Daniel Lubetzky’s "not-only-for-profit" business has created profitable joint ventures with Palestinians and Israelis. His model deserves attention

by Stacy Perman

I recently came across an article in The Jerusalem Post about social entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky. The Mexican-born son of a Holocaust survivor, Lubetzky founded PeaceWorks, a successful global business that promotes peace through commercial ventures among Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Turks, Indonesians, and Sri Lankans. The far-flung success of PeaceWorks helped Lubetzky to found OneVoice, a global movement (with some 640,000 participants at last count) that seeks a comprehensive two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians via a negotiated peace process.

Social entrepreneurship (BusinessWeek, 12/14/07) has become a hot topic in recent years, attracting people filled with the loftiest of intentions who want to do good by doing good. But it’s the tricky feat of running a sustainable operation that is the more elusive goal. So when I learned that Lubetzky had created a viable business model (in operation since 1994) that brings Arabs and Israelis together while plowing profits into peacemaking efforts, I rang up PeaceWorks’ New York office and was invited down for a visit.

Lubetzky is an energetic and pragmatic entrepreneur. The walls of PeaceWorks’ open office space are filled with the sayings of notable thinkers ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Henry David Thoreau. Lubetzky pioneered his "not-only-for-profit" business theory while on a fellowship in Israel to write about legislative means to foster joint ventures between Arabs and Israelis. It was a topic Lubetzky, who holds a law degree from Stanford, was already passionate about. In college, his senior thesis was a 268-page treatise on economic cooperation as a means for fostering peaceful relations.

Coexistence Test Case

While in Israel, Lubetzky discovered a tasty sundried tomato spread but found out the company behind it was going out of business. "The owner was getting their glass jars from Portugal and their tomatoes from Italy," he told me. Fairly quickly he realized he had found a test case for his fledgling theory: what if the company sourced the jars in Egypt, while getting their raw products from Turkey and Palestine? Today, tapenades and spreads under the labels Moshe & Ali’s and Meditalia (both joint ventures established by PeaceWorks between Israelis and Palestinians) are sold in stores across the U.S., including Whole Foods (WFMI). More recently, PeaceWorks introduced Bali Spice, a line of Asian sauces manufactured by women’s cooperatives made up of Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

"We are using market forces to achieve the goal of peace and coexistence," says Lubetzky. Having foes unite in business, he explains, works on three levels: First, it helps break down stereotypes; second, it creates an incentive to continue to work together; third, in doing so, it helps puts an end to regional violence and fundamentalism that feeds off despair.

Same End Goal

Getting entrenched enemies to set aside their animosities and misunderstandings and set up shop together has not always been an easy sell, he acknowledges. But over the past 15 years, Lubetzky’s unconventional vision has brought together a diverse group of individuals who find they are all interested in the same end goal.

About five years ago, a mutual friend introduced Lubetzky to Samer Hamadeh, a Palestinian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Vault.com, a comprehensive job and career site. Initially, Hamadeh resisted getting involved. "I’m not a political person," he told me. "I grew up in Fresno, Calif., I went to Stanford, my parents left Palestine when they were kids and never looked back.

I didn’t realize that I was Palestinian until my teens and not really what that meant until after 9/11.… I’m a red-blooded Republican American interested in our security and I felt the conflict was harming our interests. So I came at it from that perspective, as an American wanting to try and solve that problem."

Now Hamadeh sits on the board of the PeaceWorks Foundation. "There are Arabs and Jews working together and making money," he says. "From my vantage point, it is working. They are not employing tens of thousands of people but hundreds, but they are making the effort tangible. They are showing that the other side doesn’t have to be an enemy. They can be a business partner."

Two-State Solution

When the Second Intifada broke out in 2000 after the Camp David negotiations fell apart, Lubetzky realized that business alone could not singularly push the ball uphill. He cited a survey of Israelis showing that just two months before the Intifada, 90% believed peace was just around the corner. Three months later, less than 44% thought peace would ever be possible. "Business was not enough," says Lubetzky. "We needed a grassroots movement to push government."

With both sides of the conflict drowning in brutal images of the other, Lubetzky says the moderate voices of regular people were being buried. So, in 2002, he launched OneVoice to give people a voice in driving the agenda toward a workable two-state solution. "We needed a platform for ordinary Israelis and Palestinians to seize back the agenda," he says. Today, OneVoice has offices in Ramallah, Gaza, Tel Aviv, London, and youth chapters at college campuses across Israel and the Palestinian territories. Under a rather broad tent that includes those on the left, right, secular, religious, Israeli, Palestinian, Jew, Christian, and Muslim, OneVoice is actively involved in an array of efforts to find a way for people to work and live together.

A Social Bottom Line

Lubetzky does not have a strictly utopian vision for his not-only-for-profit philosophy. Three years ago he started Kind Fruit & Nut Bars, a for-profit venture that channels 5% of its profits into the PeaceWorks Foundation. The operation (it is one of the fastest growing healthy snack bars) is much bigger than the Meditalia line and sold globally. The larger scale for-profit enterprise gives Lubetzky another lucrative channel for his concept of social entrepreneurship.

"At end of day," says Samer Khoury, the executive vice-president of Consolidated Construction, one of the oldest Arab construction firms in the Middle East, "even if politicians want to make peace, they have to have the masses on board." As Khoury, who is also a OneVoice board member, explained to me, "in order to get them on board, you have to have a grassroots movement. And the movement has to convince both societies that peaceful coexistence is the only way forward. I strongly believe that this initiative is a valuable way to bring two societies closer together."

Lubetzky offers an enticing vision, one that combines traditional profit-making models with a social bottom line, attacking an issue from several angles. Moreover, he’s created a space that has brought disparate forces together for a common goal. It sounds good in theory, but it works even better in practice.

Perman is a staff writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.

The future would look very different if we put the peace process in the hands of Palestinian and Israeli children

By: Khaled Diab

A couple of months ago, as Israelis celebrated 60 years of statehood and Palestinians marked six decades of dispossession, I wondered whether there would ever be peace between the two peoples.

Rather than dwell on the depressing present or venture into the minefield of the past, I decided to look forward in time, to a fictional future where peace prevailed.

Commenting on my article, Hitham Kayali of OneVoice, a grassroots movement which has gained the written support of 600,000 Palestinians and Israelis for a two-state solution said: "Only [by using their imagination] will people understand why compromises should be made."

I was pleased to learn from Kayali that Israeli and Palestinian schoolchildren have been involved in a similar experiment: using their imagination to dream of what life could be like, 10 years from now, in a peaceful 2018.

I was intrigued to get some insight into the thinking of the coming generation, whose voices we rarely get to hear, despite the fact that they stand to lose the most from this ongoing conflict.

Besides, I have this (perhaps misguided?) sense that children are often more sensible than us adults. At least, they don’t seem to bear a grudge for long – and that is a precious asset in the promised land, where grudges take on a life of their own and can last for generations.

"These children have never experienced peace. They don’t have the chance to travel to other countries to see how it is. This is all from their imagination," Kayali points out.

One Israeli kid from Sderot, which borders Gaza and is on the receiving end of Qassam rocket attacks, imagined that he single-handedly laid the ground for peace! "It all started by accident," he wrote.

He loaded the radio-controlled plane he got for his birthday with sweets. His inexperienced hand soon lost control of the aircraft and it dawned on him that it was on course to become another casualty of war. In a panic, he pressed the wrong button and inadvertently bombed – or, more accurately, bon-bonned – Gaza with his payload of sweets.

The Israeli army couldn’t figure out what had happened … everybody was hugging them and they dropped their weapons at once. I almost started to cry. All I wanted was to get my model plane back … but then I realised that I’d actually brought peace to Israel.

Gaza also features in the vision of a Palestinian boy, who studies at a school for the visually impaired in Ramallah. He starts his essay by describing his reaction to the constant barrage of bad news coming out of the Strip: "My little heart was tormented with pain, for those [images] could cause rocks to cry."

Drained, he snoozes in front of the TV and is awakened in a peaceable country by the sounds of "chirping birds" instead of "bullets and cannons". In his dream, the simple joy of mobility features strongly. He describes getting to school on time because there are no more military checkpoints, passing his uncle who is "happily ploughing his field". He is accompanied by his father because "there isn’t a prison that can deprive me of him, because prisons have been demolished and converted into parks for children".

The boy’s dream may strike an outsider as being quite humble and unremarkable. But for most of his short life, Palestinians have been living the reality of Israeli closures, where going even to a neighbouring village is often impossible.

A Palestinian girl from Tulkarem also dreams of the freedom to roam. In her essay, she flits freely between Jerusalem, Amman, Ramallah, Jericho and the ultimate symbol of mobility, an international airport in Qalandia. Back in 2008, this same West Bank village, which hosted a six-decade-old refugee camp, was "filled with havoc, weeds, and piles of rubble, barbed wire and soldiers with helmets".

In her dreamscape, the newly independent Palestine is a dynamic, multicultural, multiethnic land, popular with tourists. The cities have impressive skylines. She describes forests on the slopes of mountains and how "Palestinian villages fall asleep in the dreamy, green embrace of nature", where there are "no military jeeps on the road and no settlements" on the hilltops.

So, what is to happen to the Israeli army?

This is the subject of another essay by an Israeli boy. Dean, a young Israeli soldier, has been called up for some mysterious mission. His unit informs him that the elusive Hassan el-Hamid has been located.

You get the feeling that something is amiss when they pick up a UN representative and that el-Hamid is perhaps not a fugitive. It turns out that he is actually their commander and he’s leading them on a peacekeeping mission to Iraq. El-Hamid explains that the Israeli army has been renamed the Israeli peace defence force and that "many countries need our assistance in resolving conflicts and deep-rooted disputes and restoring peace".

This is not only a commendable dream but reflects a powerful desire among many Israelis to be fully accepted as valuable members of the Middle Eastern and international community.

"The essays which the Palestinian and Israeli children have written are in fact one of the best indicators or opinion polls of what the situation really is like," Kayali says.

I would go even further and publicly urge the adults to let the children take over the peace process and bring to it the sensibility and competence of childhood.

By: James Montague

Close your eyes and picture the scene: it is the group stage of the 2018 World Cup and England (it’s an outside bet, but for journalistic purposes let’s just suppose they made it to the finals) follow the same path they always do in international tournaments, a narrow victory against some form of footballing minnow followed by a goalless, soulless draw, probably against Sweden. And then comes the crunch match, in a state of the art stadium near the azure waters of the Mediterranean. In, erm, Gaza City.

No, I haven’t been smoking crack. While England, Australia and the United States gear up for a long bout of sycophancy and arse-kissing to secure the rights to host the 2018 World Cup, a rather more problematic, if noble, potential host is coming up fast on the outside fence: a joint Israel-Palestine bid.

The bid is the brainchild of the Israeli filmmaker Eytan Heller and the international NGO OneVoice. "The original idea came in 2006 during the World Cup when I travelled to Ramallah," Heller said. "I was amazed to see the flags of all the European teams on the roofs of the city and seeing the same thing in Tel Aviv in my neighbourhood, it seemed like a continuity of fraternity, so I wanted to launch a campaign to launch the candidacy."

Both host countries would share the matches with Ramallah, Tulkarem and Gaza taking the Palestinian’s share and Haifa, Tel Aviv and Mitzpe Ramon the Israeli games. The final would, of course, be played in Jerusalem. Or Al Quds. Or maybe Jerusalem-Al Quds. Anyway, the aim, according to Heller, is to try and get a critical mass of football fans on either side of the wall, as well as internationally, to support the bid. "It’s a grassroots campaign and the idea is to try and grow organically and stay away from the political heaviness and manipulation of organisations that have links to government and have nationalistic agendas," he said. "Look at Japan and Korea. They were enemies too and overcame that. Why not here? There are a lot of cynics who laugh at this idea and start to ask very realistic questions. How can we build stadiums? Aren’t the territories too small? You can say the same thing about peace but if you don’t believe in it what is the point in being here?"

The idea has already attracted thousands of supporters who can sign up for a seat in the organisation’s virtual stadium on its website, which also has a short promotional video showing Palestinian footballers joyously kicking a ball over the wall. And there has also been some high profile support. Last February IRIS, a French international relations think tank, released a statement from Lilian Thuram backing the bid. "If a peace agreement is concluded…a 2018 World Cup jointly staged in Israel and Palestine would be a fantastic opportunity to consolidate the gains for both sides," wrote Thuram along with IRIS’s director Pascal Boniface. "Infrastructure investment would then follow. The joint organisation of the 2018 World Cup in a place where two peoples were once at war would serve as a powerful symbol of the way that sports can serve the cause of peace."

Boniface admitted that "it is impossible to think of the World Cup in the current situation. But look at South Africa. The World Cup is a reward for them ending apartheid. This bid would be the same, a reward for peace and the end of the war. Peace is not there. This is the biggest obstacle. Not an imposed peace, but a real and true peace."

While the oft abused, and plainly false, maxim of keeping football and politics separate is still spouted by Fifa, those backing the joint 2018 bid think that great things could be achieved if the world governing body took a more politically proactive stance on its bidding selection. Supporters think that the bid could be an incentive for peace in a part of the world obsessed by football, not to mention all the accoutrements that follow it, like the rebuilding of the West Bank and Gaza’s shattered infrastructure.

"Let’s assume that Fifa said ‘we want to inspire people to sign a framework agreement if you do a, b and c’, then I am sure there would be an enormous amount of media pressure," said Daniel Lubetzky, founder and president of OneVoice. "It would inspire politicians and inspire people not normally involved. Israelis and Palestinians are huge soccer fans so if there was such a hope it would get the average soccer fan to say ‘wow, yallah [let’s go]’. It’s one little example of how much better things could be."

So far, so right on. Should England’s footballing burghers, who are themselves planning a bid, start looking over their shoulder? So far the only country to come out in support of the bid is Djibouti and, while every World Cup bid has its unique hurdles, a joint Israel-Palestine bid literally has a huge wall in front of it. The Israeli West Bank barrier is a totemic reminder of a intractable conflict that has incrementally worsened over sixty years. And currently the countries aren’t exactly well prepared to host an international football tournament, what with Israeli road blocks, the threat of terrorism, and non-existent infrastructure.

Furthermore, there are no stadiums other than one in Gaza (itself shelled by the Israeli army two years ago while a local team trained on it) and the hopefully named Jericho International Stadium, which resembles something from the Scottish third division. Oh, and then there’s the issue of whether any Arab states would actually turn up to play a tournament in a country they don’t officially recognise. All of which puts the problems surrounding South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 tournament into a bit of perspective.

But the biggest barrier appears to be getting both the Israeli and Palestinian FAs to agree on anything at all. While the Israeli FA is at least conducive to the idea of football being used to heal deep social and political divisions - they are involved in the yearly Peres Center for Peace football matches where a joint Israel-Palestine team get hammered by the likes of Real Madrid or Barcelona - they still have reservations about working with their Palestinian counterparts. "We welcome any proposal that helps peace in the Middle East," said Gil Levanoni, spokesperson for the Israeli FA. "[But] I think that the Israelis and Palestinians have more complicated problems [than hosting a tournament]. It would be the least and last of our problems. The situation is not so simple between Israel and Palestine. We still have a soldier captured in Gaza."

There’s no love lost on the Palestinian side either. According to the Peres Center for Peace, Palestinian players who participated in any of the peace matches are punished by being dropped from the national team. Certainly when I met Mohammed Sabah, then the Palestinian national coach, during a tournament in Amman, which took place at the same time as the last Peace Match last year, there seemed little chance of footballing reconciliation. "No, I am not sharing [a pitch with] the occupation," Sabah told me outright when I asked whether he supported the Palestinian presence at the peace matches. "The Israelis must know that when we have our rights we can play. But when we are killed and they make checkpoints … we can’t play like in other countries."

But there is some hope. Earlier this year Jibril Rajoub, who is something of Palestinian political institution, was elected president of the Palestinian FA. After spending 15 years in an Israeli jail for throwing a grenade, followed by deportation to Lebanon, Rajoub rose to become Yasser Arafat’s National Security Advisor. As a moderate he was also a leading candidate to replace him as head of the Palestinian Authority when he died.

The job went to Mahmoud Abbas but Rajoub is using his position to spark some footballing détente. One of his first acts as President was to meet Israeli Knesset members about the feasibility of building a joint Israeli Palestinian national stadium over the Green Line.

Still, Heller is realistic that a joint Israel Palestine bid for the World Cup is a long shot, but he believes that even the slimmest of chances is still a chance. "The chances are very small, yes," Heller admitted. "The campaign is more aimed at lighting a match and sparking a different vision. This is the end result of a long-term vision, but there are prerequisites and preconditions. Hosting the World Cup is a dream, but why not? We should be there when the decision is made [in 2011]."

Brian Barwick, you have been warned.

It is fitting Daniel Lubetzky would grow up to be an entrepreneur who tries to bring peace to the Middle East. He recalls how, one summer when he was 12 and working for a textile wholesaler in Mexico City, he overheard people on the bus bashing Israel.

"They were talking about Sabra and Shatilla," he recalls. "They were saying horrible things about Israelis and Jews."

Upset, the boy reported what he had heard to his father, Roman Lubetzky, a Holocaust survivor who talked with him about Israel’s right to exist, its existential struggle. With his father’s help, he wrote a letter to Mexico City’s Excelsior newspaper decrying the double standard of condemning Israel without condemning the perpetrators of the massacres.

At 39, Lubetzky’s youthful passions-for Israel, for raising consciousness, and for business - remain intact.

But he’s come a long way from, as he puts it, "carrying shmattes" in Mexico City. These days, he peddles his food products, including Israeli-made sauces and spreads and Australian-manufactured nutrition bars, to a global market, with a presence in countries ranging from the US to Japan to Dubai.

PeaceWorks, his food company, is founded on the principle of simultaneously making profits and peace by bringing together, in business, people from opposing sides of various world conflicts. He also runs the PeaceWorks Foundation, whose main project is OneVoice, an organization Lubetzky founded to "amplify the voices of moderates" in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As the labels on his products state, 5 percent of all profits go to OneVoice.

Tall and broad-shouldered, with a full, expressive mouth, Lubetzky has the offbeat handsomeness of a character actor. Depending on the light, his large eyes look blue, green or brown. Married this year, he maintains homes in Tel Aviv, New York and San Antonio, Texas, the three cities where PeaceWorks has offices. OneVoice has offices in New York, London, Tel Aviv, Gaza City and Ramallah.

On a recent afternoon, speaking in his slightly Mexican-accented English, he articulated PeaceWorks’ unique philosophy.

"We call it a ‘not-only-for profit company," he says, "meaning, we won’t do something if it is not profitable, but we hope to also make the world a better place."

PeaceWorks has three ventures: Meditalia, based in Israel and operated by an Israeli Jew, which buys ingredients mainly from Arabs in Israel, in neighboring countries and in the West Bank; Bali Spice, all-women-run cooperatives in Indonesia and Sri Lanka that produce coconut milk and sauces; and KIND Fruit & Nut bars, which according to SPINS Market Data (a market research and consulting firm for the natural products industry) have reached the top three spot in the US market in the health snack and energy bar category.

KIND Fruit & Nut are currently sold in over 20,000 stores, including US-based chains Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. They are also sold in countries including Saudi Arabia, Dubai, the United Kingdom, Japan and soon Israel ("We’re in the process of certifying the factory kosher," says Lubetzky).

With their whole chunks of dried fruit and intact nuts bound by a light touch of honey or yogurt, the bars contain no preservatives or additives.

"They’re the Rolls Royce of bars," says Lubetzky. "Made with ingredients you can actually see that have names you can pronounce."

Lubetzky does not own the factories where any of PeaceWorks products are produced. His company owns the brands and handles marketing and distribution.

THE MAIN office of PeaceWorks and OneVoice, located in the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, is loft like and minimalist. The 30 employees, 20 who work for the business and 10 who work for OneVoice, sit in partially open cubicles.

Painted on the white walls in blue letters are quotations from luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mahatma Gandhi. One quotation stands out: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them" - Henry David Thoreau.

Lubetzky’s office, separated by a glass door and large window, is fully visible from the large room. On a recent afternoon, he sits with Darya Shaikh, executive director of OneVoice, and Erin Pineda, director of communications.

The three are planning a conference in Israel and the Palestinian territories of OneVoice, on which Lubetzky says he spends more time than on his business. While PeaceWorks employs "between 15 and 20" full-time, OneVoice employs 30, he says.

"When are we going to meet with [Foreign Minister] Tzipi Livni?" asks Lubetzky.

"It’s impossible," says Shaikh.

"How can you say it’s impossible, send a letter quickly, we’re six weeks away. And we want to push for meetings with [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas, [negotiator] Saeb Erekat and [Prime Minister] Salaam Fayad. Please remind Fayad I met him in Davos."

Since he established it in 2000, Lubetzky’s OneVoice has recruited almost 650,000 people - about equal numbers of Israelis and Palestinians - to sign a "OneVoice mandate." It’s a short declaration of principles demanding that elected officials work to achieve such ideals as "the rights of both peoples to independence, sovereignty… dignity, respect, national security, personal safety and economic viability." It also demands that leaders negotiate a two-state solution within a year. In some cases, Palestinians received a preamble discussing an end to occupation, and Israelis got a preamble addressing the need for security.

While the organization continues to boost its numbers, it no longer uses the mandate. "There will be something done [with it] in terms of connecting the grassroots to the top level" in government on both sides, according to Pineda.

The organization has also graduated 1,280 Israeli and Palestinian "youth leaders," mostly teenagers, who go through training to speak in the territories, in Israel and abroad about the importance of cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians, especially in business. A popular topic is that Israelis and Arabs should oppose divestment campaigns.

Lubetzky flips open his laptop to share a video that appears on the OneVoice Web site of young people circulating leaflets in cities from Tel Aviv to Tulkarm.

"The vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis want to achieve resolution of the conflict, not for the sake of the other side but for their own sake," he says.

He clicks onto a picture of Palestinians sitting in rows in a sparsely furnished room in the Jabalya refugee camp. It’s a OneVoice meeting at which Palestinians are discussing a two-state solution, he says.

He speaks animatedly about an essay contest that took place in both Israel and the Palestinian territories this spring. OneVoice workers, youth leaders and other volunteers distributed forms to teachers, asking children 13-17 to "share with us a vision of what 2018 will look like if there is an agreement for peace this year."

The Palestinian finalists were hosted at a summit of the World Economic Forum in Sharm e-Sheikh in May. The Israeli winners were chosen in June.

In the coming year, based on their essays, 10 kids will be selected - five Palestinian, five Israeli - to work with eminent filmmakers producing short films of their visions of peace.

Lubetzky has already recruited Danny DeVito and Davis Guggenheim, who directed Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, to work with the children.

"We want a new generation to say, ‘Don’t deny us our future, we want this thing to end,’" he says.

On the wall hangs a photograph of Lubetzky with his father, who died in 2003. The elder Lubetzky is seated and the younger leans over his shoulder. Their faces are side by side, bathed in rose light. Hanging nearby is a photograph of a young Israeli soldier holding the hand of an elderly Arab man as the two make their way through a crowded refugee camp.

"I fear that if we don’t succeed the bad guys could succeed and what happened to my dad could happen again," Lubetzky says. "I won’t allow that to happen without putting in the fight of my life."

LUBETZKY’S FIRST venture was Meditalia. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he went to Israel on a fellowship to research the potential for Israeli-Arab cooperation.

One night, he bought a jar of sun-dried tomato spread. Finding it delicious, he returned the next evening to buy more, but the store was sold out. He sought out the manufacturer, only to discover the company was going bankrupt.

Yoel Benesh, the owner, was importing glass jars from Portugal and dried basil from Italy, and couldn’t net enough to cover his costs. Lubetzky demonstrated that importing glass from Egypt, and basil from a West Bank town called Uja, would reduce costs.

"I said, ‘Let me introduce you to your neighbors,’" Lubetzky recalls.

Today Benesh manufactures Meditalia products for Lubetzky. Benesh buys olives from Egypt, sun-dried tomatoes from Turkey and olive oil from the Jahshan Family Farm, owned by a Christian Arab family in Galilee. He also buys produce from Palestinians in the West Bank, but can no longer employ Palestinian workers because of frequent border closings.

While he says he simply buys products where he gets the best price, Benesh believes in the PeaceWorks creed: "Once you do business with people, you trust them, they trust you, slowly, slowly - if ever - that will bring peace," he says.

Hani Jahshan, one of Benesh’s suppliers, an Israeli Arab whose family is among the oldest manufacturers of olive oil in Israel, agrees. "In business, we have already achieved peace," he says.

IT’S THE FIRST day of the OneVoice conference in Israel, and Lubetzky, staff and several board members are visiting Ramallah for a lunch with OneVoice’s Palestinian advisers.

Inside a white building, a cool entryway leads into a large room with a banquet table bearing humous, tabouli, pickled vegetables. Uniformed waiters are pouring drinks.

Lubetzky and several men greet each other with kisses on both cheeks. They include Qadora Farris, described in the bio Lubetzky’s staff circulates as "a close friend, aide and adviser to senior Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti," Muhammad Naja, country representative of the Education for Employment Foundation, a nonprofit that helps Palestinian graduates obtain employment, and Dr. Samir Huleileh, executive president of the Palestine Development and Investment Company. Several OneVoice youth leaders in their teens and 20s are along.

Lubetzky shares the head of the table with Huleileh. Most of the formal remarks concern ways to bring business into the territories, which Lubetzky and the other participants refer to as Palestine.

"People ask me, ‘Can you invest in Palestine at this time?’" Huleileh says. "I tell them the media is just concentrating on the negative side, not the peaceful side of Palestine."

Naja speaks of the importance of finding jobs for unemployed Palestinian college graduates. "Giving people hope is a very big task," he says. "We have to start on the youth, on both sides of the line."

Lubetzky then speaks about the essay contest, and about a beautiful presentation given by Christina Samir Odeh Yosef, a 15-year-old contest winner.

"We don’t have a lot of other things we feel proud of, as a people," says Huleileh. "We must support our Palestinian athletes, musicians, actors, poets. It’s not just a matter of money but of focus. We must support the Christinas of Palestine."

In October, Lubetzky canceled two highly anticipated concerts. The concert on the Palestinian side would have been the largest recreational event ever to have taken place in the territories. The singer Bryan Adams was to have performed, along with Israeli and Palestinian artists, first in Tel Aviv, then in Jericho. It would have been the culmination of OneVoice’s drive to gather a million signatures to end the conflict. Tens of thousands were expected on each side.

Prior to the event, the Palestinian staff started receiving bomb threats. Around the same time, Abbas’s office withdrew its support and sent out a statement distancing itself from the event. Lubetzky ultimately decided to cancel because of security concerns.

When the joint event did not take place, Lubetzky was crushed, according to Joshua Faudem, an independent filmmaker whom he had hired to serve as cameraman, documenting the week leading up to the event.

"The saddest thing was the last day we filmed," recalls Faudem. "We went to where the concert was supposed to be, and there was nothing there."

But Lubetzky refused to give up on his mission of ending the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

"He’s like Don Quixote," says Faudem. "Don Quixote refused to give up, he had a lot of stubbornness.

"The thing about Danny is, he could be a little, as we say in Yiddish, meshuga - crazy - but he’s sincere."

"He’s a great young man," says former Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, of Lubetzky. "What he’s doing is building grassroots support for a two state solution. All the polls prove that two-thirds on both sides want this two-state solution.

"And by the way, the world is moving forward because of naïve people and not because of the cynics."

"OneVoice encourages moderates on both sides," says MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima). "It can help by changing the atmosphere, and the influence of the atmosphere is very important when dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict."

BUT AT TIMES, an unasked question hovers like an unwelcome guest at the perimeter of all the hubbub around Lubetzky: Could it be that his prodigious energy, warmth and charm bring out the best in everyone for the moment, but only mask the underlying divide? In other words, do projects like the essay contest, the mandate and the concert-that-might-have-been mean Israelis and Palestinians are really speaking in one voice, or that in reality, they are articulating separate dreams?

Hasson chooses his words carefully: "Talking about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, there is a problem… about meanings of peace."

Lubetzky, it seems, is not blind to this problem.

The following day, at the OneVoice board meeting, he and his staff debate whether the essay project, moving forward, should require Palestinian and Israeli children to acknowledge one another.

"We want… to make sure people recognize what peace means. It’s not an amorphous concept. It requires recognition of the other," he says. "We were born for taking risks. I would rather let the organization die trying than die by not trying."

Nisreen Shahin, director-general of OneVoice Palestine, argues it is best not to speak directly of accepting Israel so that OneVoice can continue operating in Palestinian schools.

"This is what the ministry actually approved to say, ‘Imagine, if a full and comprehensive peace will be achieved this year that would guarantee ending the occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state, how would we imagine Palestine… in independence and peace?’"

Lubetzky points out that one of the essay contest winners was, before receiving her award, painting pictures of Greater Palestine that didn’t show any Israel.

"To imagine that Israelis and Palestinians achieve a peace solution, that’s not very complex language to use but that’s better language than just saying [something] amorphously… and denying the existence of the other side," he says.

Toward the end of the meeting, Lubetzky gently chides several OneVoice staffers who he says he knows agree with him but who haven’t spoken up.

Afterward he says, "I think the conclusion of the meeting was we need to be more specific in teaching children that there must be two states for two peoples and they need to come to terms with the reality of the other."

Lubetzky spends the final evening of the conference on a patio in the back of Jerusalem’s Ambassador Hotel, with OneVoice youth leaders. They are engaged in a spirited debate concerning fund-raising on campuses where OneVoice operates.

"It’s a two-way street," Lubetzky cries. "We need more student participation."

"Daniel, quit shouting," scolds a girl with curly dark hair.

"I’m not shouting," says Lubetzky. "This is Israel!"

The meeting ends. As Lubetzky turns to leave, a plump, bespectacled girl in a blue hijab tentatively approaches. "Mr. Lubetzky," she says, blushing. "I am so grateful for the opportunity."

Lubetzky nods and smiles.

It is a lovely moment, and a human one.

OneVoice Debuts Imagine 2018 Campaign: Finalists Chosen to Participate in Ground-Breaking Session on Critical Taboo Issues in Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Process

Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt / May 19, 2008 / This afternoon, in an interactive ‘WorkSpace’ Session with some of the world’s foremost dignitaries and business leaders - including Tony Blair, Amre Moussa, Saeb Erekat, MK Yossi Beilin, and Rabbi David Rosen - four young students - two Israeli, two Palestinian - will lead a discussion on their visions for the future of the region, and on the taboo issues that often impede the negotiations process from moving forward. The students are finalists in the OneVoice Movement’s Imagine: 2018 (www.imagine2018.org) campaign – an unprecedented national essay contest run by OneVoice in separate partnerships with the Israeli and Palestinian Ministries of Education.  The contest calls on students to envision what the year 2018 would look like if Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas were to sign a peace agreement this year.

“Two of the greatest stumbling blocks toward building support for the negotiations process at the grassroots level and for making progress at the negotiations table at the top-level are taboos – the issues that cannot be openly discussed within the two societies – and an inability to visualize the ways that a peace agreement would benefit peoples’ everyday lives,” said Daniel Lubetzky, the OneVoice Movement’s Founder. “People need to be able to imagine what an end to the conflict would look like, in order to be able to work for it, and they need to be able to talk about hard issues in order to prepare for working solutions.”

Immediately preceding the session, contest winners along with OneVoice staff and dignitaries including Tony Blair will take questions from the press.

About the “Building Peace, Breaking Taboos” Workspace: As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators struggle to move post Annapolis, the core stumbling blocks to progress are becoming increasingly obvious. Many of these blocks are linked to taboos on each side—that which cannot be said or done openly. This session, or “workspace”, examined the consequences of a failure of the Annapolis process, and considered new approaches that break taboos and challenge the established wisdom of how to build a lasting agreement.

“This is a very important opportunity for me, as a Palestinian – to write about my visions of a Palestine that is independent, free, and at peace with all its neighbours, and even more importantly, to talk about that vision with the leaders of the region and of the world,” said Christina Samir Odeh Yousef, age 14, one of the Palestinian essayists who is attending the WEF.

Shahar Hagi, age 15 and one of the Israeli essayists, agreed. “As an Israeli it is also important to talk about our dreams for Israel’s future – about a day when Israel is safe to live in, and a day when Israelis can work with Syrians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Palestinians – all the people of the region – in an open and peaceful way to promote common interests.”

Imagine: 2018 (www.imagine2018.org) is an essay contest designed to enable people to envision some of the tangible benefits that would come from a peace agreement. It is being rolled out in two phases: The 2018 Essay Contest and the 2018: Director’s Cut. Thousands of essays were submitted for the Palestinian and Israeli contests. All of the winners will be announced by June 10, 2008. Ten of the most compelling essays will then be turned into short films directed by some of the world’s foremost directors, including Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) and Danny DeVito. The short films will be weaved into a one hour documentary and shown in the region, as well is in regional and international film festivals.

About the OneVoice Movement:

The OneVoice Movement is an international mainstream grassroots movement with over 600,000 signatories in roughly equal numbers both in Israel and in Palestine, and 1,280 highly-trained youth leaders. It aims to amplify the voice of the overwhelming but heretofore silent majority of moderates who wish for peace and prosperity, empowering them to demand accountability from elected representatives and work toward a two-state solution guaranteeing an end to occupation and violence, and a viable, independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel. OneVoice counts on its Board over 60 foremost dignitaries and business leaders across a wide spectrum of politics and beliefs, joining as OneVoice for conflict resolution. Learn more by visiting www.OneMillionVoices.org.

Jennifer Lin

Speakers from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict spoke on Monday at UCLA to give their perspectives and offer hope for peace.

OneVoice, an international grassroots movement aimed at finding a resolution to the conflict, presented Malaka Samara of OneVoice Palestine and Shani Gershon of OneVoice Israel on their first stop of a weeklong regional speaking tour of Southern California.

The event was cosponsored by Bruins for World Peace, a new group founded this quarter.

“We are not like a lot of organizations that are out there. We have two parallel movements, one in Palestine and one in Israel, that are quite independent of each other. They’re working for different motivations but towards the same goal of peace,” said Laurel Rapp, international education program manager for OneVoice.

Samara and Gershon are youth leaders in their respective countries but had not met each other until a few days before the event.

Each spoke about the achievements their chapters had accomplished, projects underway for the future and personal experiences living in war-torn neighborhoods.

Samara, a first-time visitor to the U.S., said OneVoice Palestine does not have any political affiliations, but added that the organization has put on campaigns to encourage political activity, especially after the death of former president Yasser Arafat in 2004.

A Black Ribbon campaign featuring the slogan “Gaza in My Heart” was also launched to bring attention to the innocents who were caught up in religious faction fighting.

Samara said life in the Palestinian territories can be difficult, and she became emotional when she spoke about the arrests of one of her five brothers and her father.

But she added that she had “hope for a better life and to live under dignity and peace.”

“Both sides want peace and to end the conflict, but each side has to trust each other,” Samara said.

Gershon admitted that frequent terrorist attacks in Israel had caused her to develop a hatred of the Arab people, but working with OneVoice had allowed her to realize there are many people on both sides of the conflict who hope for an end to the violence.

This is reflected in OneVoice Israel’s “Halas Nimas” (Hebrew for “That’s enough, we’re fed up”) campaign, which involves taking pictures of 5,000 supporters of a peaceful resolution to the conflict and posting them on billboards across Israel.

Hershon said it would serve as a reminder to the government about what the people want.

“We both want a better future, not only for us, but for our children,” Gershon said.

OneVoice is currently pushing for a solution to be developed by the end of 2008 with their One Million Voices to End the Conflict campaign.

Talks have been going on in Annapolis, Md., since November of last year with the hopes of reaching an agreement on the formation of a free Palestinian state existing peacefully alongside Israel as well as determining a nonviolent approach to achieve such a resolution.

The presentation piqued the curiosity of some attendees, such as Jiae Koh, a fifth-year biology student.

“Before I came, I never really thought about the conflict,” Koh said. “(But when) I can really see and hear from two people who come from this reality, it made me really aware.”

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/apr/22/unifying-peace/

Danny Spector

Renowned actor Jason Alexander, best known for his role as George Constanza on the hit show "Seinfeld", will be one of the judges in the “imagine: 2018” contest, sponsored by the One Voice organization, which encourages moderate Israelis and Palestinians to actively promote the peace process between the two nations.

As part of this contest, Israeli and Palestinian youths were asked to imagine what their lives might be like in 2018 during an era of peace in the Middle East. The winning script will be made into a short film directed by renowned filmmaker David Guggenheim.

Alexander noted that this project will allow young, aspiring filmmakers to meet with some of the world’s best known directors and bring across their vision of peace.

The actor also stated that he hopes that these teens would be able to tell a tale of peace that the world has not yet encountered, and that he, personally cannot wait to hear. The conflict in the Middle East is the past, said Alexander, but these stories are the hope that lies in the not so distant future.

T.J. Hall

In the front of Room 2302 in Sangren Hall, two miniature flags stood beside each other on a table. Two more full size flags hung from the adjacent wall. And two young women sat side by side, different in nationality, but alike in their shared belief that one day Israel and Palestine will be at peace.

Monday night, representatives from the OneVoice Peace Initiative Group spoke at Western Michigan University. The event was sponsored by the Palestinian Israeli Peace Initiative of Kalamazoo, in collaboration with WMU Hillel, The Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and The Muslim Student Association.
Guest speakers were Israeli Maya Epstein, Palestinian Duroub Yacoub and American Laurel Rapp, education program manager for OneVoice.

Rapp opened the evening by giving an overview of the OneVoice group and its mission. By building support with Israeli and Palestinian moderates as well as international backers, OneVoice hopes to present lawmakers with one million signatures calling for a peace agreement. Rapp also stressed the uniqueness of OneVoice, showing that it is one group that has two separate operations in both Israel and Palestine. And while Rapp estimates that 95 percent of the work OneVoice does is in the Middle East, it is still essential to build support on the international front.

"We want to bring the voices from the Middle East to speak about the conflict," Rapp said.

Maya Epstein, a 24-year-old student at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, recalled her recent years in the Middle East. After moving from Botswana, a landlocked country in Southern Africa, at 17, Epstein had to adjust to the constant threat of danger.

"Living in terror is not something you can get used to," Epstein said. "It was difficult to even ride the bus."

Epstein also helped put things into perspective for the 50 people in attendance.
"We are just trying to live a normal life," she said. "We envy you [Americans]."
Duroub Yacoub, 25, moved to Ohio after growing up in Palestine. A graduate of Kent State University, Yacoub went back to her home city of Ramallah in 2002 to find it in shambles.

"The whole city was destroyed," Yacoub said. "It wasn’t the city I grew up in." Fighting back her emotions, Yacoub went on to add that she lost a family member in an attack on a church.

"We just want to live like human begins," Yacoub said.

In sharing their perspectives, Monday’s OneVoice speakers hope to foster a cooperative peace effort among people of all ethnicities.

Epstein said of Yacoub, "The most important thing is knowing that I have a counterpart in Palestine who is working toward the same goal."

http://www.westernherald.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&uStory_id=6daad66a-f880-4549-848c-3a8d4f3e3080

http://www.wosu.org/radia/radio‐open‐line/archive=1&date=03/26/2008

By Sean Steels 

Daroub Yacoub, a young Palestinian woman, remembers the moment she realized she wanted to speak out for peace in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Not that she could forget coming home to find the street in front of her house lined with military tanks.

The Alumni wall in front of which she and Maya Epstein, a young Israeli woman, are speaking to a small number of students might remind Epstein of a similar installment on her own campus. There’s only a small difference between the two exhibits: the wall on Epstein’s campus is decorated with the names of the seven students killed in her cafeteria by a suicide bomber, not with alumni.

Maya and Daroub have been brought together to speak at North American universities about their experiences by the OneVoice Movement, a non-partisan, grassroots organization dedicated to resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. They are aware of the unique nature of their friendship.

“This,” Maya said, waving her finger back and forth between herself and Daroub, “does not happen everyday.”

The battle over the land in the Gaza strip has turned the two cultures into alien neighbours. They explained that the conflict, spurred on by a small minority of violent extremists, has cut traffic between the two states down to a paperwork-laden trickle. Most people don’t believe that the side opposing them would ever be willing to co-operate or keep promises that could lead to conflict resolution. At the same time, a poll conducted by OneVoice determined that 76 per cent of Israelis and Palestinians support a peaceful, two-state solution.

Laurel Rapp, OneVoice’s international education program manager, explained that through the use of its two branches, OneVoice Palestine and OneVoice Israel, the organization is coordinating state-unique efforts at the grassroots level to foster an atmosphere of trust and compassion between the silent and peaceful majorities of the two groups.

“What we have are two separate nationalist movements, OneVoice Palestine and OneVoice Israel, who are working for very different reasons but ultimately share the same goal of ending the conflict and establishing a two-state solution,” she explained.

“We do very few joint activities for two reasons. The first is logistical. Israelis cannot go to the West Bank or Gaza, and Palestinians […] require a lot of paperwork […] to get travel permits to Israel,” she said. “The second is we also realize that, at this point, we’re a bit of a ways from bringing Israelis and Palestinians together to love each other.”

But despite stumbling blocks created by over half a century of distrust and death, OneVoice has managed to break ground in the peace-making process. They’ve obtained over 650 000 signatories to their cause, with an equitable divide between Palestinian and Israeli participants. In the years since the organization’s 2002 debut, it has also expanded to stem the conflict on an international stage with their campus presentations in Europe and North America.

“It’s so clear that this conflict isn’t isolated to the West Bank,” Rapp said. “Coming to North America. you’ll find that this conflict replicates itself on university campuses. What we’re trying to do is bring moderate voices for resolution to campuses and show that Canadian students can be part of the solution rather than the problem.”

Jay Cairns, administrator of the Jewish Students Association (JSA) at the University of Alberta, fell short of directly endorsing OneVoice’s cause, but agreed that there should always be a venue for positive dialogue.

“There are many students that feel various ways about [conflict resolution], but the point for us is that we need to start focusing on peaceful solutions,” he said.

He explained that the JSA doesn’t take a political stance on the issue. The JSA’s first and foremost priority is the support it provides for university students and the security of the Jewish community on campus.

“Whether [the solution] is one-state or two-state, that gets into the political arena, and that’s something that we’re not prepared to do,” he conceded. “As it stands, we’re very happy with the situation on U of A campus. It’s very tame.”

http://www.thegatewayonline.ca/onevoice-movement-comes-to-u-of-a-for-middle-east-peace-talk-20080326-2426.html

Three-year Award to Support Grassroots Initiative to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

New York, NY – 11 March 2008 – The PeaceWorks Foundation today announced it is the recipient of a three-year, $1,015,000 award from the Skoll Foundation for its initiatives aimed at mobilizing the Israeli and Palestinian grassroots in support of a negotiated two state solution. The award is one of 11 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship presented by the Skoll Foundation to recognize the most innovative and sustainable approaches to resolving the most urgent social issues. PeaceWorks joins a prestigious global network of Skoll entrepreneurs, now numbering 59, who are working around the world on issues including tolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability.

Since its inception in 2002, the PeaceWorks Foundation and its flagship initiative, the OneVoice Movement, has worked to bring the voice of the moderate majority of Israelis and Palestinians to the leaders and to the world stage, demanding a resumption of immediate and uninterrupted negotiations toward a two state solution guaranteeing the establishment of an independent, viable Palestinian state at peace with Israel. Via separate, parallel, nationalist movements in Israel and Palestine and an international movement of invested citizens worldwide, OneVoice has succeeded in signing on 650,000 signatory members to its call for a serious peace process to end the occupation and all forms of violence, and achieves international recognition, security, respect, peace, and prosperity for both sides.

“Our work is aimed at and centered on the lives and aspirations of ordinary people – it is based on the urgency of their right to live in a place free from violence and bloodshed and fear,” said Daniel Lubetzky, the organization’s Founder and President. “In the end, sustainable, meaningful change won’t come from boardrooms or statehouses; it will come from these ordinary citizens. We seek to empower grassroots agents of change, giving them the tools to wrest their lives from the grips of interminable conflict. The Skoll Foundation’s generosity will go a long way in helping us to have a real impact on the ground.”

“Daniel Lubetzky and his team at PeaceWorks are tremendous additions to the community of Skoll social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated, through their inspiration and creativity, courage and fortitude, that solutions do exist for some of the world’s most intractable problems,” said Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. “We believe their work has the potential for transformational benefit to the area of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we’re honored to support their continued commitment to systemic change at the grassroots level.”

Mr. Lubetzky will be presented the award by Skoll Foundation Chairman Jeff Skoll, Skoll Foundation President and CEO, Sally Osberg and special guest, former President Jimmy Carter, at a special ceremony on March 27 at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. Lubetzky will be participating in the three-day World Forum along with over 700 attendees from the global social entrepreneurship community.

About the PeaceWorks Foundation & OneVoice Movement

Founded in 2002, the PeaceWorks Foundation works through a variety of initiatives to unite moderates in the Middle East to push for conflict resolution and a negotiated two state solution ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Foundation’s flagship initiative is OneVoice, an international movement of Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, Europeans, Muslims, Jews and Christians who are ready and eager to support a serious process, leading to a comprehensive peace agreement ending the occupation and all forms of violence. With 650,000 Israeli, Palestinian, and international signatories, we work to amplify the voice of the moderate majority of Palestinian and Israelis, empowering them to seize back the agenda for conflict resolution and to demand that their leaders work immediately and continuously to achieve a two state solution through comprehensive negotiations that will lead to the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state living in peace and security with the state of Israel.

For more information, visit www.onemillionvoices.org.

About the Skoll Foundation

The Skoll Foundation was created in 1999 by eBay’s first president, Jeff Skoll, to promote his vision of a more peaceful and prosperous world. Today the Skoll Foundation advances systemic change to benefit communities around the world by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs - individuals dedicated to innovative, bottom-up solutions that transform unequal and unjust social, environmental and economic systems.

The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship is the foundation’s flagship program. There are currently 50 organizations represented by 59 remarkable social entrepreneurs in the program, working individually and together across regions, countries and continents to evolve the field of social entrepreneurship into a global movement for social change. The Skoll Foundation connects social entrepreneurs and other partners in the field via an online community at www.socialedge.org, and through the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The foundation also celebrates social entrepreneurs by telling their stories through partnerships with the PBS Foundation and the Sundance Institute, with the goal of promoting large-scale public awareness of social entrepreneurship.

For more information, visit www.skollfoundation.org.

Arab and Jew sit side-by-side at the San Francisco Hillel house and explain how the humanity that unites the two women is stronger than the boundaries dividing them.

They feel so strongly about this that the pair spent the week of Feb. 11 in California talking about OneVoice, a grassroots initiative that seeks to empower the moderate majority of Israeli and Palestinian citizens to take a more assertive role in resolving the conflict.

Wafa Nazzal, an Arab from Jenin, and Noga Ron, a Jew from Tel Aviv, visited Sanford University, Sonoma State and San Francisco State universities, U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Santa Cruz to educate interested parties stateside about their volunteer work as two of 3,100 youth leaders working to end the violence.

Although they share a vision of peace and equality, they recognize that they come from different points of view.

Ron, 28, is a thin woman with a big smile and wisps of hair that fall into her freckled face when she speaks. She was born and raised on a kibbutz in southern Israel. After serving in the army and graduating from Tel Aviv University, she became involved with OneVoice.

“It’s easy to say there’s no way to solve this problem.” it’s harder to do something to change it,” she continued. “I believe I can do something. I can change my world. That’s why I’m here.”

Nazzal, 21, wears a wasabi-green hijab that complements her striking dark eyes. She was born in Saudi Arabia and spent her childhood in Jordan. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Jenin, where her parents were born.

The second intifada in 2000 made life difficult for Nazzal and her family. In 2002, things got worse when the Israeli army invaded a Jenin refugee camp. Her family had no water, electricity or food, except what was rotting in their refrigerator.

Nazzal eventually enrolled at the Arab American University in Jenin, where she learned about OneVoice.

“OneVoice is the first organization I’ve found that believes in the power of people to ask their representatives to negotiate,” she said.

OneVoice was created in 2002 to empower moderates who support a two-state solution. It does this through town hall meetings, youth leadership programs, public service announcements and public events in Israel and the territories.

With other youth leaders, Ron and Nazzal have helped get 620,000 signatures — half from Israelis, half from Palestinians — on the OneVoice Mandate, which affirms mutual rights of both peoples. The goal is 1 million signatures.

This year, OneVoice is reaching out to American university students. The Bay Area appearances each drew up to 50 students.

Sarah Kleinman, 22, a graduate student at Stanford, attended the Feb. 13 lecture. Because of its small size (15 students), it ended up feeling more like a dialogue.

Seeing an Israeli and Palestinian sitting next to one another “was a pretty powerful message that we need to make peace — lasting peace,” she said.

“I think our generation recognizes that we need to come together as a global community,” she added. “OneVoice is another instance in which this optimism shines through.”

Nazzal and Ron hope that Bay Area college students like Kleinman will want to get involved with a Bay Area chapter of OneVoice.

Their speech aimed to promote an April leadership-training seminar in San Francisco. The training will establish a network of OneVoice student ambassadors who can help support the efforts of the youth leaders in the Middle East. There are already OneVoice chapters on college campuses in Boston, Washington and eastern Canada.

“We have high hopes for the Northern California network,” Rapp said.

For more information about the upcoming leadership training, or to apply, contact Laurel Rapp at laurel@onevoicemovement.org.

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/34647/format/html/displaystory.html

Israeli Noga Ron and Palestinian Wafa Nazzal are unlikely partners in the movement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But their differences just might work to their advantage.

Youth leaders Noga Ron and Wafa Nazzal spoke last night on behalf of OneVoice, a citizen activism movement working in Israel and Palestine to achieve a two-state solution to the crisis.

Ron and Nazzal are youth leaders of OneVoice, a citizen activism movement working in Israel and Palestine to achieve a two-state solution through non-violent means. The pair spoke at Stanford last night as representatives of OneVoice to discuss the organization’s goals and history since its founding in 2002 at the height of the second Intifada, a period of renewed violence between Israelis and Palestinians that began in 2000.

In the past six years, 650,000 Israelis and Palestinians have signed onto the OneVoice mandate that “recognizes the right of both people to independence, sovereignty, freedom, justice, dignity and respect.”

Rather than propose its own resolution to the crisis, OneVoice seeks to empower Palestinians and Israelis to demand that their leaders work toward a two-state solution.

“We believe it’s very important to honor our leaders,” said Nazzal, 21, in Building 420 last night. “We support the Palestinian and Israeli leaders in their quest for a peaceful conclusion to the conflict.”

Although OneVoice strives to reach all levels of the population, one of its main objectives is working with young political leaders and urging young people to vote. Both OneVoice Israel and OneVoice Palestine believe that involving the next generation is essential to achieving lasting peace.

“We believe in the young people,” said Ron, 28. “We need to encourage and educate the future leaders.

Ron was born and raised in an isolated Kibbutz in southern Israel. In describing her earliest memory of violence in Israel, she recalled a series of bombing attacks in 1995 that swept the country, including Tel Aviv, where her older sister was living.

After completing her mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces, Ron traveled to South Africa and the United States before returning to Israel to enroll at the University of Tel Aviv. She said that she finally realized that something was not right about the way she and her family had been living while she traveled abroad.

“There’s nothing normal about calling my sister at age 15 in tears,” she said. “There’s nothing normal about not going on the buses for eight years because I was afraid. There’s nothing normal about opening your bag every time you go to the cinema because someone may be carrying in a bomb.”

Nazzal was born in Saudi Arabia but was raised in Jenin in the West Bank. She said that she has wrestled with her Palestinian identity since her father moved the family from Jordan to Jenin in 1995.

In April 2002 one of the fiercest battles of the second Intifada occurred at Jenin’s refugee camp. During the ten-day invasion, a brother of Nazzal’s friend, a freelance reporter, was shot in the leg by Israeli forces and later died.

“The smell of death was everywhere in Jenin,” Nazzal said. “You didn’t feel safe walking in the streets because you might be shot.”

Nazzal became a strong believer in the OneVoice movement after attending a town hall meeting in Jenin City. Although her uncle told her that she was wasting her time by coming to the United States to talk to college undergraduates, Nazzal said she still believes a two-state solution can be obtained through non-violent means.

Laurel Rapp, the international education program manager for OneVoice, does not think that discussion of the conflict can be limited to the areas directly affected.

“So often you’ll find this conflict has spread throughout the area,” she said. “It’s spread throughout the Middle East, to the United States, to Stanford’s student groups.”

The OneVoice presentation was not organized by any groups affiliated with the Israeli or Palestinian movements; the event was co-sponsored by the year-old Students Promoting Ethnic and Cultural Kinship (SPEAK).

“Many are interested in the [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] from a political perspective,” said Sarah Kleinman ‘08, co-executive director of SPEAK. “But we’re looking at it from a standpoint of identity.”

Both Ron and Nazzal admit that there are challenges ahead, especially now that Israelis cannot enter Palestinian territories and Palestinians must get special permission to enter Israel. But both said they have experienced the darker side of the conflict — and neither wishes it to return.

BY FANNIE SUNSHINE

Adi Labadi was just 15 when he was shot in the leg while on a street in the Jenin refugee camp in Palestine.

Labadi, now 20, is well aware he could have made "bad" choices after he and a friend were caught in the crossfire of the Israeli Army, but instead chose to join the conflict resolution OneVoice Movement.

"After I was shot, I had anger," said Labadi, adding that his friend died. "At that age, you don’t know right from wrong. My parents were trying to keep me away from bad. And it’s really hard when you’re living in the middle of that."

Labadi and his Israeli counterpart, Smadar Cohen, spoke to York University students on Tuesday, Jan. 22 about their involvement with OneVoice, a grassroots movement working toward ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution.

"When you lose friends, you become more angry, more aggressive," Labadi told The Mirror, adding he has friends in militias. "But my good friends try to keep me away from anything bad, even if they are involved with bad things themselves."

Life for Labadi in Palestine is vastly different from that in the western world, he said.

"You don’t really live a life, you just live," he said. "There are curfews, check points everywhere, you cannot really move freely and you see people getting killed."

Cohen has also seen her fair share of tragedies.

Her army commander was blown up in a bus outside the base. She’s lost friends in bombings and through army service. Her paramedic boyfriend was shot in Gaza while they chatted on the phone, surviving thanks to a bulletproof vest.

"Everyday life becomes harder," said the 24-year-old. "People are angry, resentful. In my opinion, Palestinian leaders have made problematic decisions throughout history and the Palestinian people suffer from it. We want to show both sides have suffered, but it’s time to look to the future. It’s not what happened, it’s what do we do now?"

Laurel Rapp, international education program manager at the OneVoice Movement, said the organization is not advocating for peace but simply conflict resolution.

"Each side faces particular challenges," she said. "We want the creation of an independent and viable Palestine that lives next door to an independent and viable Israel."

On Sunday, WLU played host to representatives from OneVoice New York, Israel and Palestine. The OneVoice movement is a youth-based initiative to bring peace and stability in the Middle East and end the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict.

The grassroots movement has transcended borders and has offices in New York, London, Ottawa, Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Through its various offices, the movement has asked that supporters sign the OneVoice mandate that asks that the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis to “independence, sovereignty, freedom, justice, dignity, respect, national security, personal safety, and economic viability” are respected and recognized.

The public talk, held on Sunday, January 20, brought two field officers from the organization’s Tel Aviv and Ramallah branches to Waterloo to talk about their experiences and the challenges they have faced in spreading the word about the OneVoice movement.

Adi Labad and Smadar Cohen represented OneVoice Palestine (OVP) and OneVoice Israel (OVI) respectively, and each brought with them experiences and stories to share with the audience.

From the outset, Labad made it clear that the goal of OneVoice was not to make “Palestinians and Israelis love each other.” The goal rather was to make each side understand the common ground they shared – a want for a ceasefire and a two-state agreement.

OneVoice New York’s International Education Program Manager Laurel Rapp led the talk and spoke of the dynamics of the organization and how it is run. Furthermore, she highlighted that each office works independently of the other and, as such, OVI and OVP do not communicate with each other.

The reasoning behind this, as explained by Rapp, is that, “Israelis have very particular concerns about the conflict that they’re hoping to secure and in Palestine they want an independent Palestine that exists viably beside Israel.”
This difference in needs is also reflected in each of their mandates, which share main demands but have very different preambles that highlight their varying requirements.

Cohen has worked with OVI in getting people to sign the organization’s mandate, a task she says has not been an easy one. “The problem we face in Israel is that the people are apathetic.… Stopping them on the street is the challenge. In Palestine, they want to do something but have no means.”

Furthermore, the act of signing the mandate was often preceded by statements like, “I’ll do it, but the Palestinians would never do it.”

However, Cohen was quick to assure them that “actually over 300,000 Palestinians have signed – and there was a complete switch and it was interesting to see the start of building trust between both societies.”

The OneVoice movement aims to mobilize the modern moderate strata of Israeli and Palestinian society who are the majority. However, as Labad affirms, “the moderate majority is often silenced by the violent minority…. The moderate majority in Palestine wants to be able to speak, but they are afraid. OneVoice allows them to share their opinion.”

Cohen adds that “the people who are not the majority are often heard because they use violence, and today violence sells. It’s interesting to see them killing each other; it’s not interesting to see them loving each other or at least respecting each other.”

An interesting aspect of the OneVoice movement is that they renounce actual specific political blueprints to ending the conflict. Rather, they aim to get voters to demand that the ceasefire and a peace agreement is initiated and outlined by the government. As Cohen says, “We’re not politicians; we’re just trying to get people to voice their opinions. Our leaders need to get in a room and not come out until the white smoke comes out.”

She added that even within OVI there are arguments over borderlines, but that “this is the job of the government.”

Since OneVoice’s inception in 2002, the organization has taken steps to start a clear, respectful stream of dialogue between the two governments.
The organization also realizes that “when we talk about ending the conflict, we don’t mean tomorrow – we mean in the next few years. The process requires time and commitment and support from both sides.”

The support they have received thus far has been enormous – as of now, they have 600,000 signatories who support their mandate, with an almost equal split between Israelis and Palestinians.

The OneVoice movement has garnered considerable support from North America and Europe as well as within the Middle East. Its funding comes primarily from grants and funds from the US such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation and many other independent donors. The organization is also waiting on charity status from the Canadian government.

The movement and its people are especially passionate about diminishing the gap between the high-level negotiations, such as the ones recently held in Annapolis, Maryland in November, and the people these negotiations really affect.

THANA DHARMARAJAH

Adi Labadi was shot in his right leg in the middle of the street in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

Tel Aviv native Smadar Cohen’s commander was blown up in a bus that the Israeli woman often took home herself.

Labadi, a 20-year-old Palestinian, and Cohen, a 24-year-old Israeli, grew up in an environment where violence became the norm. But on the day when the Israeli-Palestine conflict touched their lives, anger filled their hearts.

"I had anger and hate at that time for everybody," said Labadi, thinking back to the day he was lying on the street beside his friend, who was also shot.

Both youths, now part of the OneVoice Movement, were invited by the University of Guelph’s Jewish Students’ Organization last night to share their experiences and speak about how they’ve moved forward to effect change.

"By sheer luck I was not on that bus," Cohen said. "It really changed my perspective on the conflict . . . Like Adi, at the beginning you only want revenge."

The pair joined the OneVoice Movement, an international movement that aims to resolve the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis by uniting their voices.

Both sides want an end to the bombings, kidnappings, murders and other forms of violence, Cohen said.

Through the movement, the youths speak to citizens of Palestine and Israel convincing them that those on the opposite side also want to live in a peaceful environment. Cohen said that OneVoice doesn’t work to create peace, but rather works toward conflict resolution.

"As an Israeli, it’s very hard to be told that we should love each other and be friends because you have too much emotional baggage," she said. "Conflict resolution is about stopping the killing."

When he’s on the streets of Jenin, Labadi said at first it’s hard for people to see Israelis as humans like themselves.

"When people think of Israel, they think ‘Oh they killed my brother,’ " he said.

Through town hall meetings, OneVoice is trying to build trust on both sides, Labadi said.

In November, negotiations began in the United States that would guarantee an independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel. In the meantime, for about a year OneVoice has been collecting signatures from both Palestinians and Israelis to demonstrate the need for an end to the violence.

When they have one million signatures, Cohen said, they’ll take it to politicians on both sides.

To date, OneVoice has collected more than 600,000 signatures.

tdharmarajah@guelphmercury.com

By Paul Taylor

KRONBERG, Germany, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world and people-to-people contacts if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories.

In an interview with Reuters, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain and adviser to King Abdullah, said Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.

Asked what message he wanted to send to the Israeli public, he said:

"The Arab world, by the Arab peace initiative, has crossed the Rubicon from hostility towards Israel to peace with Israel and has extended the hand of peace to Israel, and we await the Israelis picking up our hand and joining us in what inevitably will be beneficial for Israel and for the Arab world."

The 22-nation Arab League revived at a Riyadh summit last year a Saudi peace plan first adopted in 2002 offering Israel full normalisation of relations in return for full withdrawal from occupied Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese land.

Israel shunned the offer then, at the height of a violent Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But it has expressed more interest since the United States launched a new drive for Israeli-Palestinian peace at Annapolis, Maryland, last November, aiming for an agreement this year.

Prince Turki, who was previously head of Saudi intelligence, said that if Israel accepted the Arab League plan and signed a comprehensive peace, "one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity".

"One can imagine not just economic, political and diplomatic relations between Arabs and Israelis but also issues of education, scientific research, combating mutual threats to the inhabitants of this vast geographic area," he said.

"ARAB JEWS"

His comments, on the sidelines of a conference on the Middle East and Europe staged by Germany’s Bertelsmann Foundation think-tank, were some of the most far-reaching addressed to Israelis by a senior figure from Saudi Arabia.

The desert kingdom, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, has no official relations with the Jewish state, although both are key allies of the United States in the region.

"Exchange visits by people of both Israel and the rest of the Arab countries would take place," Prince Turki said.

"We will start thinking of Israelis as Arab Jews rather than simply as Israelis," he said, noting that many Arabs historically saw the Israeli state as a European entity imposed on Arab land after World War Two.

Prince Turki, brother of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, holds no official position now but heads the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh.

He said Israel could expect some benefits on the way to signing a treaty and making a full withdrawal, noting that after the 1993 Oslo interim accords with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, regional cooperation had begun and the Jewish state had achieved representation in several Arab states.

Those Israeli advances were reversed after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000.

Israel was wary of the Arab League plan partly because it would entail handing back the Syrian Golan Heights captured in the 1967 Middle East war, as well as re-dividing Jerusalem, of which Israel annexed the captured Arab eastern part in 1967.

But an Israeli participant at the conference, Yossi Alpher, co-editor of the Bitter Lemons Israeli-Palestinian Web site and a former senior intelligence official, welcomed the comments.

"I was delighted to hear Prince Turki’s description of the comprehensive nature of normalisation as he envisages it within the framework of the Arab peace initiative," Alpher said.

"His remarks should encourage us Israelis and Arabs to deepen and broaden the discussion of ways to reach a comprehensive peace, implement the Arab peace initiative and reach the kind of cooperation that his highness described."

Alpher said he hoped that once there was a comprehensive peace, Israel’s Arab neighbours would accept Israelis "as Jewish people living a sovereign life in our historic homeland" and not as "Arab Jews" or "European Jews". (Editing by Caroline Drees)

How does a Mexican of Jewish heritage with a background in business and law launch PeaceWorks, an innovative food company, and the ambitious foundation OneVoice, both of which work towards towards peace in the Middle East? Daniel Lubetzky, born and raised in Mexico City, studied in the US, France and Israel, before attending Stanford Law School in California. He then had short stints at a law firm and an investment company before launching PeaceWorks in 1994 and OneVoice in 2002. We spoke last year when the Arab League had just taken a leadership role in the peace process between Israel and Palestine after the Second Intifada.

Janera: What do you think when you hear the term “Global Nomads?”

Daniel: Humanity transcending barriers and borders. All of us are, in essence at least, global nomads.

J: PeaceWorks is a company but you don’t really produce anything. Can you explain how that works?

D: Most big companies don’t own the factories; they contract out to other companies. As does PeaceWorks. We manage the relationships, start the ventures, own the brands and the formulas and work with local partners to produce a product—that is our model. We have joint ventures in Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and Indonesia. In each of these places, we partner with local manufacturers that trade with each other. For example, the Israeli company buys glass from an Egyptian company, sun dried tomatoes from a Turkish company, olives and olive oil from Palestinian growers.

J: Does the Israeli partner employ Palestinians?

D: No, because it’s against the law. Maybe a handful of Palestinians can come into Israel, but they are not allowed to work in these factories. So the trade in the Middle East is through partnerships. Israelis, Egyptians, Turks, Palestinians each work on their own and then trade with each other. The PeaceWorks model is symmetrical: the ventures can either be trading partners of equal relationships or they can be companies that manufacture side by side.

J: Is it impossible for actual enemies to work together?

D: Starting ventures in conflict areas is very hard. We work with people who believe in what we do. We want to cement and strengthen and expand on good will and go to Israelis and Palestinians who are willing to begin exploring how they can collaborate. We don’t try to convince people who don’t want to work together to collaborate, like a Hamas terrorist and an Israeli militant. It won’t happen—they hate each other.

J: Do you think the process needs somebody from the outside, like you, to come in and create something that will benefit the local population?

D: There are definitely serious barriers for people who are living with daily tragedies. But it’s also a question of leadership. There are many examples of people, locally based, who do very good work breaking stereotypes and fostering cooperation. But I would encourage outsiders to be engaged because I’ve noticed that there are also practical ways, not just mental barriers and psychological barriers, but also legal ways an external person can help.
For OneVoice, our Palestinian staff in Ramallah couldn’t go into Gaza; our Palestinian staff in Gaza couldn’t go into Ramallah. Our Israeli staff cannot go into Gaza. I had to open the office in Gaza because I, as a Mexican, had the ability to go in there. Similarly there are a lot of permit challenges when the Palestinians want to meet with Israelis and they are not given permission, and the Israelis want to meet the Palestinians and they aren’t allowed in to the West Bank. Sometimes you have to be a catalyst who tries to build these bridges.

J: Do you think the Internet can be a catalyst for connecting people who can’t physically meet?

D: The Internet can be an enormous bridge but it can also be an enormous burned bridge. Today it is totally unregulated. What tends to happen is that very aggressive people use this online space to speak unrestrainedly. If you visit these Israeli websites where people from different places speak in English—it’s horrible and scary how negative patriotism can be. I think the same people who write this horrible stuff on the Internet would have a harder time saying it in person.

On the other hand, the Internet has phenomenal power. I’m working on a lot of initiatives to use the Internet as a way to bridge different groups of people—showing them the usefulness of one another and helping them to connect with each other.

J: Do you think that business can improve the social aspect of people’s lives, specifically in Israel, but maybe also in Indonesia and Sri Lanka?

D: I think business plays a very important role and has a big responsibility. If it plays an amoral role or an uninvolved role then we’re missing out on a lot of the potential market. Market forces are so powerful; why not engineer them in a way that they play a positive role?

J: How do you make the PeaceWorks model attractive? How do you get partners engaged?

D: At the venture level, the key to making peace attractive is to make it the partner companies’ business interests. For example the Israeli company was buying glass jars from Portugal. It was costing them a lot more than it was to buy them from Egypt. So it was in their economic interest to switch to Egyptian jars. It’s a business decision. You’re saving money. Better business gets them to the table and the byproduct is peace.

J: And this happens because you’ve decided it at the corporate level?

D: Yes, that’s the beauty of the model. It’s not artificially imposed. It works because there’s openness towards it. The social mission can be advanced as well as the business mission. It’s not sacrificing one for the other. The more people work together, the more they’re cementing relationships and the more they’re saving. This is what I call complementary, comparative advantages—each group of people has advantages that complement the other.

J: Why did you need to start OneVoice, the non-profit foundation?

D: I realized I wasn’t going to achieve peace in the Middle East through the business model alone. While the business model has a positive role to play, I