OneVoice Movement Press Coverage

NEW POLL:
TWO STATE SOLUTION REMAINS ACCEPTABLE RESOLUTION
FOR VAST MAJORITY OF ISRAELIS & WEST BANK/GAZA PALESTINIANS
74% of Palestinians in West Bank & Gaza willing to accept Two State Solution
78% of Israelis willing to accept Two State Solution

MAJORITIES ON BOTH SIDES SUPPORT A NEGOTIATED PEACE
71% of Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza &
77% of Israelis feel Negotiations are ‘Essential’ or ‘Desirable’

ONEVOICE LAUNCHES TOWN HALL MEETINGS SERIES
IN ISRAEL & PALESTINE
TO ADDRESS FINAL STATUS & MUTUAL RECOGNITION ISSUES

DOWNLOAD THE FULL POLLING REPORT

22 April 2009

/ Jerusalem / Despite growing fears that the “Two State Solution” is losing purchase on the ground in Israel and Palestine, today the OneVoice Movement (www.OneVoiceMovement.org) released the findings of a new poll which demonstrates that the two state solution remains the only acceptable resolution for the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians.

OneVoice is an international grassroots collective using civic engagement to mobilize citizens and their leaders to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a mutually-acceptable two state agreement which ends the occupation, guarantees the security of Israel , and establishes a viable, independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel.

The poll was commissioned by OneVoice in collaboration with Dr. Colin Irwin of the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool (www.peacepolls.org), and in conjunction with Dr. Nader Said of Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) in Ramallah and Dr. Mina Zemach of Dahaf Institute in Tel Aviv. The methodology, which had been piloted by Dr. Irwin in Northern Ireland and subsequently used in places as varied as Sri Lanka and Macedonia, involved a questionnaire designed through a series of interviews with civil society leaders and political figures on each side. The field work was conducted by Zemach in Israel and by Said in Palestine during February 2009, in the wake of the Gaza war and the Israeli elections.

The results indicate that 74% of West Bank & Gaza Palestinians and 78% of Israelis are willing to accept a two state solution77% of Israelis and 71% of Palestinians consider a negotiated peace ‘essential’ or ‘desirable.’ (an option rated on a range from ‘tolerable’ to ‘essential’), while 59% of Palestinians and 66% of Israelis find a single bi-national state ‘unacceptable.’ Additionally, according to the data, Ninety-four percent of Palestinians and 74% of Israelis think that the people must be continually informed on the negotiations process.

The poll also reveals that consensus still needs to be built. The findings imply that mainstream Israeli and Palestinian populations still have yet to acknowledge the significant priorities and fears on the other side. While the issue of greatest significance for Palestinians is freedom from occupation (94% deem it a ‘very significant’ problem in the peace process, ranking it the primary issue on the Palestinian side), only 30% of Israelis find it to be ‘very significant,’ ranking the issue 15th on the Israeli side. Similarly, the primary issue on the Israeli side is stopping attacks on civilians (90% rate it a ‘very significant’ issue). This issue meets with 50% approval on the Palestinian side, and ranks as 19 in a list of 21 issues. Significant gaps in public consensus persist as well on the issues of settlements and refugees – two issues on which there was no single proposed solution which met with majority approval on both sides.

To address the critical gaps that still exist on some recognition and final status issues, OneVoice is launching a Town Hall Meetings Series in Israel and Palestine to present the findings of the poll and discuss the various issues – from mutual recognition to settlements, refugees, and Jerusalem – that both sides will need to confront in order to reach a two state agreement. Progress at the negotiating table is only one step in the process of reaching an agreement that can be implemented. An end to the conflict will only come when the leaders come to an agreement that their peoples are ready to understand, accept, and support. The series will be launched in May and will be implemented throughout the rest of 2009. It will use the findings of the poll as a starting point for discussions.

Five hundred interviews were completed in Israel and six hundred in the West Bank and Gaza to produce representative samples of both populations in terms of age, gender, social background and geographical distribution. As the polls were conducted during a particularly difficult time on both sides – immediately following the Gaza war and the Israeli elections – the continued insistence of both sides on a negotiated and mutually-acceptable resolution could offer significant legitimacy to political leaders looking to push for negotiations toward a two state agreement.

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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 2,000 highly-trained youth leaders. It aims to amplify the voice of Israeli and Palestinian moderates, empowering them to seize back the agenda for conflict resolution and demand that their leaders achieve a two-state solution guaranteeing both the end of occupation and the establishment of a viable Independent Palestinian state as well as the safety and security of the state of Israel - allowing both people to live in peace with all their neighbors. 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.OneVoiceMovement.org

Full Polling Report Available for Download

SIR PAUL JOINS HONORARY BOARD
OF GRASSROOTS ORGANIZATION
WORKING TO END PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT

23 March, 2009 / Tel Aviv, Israel / The OneVoice Movement today announced that Sir Paul McCartney has officially joined its International Board of Advisors, which includes other celebrities such as Danny DeVito and Jason Alexander, as well as international dignitaries and political figures like Dennis Ross.

McCartney first spoke with Israeli and Palestinian representatives of the group, which seeks to empower the moderate majorities of Israel, Palestine, and citizens internationally to work toward a two state solution to the conflict, during his visit to Israel at the end of September 2008. He met with OneVoice Israel Chairwoman, Irit Admoni Perlman, in addition to staff members and youth activists from the movement. At the meeting, he expressed his support for OneVoice’s activities on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Speaking to Nisreen Shahin, OneVoice Palestine’s Executive Director, Sir Paul reaffirmed his commitment to OneVoice’s moderate, grassroots approach to ending the conflict.

He also travelled to Palestine, to bring his message of peace to the West Bank as well. Later that evening at his concert at Tel Aviv’s Park HaYarkon, he and members of his band wore OneVoice pins in a show of support for the movement and the ideas it promotes.

Said McCartney, “Having met representatives of the association OneVoice, I was impressed, first of all, by the fact that half of the organization is Palestinian and half is Israeli.  Almost 650,000 people have signed on to their manifesto, supporting their steadfast work to bring about a negotiated solution, and peace in the region.” He went on to say of OneVoice: “They told me that the vast majority of people in both societies are moderates and simply want a better life for their families and themselves. This gave me great hope that, one day, people like them will help to bring about a peaceful resolution to the troubles in the area. I am, therefore, happy to lend my support in this way to the cause of peace.”

Over the past six years, OneVoice has built a “human infrastructure” of youth leaders and citizen activists working to mobilize their communities and push their elected representatives to achieve a two state agreement. The movement has trained over 2,000 youth leaders in Israel and Palestine, and counts on its board over 60 world leaders, dignitaries, celebrities, business people, and political figures.

© 2009 MPL Communications Ltd.
Photographer: Emanuelle Scorceletti

By James F. Smith, Globe Staff

There could hardly be a less hopeful moment for peace between Israelis and Palestinians: Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip last month, and then Israeli voters marched firmly to the right in elections. Palestinians are more divided than ever, with the hard-line Hamas movement still firing rockets from Gaza at Israeli towns, while the moderate Fatah faction has been sidelined.

Yet Nisreen Abdallah, a Palestinian, joined Roi Assaf, an Israeli, in a conference room at the Harvard Divinity School this week to make the case that this is precisely the moment for compromises that will let Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in two secure states.

It was the first stop on a weeklong tour of a dozen schools and colleges in New England for leaders of OneVoice Israel and OneVoice Palestine, parallel organizations that are pushing for a two-state solution. Their goal: build a critical mass of moderates in each of their communities able to challenge the extremists and move toward peace.

Muslim and Jewish student organizations are cosponsoring the OneVoice meetings around Boston campuses - where Abdallah and Assaf offer firmly nationalistic arguments that reflect the strong emotions flowing from years of grievances and slights in both camps.

At Harvard, Abdallah told of the humiliation she has endured at Israeli checkpoints in the Palestinian West Bank, and her hatred of the Israeli soldiers who run them. Assaf told of serving as an Army sergeant in charge of one of those tense checkpoints, at a time of suicide bombings by Palestinians in Israel.

Nevertheless, Abdallah and Assaf both conclude that the only way to protect their own community’s future well-being is to create a viable Palestinian state that recognizes a secure Israel. The OneVoice case is that this is not a naive dream but hardheaded self-interest; the alternative is more years of worsening bloodshed.

They both acknowledged the particularly pessimistic context for their work.

"The option is still there for a two-state solution, but on both sides the window is narrowing down," Assaf said. Moderates have been undermined by the Gaza fighting, he said, because the conflict "pushes people on both sides toward the extremes."

For her part, Abdallah said Palestinians in the West Bank watched with a mixture of anguish and anger as the Israelis have focused recently on Hamas and Gaza while all but ignoring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the moderate Fatah faction that controls the West Bank.

"The danger is that people start to think that violence can achieve something," she said. "We have a lot of people becoming pro-Hamas because they see that Hamas is getting more attention from the Israelis."

The OneVoice branches operate separately in Palestinian areas and Israel. Unlike some peace groups, the goal is not to get dialogue going with the other side, but rather to energize the moderate center within each community to make its voice heard in favor of a two-state deal.

OneVoice also is premised on moving beyond the vexing historical disputes that underlie issues such as the status of Jerusalem and the rights of Palestinian refugees, knowing that Palestinians and Israelis will never persuade each other to concede past wrongs.

"I am not here to discuss every argument," Assaf said. "If you go down the path of arguing each narrative, I will tell you that I am 100 percent right on these issues, and the other side will tell us they are 100 percent right. We are trying to build something to reach a future. If you don’t see a future, you fail."

OneVoice was founded in 2002 by Daniel Lubetsky, a Mexican-born entrepreneur and social activist who lives in New York and Israel. The organization’s Israeli and Palestinian branches boast of signing up nearly 650,000 people, roughly equally divided between the two communities, in favor of sustained negotiations for a two-state solution.

Assaf and Abdallah are the full-time coordinators for the 1,800 volunteer youth leaders in the two movements, who organize local projects in schools and neighborhoods. Their recent programs include the "Imagine 2018" project last year, in which Israeli and Palestinian students wrote essays on what their societies would look like in a decade if the conflict ended.

China Sajadian, the New York-based international program coordinator for OneVoice, said US campuses often are fiercely divided on the issues, pushing programs such as Israel-Apartheid Awareness Week or Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

She said the OneVoice campus tours seek to engage moderates in the United States who will speak out for mutual engagement, rather than remain mired in the old divisions.

By Sarah Kessler

“Entertainment, vision and chutzpah,” was the battle cry of New York’s Israeli consul general, Asaf Shariv, on October 29 at Manhattan’s Ziegfeld Theatre. It was the opening night of the 23rd Israel Film Festival, and Lifetime Visionary Award winner Danny DeVito worked hard to include all three elements in his acceptance speech.

“Look around. A lot of you are bald,” said the actor, who was introduced by Michael Douglas — DeVito’s oldest show business friend and former roommate in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment — with a crack about absent hair. DeVito went on to make an earnest plea for support of the grass-roots organization in which he and his wife, actress Rhea Perlman, are involved: the OneVoice Movement, which pushes for peace in the Middle East.

Douglas and DeVito, who kissed manfully on the red carpet at the request of photographers, were the biggest names of the night, but not the only. The respective honorees for lifetime and outstanding achievement were Oscar-winning producer, director and writer Irwin Winkler and the similarly multitasking Edward Zwick. “Growing up in the Midwest, I was a Jewish boy looking for heroes,” said Zwick, whose latest project, “Defiance” (based on Peter Duffy’s 2003 book “The Bielski Brothers”) stars Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as Jewish brothers who set up a refugee camp during World War II and succeed in saving 1,200 Jews.

Guests sipped DeVito’s own brand of limoncello (a lemon liqueur) and snacked on that Israeli classic, sushi, before settling down to America’s premiere of Reshef Levy’s box office smash, “Lost Islands.” You can catch the movies — more than 30 feature films and documentaries by Israel’s up-and-coming filmmakers — in New York through November 13.

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 25 (UPI) — Young Israeli leaders from the OneVoice Movement met Thursday with British rock ‘n’ roll icon Paul McCartney in Tel Aviv, the group said.

Photo: Reuters

In support of the movement’s mission to empower ordinary Israelis and Palestinians to push for peace and a two-state solution, the group said McCartney promised he would wear a OneVoice pin on his lapel during his first concert in the country Thursday night.

Although McCartney was asked by some groups to cancel the concert in protest of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, he declined to do so, stating his visit was meant to spread a message of peace and explaining he wanted to see what was going on in the region for himself.

At Thursday’s meeting with executive staff from OneVoice Israel and 10 youth leaders, McCartney said: "My father told me that regular people don’t like wars and don’t want conflict. I’m not a politician — I just want to bring a message of peace. In every place I perform I see that people want the same thing."

McCartney made a trip to the Palestinian city of Bethlehem Wednesday, bringing his message of peace to Palestine, as well, OneVoice said.

http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2008/09/25/Macca_meets_with_two-state_solution_group/UPI-65871222379137/

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.

By: Heather Robinson

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.

Joint Discussion with Foremost Dignitaries at the World Economic Forum

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.