OneVoice Movement Press Coverage

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.

by Stacey Palevsky
The Jewish News Weekly

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

By Brian Andrew

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."

Waleed Hafeez  

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)

Janera Soerel

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 couldn’t scale it up fast enough and the nature of the conflict requires civic engagement.

There are ten million people in Palestine-Israel, and with PeaceWorks we’re affecting 10,000 lives at most. You realize there is no way you can resolve this conflict purely through business.

Also, citizens need to take responsibility for ending the conflict. Politicians alone can’t resolve it. And this is not a conflict of the left versus the right, or the Palestinians versus the Israelis, or the Jews against the Muslims. It is moderates versus extremists. Everyone joining us at OneVoice is against extremism. So you have to frame the conflict properly. OneVoice is trying to help people realize this.

J: How did you get to speak at the World Economic Forum?

D: I received a letter that I had been named a young, global leader at the World Economic Forum in 1997. And I thought: this is a scam. So I threw it away. Then they called me and asked “Didn’t you get our invitation? We want to interview you, it’s for the award.” I went and was blessed to meet a lot of great people who have become very very important figures in my life. OneVoice would literally not exist today without the support of the World Economic Forum. Professor [Klaus] Schwab [founder and president of the WEF] was very supportive and believed in us very early on, when it was a difficult journey. It is a great platform to meet impressive people who want to do something positive.

J: What difficulties did you encounter at the beginning with OneVoice?

D: Trying to get foundations to believe that OneVoice was worth pursuing. I didn’t have any nonprofit experience and they probably thought, “Here comes this Mexican guy telling us that there needs to be a grassroots movement of Palestinians and Israelis.” So nobody gave me money and I gave up—in the beginning. This was 2001. Then in 2002, I remember, there was bombing after bombing and I couldn’t sleep at night — I felt so guilty I wasn’t doing something. I watched the news and it was so clear they were getting it all wrong: they were showing the extremists from both sides. I realized we weren’t seeing the moderate voices. Back then you didn’t hear the word “moderate.”

If you follow speeches in 2001 and 2002, the only people who were speaking like that were King Abdullah and Queen Rania [of Jordan]. Everybody else was in an “us” vs. “them” mentality: it was all about extremism. I called up my friends and said we are going to do this, even if it means we each put down a hundred dollars. That’s how it started.

It’s great going to Israel-Palestine wearing the OneVoice symbol and having people come up to you who know what it is, and they talk to you and see that you are building a mindset and a movement. We have 300,000 members and 2,000 young leaders who have impacted each other and the world. What I’m proud of are our partners on the ground. They are very courageous and are doing important work every day.

J: What is your measure of success?

D: Ending the conflict. Our goal is not for people to get along, for understanding. Our goal is to end the conflict and to achieve a two-state solution.

J: Do you have a time frame for it, more or less?

D: Today. Yesterday. It is such a hard thing to do that people basically write it off and stop believing that peace can come, and they’re going to stop working because they believe it won’t happen. So our goal is to solve it, to do this already.

J: Do you think the recent involvement of Saudi Arabia as a leader in the Arab League helps the process?

D: Yes, I think it has historic potential. I think it can play a very positive role. It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s a much better start than in the year 2000 when the Saudis and the Egyptians told Arafat not to negotiate with Jerusalem. Now they’re saying let’s get this thing done.

J: Do you try to influence policy?

D: Yes, we meet every two or three months with the dignitaries and tell them what we do. Our Citizen’s Negotiation is a process in which citizens themselves are crafting a possible resolution for the conflict. It is something we collect and take to the politicians. It has a lot of moral authority because it is coming from the grassroots level. We regularly brief the politicians and tell them what the people want.

J: So it is like market research in a sense?

D: Yeah, but market research just gives you poll results. Our process actually helps people think as negotiators. It teaches you to be conciliatory. It teaches you the art of compromise.

NEW YORK, December 6, 2007 – The PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement announced today that it has been selected by Fast Company magazine and Monitor Group to receive the annual Social Capitalist Awards for the second consecutive year. The organization is among a select group of non profits who use the tools of business to solve the world’s most pressing social problems and who have demonstrated a consistent and unusually large impact on society.

“This year we’ve seen an explosion of diverse experiments, many of them engineered by onetime Wall Street heavies, that attempt to bring new capital – and capital-market dynamics – to the realm of social good,” said Fast Company Contributing Writer Keith Hammonds. “Through these deals, social entrepreneurs and businesses are raising the stakes, creating both business and social impact, and changing old-style capitalism as we know it.”

OneVoice, a youth-led, grassroots movement that runs in parallel in Palestine and in Israel, has been awarded the Social Capitalist Award because of the organization’s demonstrated social impact, entrepreneurial and innovative approach, and potential for growth and sustainability. In the five years since its inception, OneVoice has worked to bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by mobilizing the grassroots, in the past year has nearly tripled its membership – now boasting of over 600,000 Israeli and Palestinian signatory members, in roughly equal numbers on each side. The organization is based in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Gaza City, with international offices in New York, London, and Tel Aviv.

Darya Shaikh, Executive Director of OneVoice US, said, “OneVoice is proud to count itself among the winners of this award, and therefore among those using innovative tools and approaches to shape the world around them for the better. This has been an important year for us, in trying to mobilize the Israeli and Palestinian populations for a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and we are dedicating ourselves now more than ever to our mission.”

The goal of the Social Capitalist Awards is to advance performance measurement and accountability in the social sector in a highly rigorous, data driven, comparative approach. OneVoice is featured in Fast Company’s December/January 2008 issue and will be recognized at a ceremony at the Westin Washington D.C. city Center on January 8, 2008.

Complete information on this year’s Social Capitalist Awards winners, including expanded profiles and links that let you make donations to the groups you find most compelling, can be found online at www.fastcompany.com.

About the PeaceWorks Foundation & OneVoice Movement:

The OneVoice Movement is a mainstream nationalist grassroots movement with over 600,000 signatories in roughly equal numbers both in Israel and in Palestine, and 3,000 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. OneVoice counts on its Board over 60 foremost dignitaries and business leaders across a wide spectrum of politics and beliefs, joining as OneVoice against violent extremism and for conflict resolution. Learn more by visiting www.OneMillionVoices.org.

About Fast Company magazine:

Founded in 1996 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, LLC, award-winning Fast Company magazine (www.FastCompany.com) covers the ideas, trends and visionaries that are sparking change and creating the future of business. With a total paid circulation of 746,161, Fast Company explores the profound innovation, creative breakthroughs, best and “next” practices that are driving the business world.

About Monitor Group:

Monitor Group is a leading global professional services firm working with corporations, governments, and social-sector organizations to help them drive growth. Employing over 1,500 people in 22 countries worldwide Monitor offers a blend of advisory, capability building and capital services.  Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Monitor can be reached at 617.252.2000 or on the web at www.monitor.com