" – advising that each country has the ability to produce a good at lower cost, relative to other goods, compared to another country.

Ricardo’s theory advises countries to specialize in the production of goods and services they can produce most efficiently – or with lowest relative costs. 

Complementary Comparative Advantage involves identifying countries (or parties or companies) where each has a comparative advantage over complementary areas of production – so that partnering will bring both economic benefits. 

This was the language I used in my college thesis and law school work to explain the economics of peacemaking.

When we started PeaceWorks in 1993, we relied on this theory to encourage Israeli food manufacturers to purchase their olives from Palestinian growers, their sun-dried tomatoes from Turkish growers, and their glass jars from Egyptian manufacturers.

Another requirement of PeaceWorks is to ensure symmetry in economic relations, which is another prerequisite to ensuring or maximizing the chances of positive impact from economic cooperation.  Besides the agricultural field, where Israelis and Palestinians and other Arabs can make symmetrical contributions, other areas in the Middle East where there are symmetrical complementary comparative advantages include the textile sector, and the area of Dead Sea cosmetics, where we dabbled in 1993. Furniture (where Palestinian craftsmanship from Gaza has a lot to offer) is another area ripe for collaborative cooperation, as is construction, and of course tourism.  Business leaders like Dov Lautman have spearheaded cooperation in the textile industry between Israel and Jordan, between Israel and Egypt, and within Israel between Jews and Arabs cooperating side by side.

As my prior post notes, Zvi Schreiber has now also proven that even in the hi-tech world you can achieve worthwhile synergies between Israelis and Palestinians.

About two and a half years ago I was approached by Zvi Schreiber with a dream he had: to build a hi-tech joint venture between Israelis and Palestinians.  I had started joint ventures in the food industry between Palestinians and Israelis and we had a mutual friend, Alvaro Aguirre, who had encouraged Zvi (who was a very successful internet entrepreneur) to exchange notes.  I believe we spoke briefly and I tried to share a couple thoughts, but in the back of my mind I frankly was worried about his project and a bit skeptical whether he’d succeed, given all the obvious challenges during the political and economic environment, but also the prospect of cooperation in the tech space given the overall disparities between Israelis and Palestinians in high-tech skills.  After all, economics of peacemaking that PeaceWorks bases itself on require complementary comparative advantages.

Well, Zvi more than did it.  G.ho.st is a hot start-up with a hot product and great potential.  The New York Times just wrote about it.  And in Ramallah, G.ho.st is the pride of the town.  It is also winning rave reviews from Wall Street to Sillicon Valley.  And it is at the forefront of efforts where Israelis and Palestinians are cooperating on a daily basis to build a business platform and in the process build understanding.

What most excites me about this is that my pessimism was proven wrong.  So many times people have ideas and are discouraged from pursuing them.  Yes, it is healthy to have someone to question all your assumptions and to ask the tough questions.  But it is also important for people to JUST DO IT some times.  And Zvi is doing it!  Read the NYT article…

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