Daniel Lubetzky

The OneVoice Movement has been running for the past couple years a program called Imagine 2018, where they are asking Israelis and Palestinians to share their vision of what their lives and future would look like if the conflict were to be resolved and a two state solution achieved.

OneVoice will soon be unveiling its next phase in the project – very promising stuff.

In the meantime, I just got a video from my friends Art Winter and Doug Suisman about their vision. In cooperation with the RAND Foundation, they have worked for several years on a Palestinian infrastructure corridor that includes state-of-the-art planning to enable a Palestinian state to prosper and grow in peace with Israel.  Their work is nothing short of stunning.

Take a look at their teaser video below, and visit their site here:

A troubling portrayal in the New York Review of Books by Peter Beinart of American Jewish leadership and Israeli society is a must reading.

The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment

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by Kim Walker on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky

OneVoice teamed up with students at Tirtza Grannot [the Academy of Commercial Communications] in Tel Aviv to create moving visuals that address many of the key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The best 40 were then exhibited and a winner was chosen. The winning poster is below, and the tagline says, "People Are Dying. To End The Conflict."

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OneVoice Palestine participated in the Strengthening Nonviolence in Palestine, organized by Realizing the Dream, Inc. Middle East Nonviolence and Democracy Center, and The Center for Democracy and Community Development. More than 200 people attended the conference, in which Martin Luther King, III- the oldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the founder of Realizing the Dream, INC talked about his father’s nonviolent struggle to grant the African Americans their civil rights in the U.S.A.  Johnny Mack, the executive vice president of Realizing the Dream, talked about the need for adopting nonviolent technique to reach a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

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For anyone who maybe losing hope that the Palestinians and Israelis will ever overcome their past to build a brighter future, here’s a story that should awaken the potential we all have to make a deep difference. Elias Khoury lost his land to Israel and his father and son to attacks by Palestinians, and now he has sought to bridge the gap by funding the translation of a prominent Israeli author, Amos Oz, into Arabic.

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A new poll by Dr. Nader Said confirms that Palestinians are disenchanted with those who govern them.  Even though Palestinians are traditionally very loyal to one political faction or another, they are fed up with corruption and destruction and are increasingly favor independent technocrats.  Below are some of the highlights from the poll:

• A vast majority (82 percent) support an immediate PLC election.
• Two thirds of Palestinians support the position of Fayyad Government to hold local election in July.
• 37 percent in the West bank and 27 percent in Gaza feel that corruption is on the increase.
• 57 percent of Gazans view negatively the performance of the Haniyeh Government in improving the economy.
• 51 percent of Gazans negatively evaluate the performance of the Haniyeh Government in respecting personal and civil freedoms; while 38 percent of West Bank respondents feel the same way about the Fayyad Government.
• Gazans are much more critical of the Haniyeh Government than West Bank respondents; while the Fayyad Government receives lower evaluation in the West Bank than in Gaza.
• 73 percent support the appointment of a woman (Dr. Laila Ghannam) as Governor.
• Only 8 percent feel that Mr. Obama is serious about establishing a Palestinian state.
• A PLO list will win over an Islamist one in an upcoming PLC election.
• Abbas, Fayyad, and Mustafa Barghouti win over Haniyeh in an upcoming presidential election.
• Independents will play a decisive role in local and national elections.

I have noticed over the years that every incident, every data point, every fact, and certainly every news story is interpreted differently by Israelis and Palestinians, each time suspecting bias against them.  Here is a study that explains the psychology behind the perceived partisan bias towards the other side.

To those who wonder if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will ever end and who think it is truly “intractable”, I thought I’d share a note from my colleague John Lyndon, Executive Director of OneVoice Europe:

I know that this is off-topic, but just thought I’d draw people’s attention to a not-entirely-unrelated news story: The ‘final piece in the jigsaw’ was put into place in Belfast, Ireland last night, with the finalising of twenty year long process of negotiations, for a seven hundred year long conflict. The DUP and Sinn Féin (the two most extremist political parties in modern Irish history) have agreed the last details of a power sharing agreement.

Strong, patriotic and at one time violent leaders of both communities sat down and thrashed out a deal that looks like putting to bed most of the grievances that resulted in decades of violence and thousands of deaths. Conflicts do end, the wishes of the moderate majority bear fruit, and extremists eventually come into the political mainstream.

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Bono just wrote an opinion piece advocating, among other things for 2010:

• A Festival of Abraham where artists celebrate Muslim, Jewish and Christian traditions (similarities to OneVoice’s OneMillionVoices campaign)
• The World Cup as tool for political change (similar sentiment to OneVoice’s Goal2018 Campaign)
• People Power, in line with the What Are You Willing to Do To End the Conflict campaign
• Non-violent revolution (in tune with why OneVoice was created)

So it seems OneVoice should invite Bono to join its Honorary Board, alongside music and change icons like Sir Paul McCartney.

Article pasted below…

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Interesting article by IPF’s Roberta Fahn Schoffman on recent moves by Prime Minister Netanyahu to enforce restrictions against Settlement building. 

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