Daniel Lubetzky

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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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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With regards to the Hezbollah-Lebanon-Doha debacle, and the article by Barry Rubin that I blogged about here, I received some interesting comments from Ami Isseroff, who runs MideastWeb and who I consider one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking analysts on the Middle East:

There is no use comparing everything bad that happens to Munich. This was more like Abbyssinia – including the toothless sanctions. Iran can only be stopped in Iran. Nothing could be done in Lebanon. As for us [in Israel], we have Iran in the north and Iran in the south. There cannot be peace as long as Hamas exists. Your Gaza correspondents are right, and the Palestinian public opinion surveys confirm that Hamas have little support. But in elections, it doesn’t matter what people think. It matters who has the most guns and counts the votes. Read the book Point of No Return about Iran/Hezbollah by Ronen Bergman . …Iran cannot be negotiated with. They will not give up until they are confronted with overwhelming and decisive force. A blockade by sea and air at least,

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The New York Times periodically rotates bureau chiefs and reporters across cities and regions.  When tracking the Jerusalem bureau, it is interesting (and sad perhaps) to notice a trend where many of them arrive with a positive outlook and are moved elsewhere after they start adopting an increasingly dour (if not pathologically cynical) perspective with regards to peace prospects.  Steven Erlanger used to write extremely insightful and diverse stories, then slowly gave in to total bleakness, and now I notice he is writing out of France, as he has eased Isabelle Kershner into the position.  She seems to be much more balanced on the topic.  Will she also be overcome by despair before too long?  I recall years ago noticing how Clyde Haberman went through this arch of perspectives, from positive to balanced to pessimistic.  Peter Bennett seems to have avoided the curse, but it is quite hard, perhaps impossible – and arguably it is a sign of dark wisdom.

A Palestinian truck packed with 4 tons of explosives rammed into the Israel-Gaza border crossing and caused an explosion that was heard 12 miles deep into Gaza and out to Israel.  By miracle or defensive design, the bomber was the only immediate casualty as the crossing includes a long tunnel that acts as a buffer (see last picture of this post).

(this picture is of a getaway car that was destroyed by an IDF missile; no pictures were allowed to be taken at the checkpoint/crossing)

Given the war with Hamas in Gaza, I should not be surprised. 

But I was sobered up.  Darya Shaikh, our US Executive Director, and I were planning to be exactly where the explosion occurred the following day to meet Ezz and Mowaffaq, Palestinian Executive Directors of OneVoice Gaza.  They had not been able to get a permit to join our Board meeting, so we were going to meet at the Erez crossing to bring them up to date.  I have not gone back inside Gaza since the Hamas coup 11 months ago, but we had received permits to go through the Israeli checkpoint and meet at the end of the tunnel with Ezz and Mowaffaq.

This is the tunnel between Erez/Israel and the Gaza entrance, which was targeted by the Palestinian terrorist, apparently from Islamic Jihad, a 22 year old recruited into a suicide mission.

A lot of people are worried that 2008 will pass without an agreement among Israelis and Palestinians to define a Palestinian State – and presumably and hopefully start implementing such vision.  I, too, get worried about this, every day.  But listening to Tzipi Livni is quite reassuring.  She genuinely speaks with the OneVoice language and framework and today recommitted herself and the Israeli government to the timeframe and the goals set out in Annapolis.  Most important, she was asked tough but valid questions by Palestinians, and she treated them all with respect, without dismissing any of the human pain inherent in the questions.  I need to check with those who asked the questions, but my impression was that, even though they hate the Israeli government, they recognized a sincerity and goodwill on her part.

How bad is the situation for the Lebanese? This is how bad:

1. Hezbollah’s militia is destabilizing in and of itself – no State in History has ever been able to call itself a stable State if there is a non-State-controlled militia that challenges the authority of the State;
2. For years the UN and the world have indicated that all Lebanese militias had to disarm, in order to allow Lebanon to evolve into a vibrant integrated country; Hezbollah is the only militia that refused to turn in their arms and allow re-integration; even though Israel fully evacuated from Lebanese territory according to the UN and all observers, Hezbollah used its "struggle" against Israel as an excuse not to disarm;
3. Hezbollah continues to smuggle arms from Iran and Syria and send its fighters to train in Iran; it uses the Beirut airport with impunity, and effectively controlled it, along with a separate communications infrastructure;
4. The Siniora Government sought to prevent the continued smuggling of arms by firing the Airport manager that was following Hezbollah’s guidance.  It also sought to ban the separate communications network
5. Hezbollah responded with a semi-coup – attacks against other Lebanese and against Government ministries and employees.
6. The Lebanese Army stood by; now, in which country is it considered normal for the Army to be required to stay "neutral" when a militia initiates attacks against the Government? The Lebanese Army stood by because a) they are too weak against Hezbollah’s passions, training, and weapons; b) they sense in the winds that Hezbollah is becoming stronger and the ruling government is going to fall;
7. The gutsy Hezbollah shiite fighters give their lives to the Movement and will go to the streets or to wherever their admired leader Nasrallah sends them; the Westernized Sunni and Christian moderates on the other side would like to live a fun life and hang out in bars and restaurants, or pursue greater education in the US or Dubai, and they have no undying allegiances to their leaders;
8. Now the "compromise" to prevent further fighting cemented Hezbollah’s control of the airports and their communication network, as well as a change in the government laws; General Suleiman, the head of the Lebanese Army, who was once seen as the only possible candidate for President capable of being responsive to both sides, is increasingly seen as tilting to the Hezbollah side;
9. Iran and Syria have been emboldened by this development and will further invest in their proxy Hezbollah; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, other Arab states and the Unite States, seen as the counterbalance to the Iranians, do not have legitimacy on the street, or the stomach or roadmap to invest themselves into strengthening Lebanese civil society and investing in the people.
10. Hezbollah’s leader Nasrallah has built a mythical reputation as a direct and straightforward and humble leader (it still confounds me how he achieve this, but he did), seen as a model in the Arab world, not just by Shiites loyal to him, but also by Palestinians and Sunnis across the Arab world;
11. The epicenter of struggle is now moving from Iraq to Lebanon; Iraq, even if stabilized, is already Shiite-controlled and significantly influenced by Iran; there is still hope the Iraqi Shiites will demand openess, stability, and progressive policies towards the world, in contrast to the Iranian regime’s apocalyptic totalitarian revolutionary zeal; but they are certainly not going to be any counterweight against Iran; now the threat is that Lebanon will become as oppressive and regressive as Iran;
12. This may be the most alarming development even for Israeli-Palestinian relations; the hope of a two-state agreement between Israel and Palestine is dimmed by the prospects of interference and destabilization from the North and from Iran, via Islamic Jihad and Hamas.  It is now far less likely that Hamas will agree not to to be a spoiler in the negotiations between Abbas and Olmert.  It sees it can become the Hezbollah of Palestine.
13. Lebanon’s dream, and with it the dream of a peaceful Middle East based on harmony, respect, tolerance, economic liberalization, democracy and openess, is in greater jeopardy than it has ever been.