It’s been a known and disappointing reality that Arab aid to Palestinians is significantly less than aid from the West, but it borders on repulsive that even the committed pledges are not being fulfilled, and all this in the midst of a surge in oil prices that is generating hundreds of billions in windfalls to Arab oil producers.
Some will criticize this as Shimon Peres’s much-discounted "New Middle East" vision, but I love it, and I am confident that if Israelis and Palestinians get their act together and accept the historical compromises necessary to a comprehensive permanent agreement, this will only be the beginning. Check out this vision for the future of the Arava, intersecting Israel, Jordan and Palestine. It fits nicely within OneVoice’s Imagine 2018 Project.
Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz’s interview with Barack Obama is one of the most to-the-point expositions of Senator Barack Obama’s stances on Mideast issues. Horovitz asked strong and straightforward questions, and Obama replied with earnest answers. Anyone who truly cares about understanding the "real" Obama on these issues should read this interview.
One example:
Horovitz: You’ve said on this trip that you want to work for an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation from the minute you’re sworn in, so let me ask you about the thesis that there is no prospect of Palestinian moderation prevailing and enabling a peace process to really move forward until Iran’s nuclear drive has been thwarted – that so long as the Teheran-backed extremists of Hamas and so on feel that they are in the ascendant, the moderates can’t prevail and that the whole region is now in this kind of holding mode.
Obama: I think there is no doubt that there is a connection between Iran’s strengthening over the last couple of years, partly because some strategic errors have been made on the part of the West. And [the same goes for] the increasing boldness of Hizbullah and Hamas. But I don’t think that’s the only factor and criterion in the lack of progress.
Hamas’s victory in the [Palestinian Authority] election can partly be traced to a sense of frustration among the Palestinian people over how Fatah, over a relatively lengthy period of time, had failed to deliver basic services. I get a strong impression that [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas and [Prime Minister Salaam] Fayad are doing everything they can to address some of those systemic failures by the Palestinian Authority. The failures of Hamas in Gaza to deliver an improved quality of life for their people give pause to the Palestinians to think that pursuing that approach automatically assures greater benefits.
You know, look, I arrive at this with no illusions as to the difficulty in terms of what is required. But I think it’s important for us to keep working at it, frankly, because Israel’s security and peace in the region depend on it.
If you are struggling to understand why Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both Shiite, are so popular among Arab masses from Egypt to Palestine and Saudi Arabia, where the predominant religion is Sunni, think of it through a different prism: the culture of Resistance.
The culture of Resistance trumps the schisms of religion, as well as other divisions like nationality, ethnicity, and political persuasion.
The Arab world has been so impregnated with an anti-West, anti-colonialist, anti-occupation, anti-invasion, anti-globalization, anti-Israel ethos, that anything or anyone who stands at the vanguard against these modern suppressors will be greeted with enthusiasm.
The challenge for the good of the Arab Middle East and the world at large is how to channel all of these very real frustrations, that have only been deepened by lack of political accountability and continued authoritarian rule seen as imposed by the West on the Arab population, into a constructive path for progress within the Arab Middle East and outside.
It is not an easy challenge to overcome. If anyone figures it out, they will hold the key to progress and popularity.
At present, you either drive for revolution and cry against oppression in the name of "resistance", or you are part of the establishment and hence seen with suspicion by ordinary Arabs that are not part of the elite.
Great leaders like Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad or Jordanian King Abdullah, who are bringing economic progress to the poor in their country, will have difficulty getting credit, because they are seen as agents of the West.
Democracy and other concepts that should ordinarily appeal to the human quest for freedom similarly have difficulty because they are seen as Western impositions, and part of a cultural colonization.
James Montague from The Guardian newspaper just posted an article about Eytan Heller’s vision for Israel and Palestine to co-host the World Soccer Cup in 2018, an idea which so far has already spawned OneVoice’s Imagine 2018 Campaign.
From an interesting article in Ha’aretz by Michalis Firillas
[T]he concept of hegemony . . . is almost comical in the era of globalization. The sheer number of real or imaginary powers vying for the limelight has made international political maneuvering so complex that real power is hard-pressed to manifest itself in historically familiar ways. Suddenly, "statesmen" are a dime a dozen, and what really matters is whether you are invited to a conference, not what you can actually achieve there.
Firillas goes on to ponder on how civil society and multilateral organizations will somewhat fill that void.
To the chorus of people who complain that religious leaders are not doing enough to raise their voices against extremism and to improve interfaith relations and foster respect, here is an under-reported but remarkable story about a high profile conference to bring foremost Muslims, Christians and Jews together. See also this story.
Among the participants was Chief Rabbi David Rosen, who besides being the President of the IJCRC (the highest Jewish body charged with interfaith relations) and the AJC’s representative, is an Honorary Board member of the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement – and, perhaps granting him the most moral authority – was the Rabbi who got my wife to say yes at our wedding. 
It is a sign of how messed up the region can get that Palestinians in Gaza were motivated to throw rockets at Israel to try to undo the cease-fire agreement, rekindle the fighting, ensure a continued closure of the borders, preventing imports and trade, and thereby keeping at artificially high levels the prices of seeds they had purchased to sell to farmers within Gaza.
I am not making this up. Hamas, now motivated to keep the cease-fire, arrested Palestinian seed traders who had thrown rockets at Israel, and received their confessions.
I already blogged about my instinctive misgivings with negotiating to exchange imprisoned terrorists for the bodies of fallen soldiers, as well as about the perspective from some Israelis on why it was the right thing to do.
Now that the painful exchange took place, as much as I heard from many Israeli friends how this part of the code that makes Israeli soldiers so dedicated – knowing they will never be left behind, I regret to bring more information to bear on why this was such a damaging act.
It is not just that it empowered Nasrallah and sent a signal to all would-be-enemies of Israel that they can kill any Israeli prisoners and still exchange the bodies for value.
It turns out that even moderate ordinary Palestinians were enveloped in the fever of Nasrallahic heroism, buying Hezbollah’s message. A parade in Ramallah was held to celebrate the release of Samir Kundar, and all the messages addressed to President Abbas stated that the only thing that works with Israel is a strong position to FIGHT, as opposed to negotiate. Palestinians were glued to Al-Manar TV, the Hezbollah station that is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen – pure propaganda, pure hatred. The prisoner exchange was seen as a mythical victory for Nasrallah.
Nicholas Kristof considers using schools and education, rather than military force, to combat terrorism.