Economics is the New Politics
After thirty years of settlement in Gaza Israel has withdrawn its citizens and sealed the border. Watching the emotional scenes of Israelis evicting Isrealis from land won by the blood of its soldiers has been a strange sight. The government's decision to trade land for a chance at peace has divided the politics of the state. Will this step prove to be the key to retarting the roadmap to peace or a serious misstep in the ongoing struggle between two worldviews?
Writing in the Times this morning Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres lays down the line that this is the right thing for Israel to do as a gesture of goodwill and intent. But he makes one salient point in this paragraph about the need for economic development in the Palestinian lands:
"...Privatisation and globalisation are moving in lock step. A global world needs to be a peaceful world. So corporations should mobilise to help to build and secure the peace. Governments have budgets, but corporations have money. Governments are unwieldy and corporations are nimble. Corporations can become an agent of peaceful relations between nations. As we make peace with each other, we should also make peace with the age. In an age of open borders, global communications, human mobility, and wealth that is extracted from the mind rather than the land, economics is the new politics. Private corporations can help to bring this age to the Middle East. Every company that opens a branch, a factory, an office in Gaza and the West Bank is making future conflicts and wars a little less likely."
Whether any company is going to invest in an area that is divided in its hatred of Israel, the west and anyone connected with "modern" thinking is doubtful right now. But Peres is correct. A solution to hate is to stop working within a paradigm that cannot accept the modern world. Sending your youth on suicide missions is not the way forward with the rest of the world. As last month's London bombings showed even those youth who live in the west have difficulty adjusting to the freedoms which form a modern global world.
It will take more than economic development to change the heart of those bent on the destruction of Israel as a state in the Middle East. But it is a goal to strive for until other spiritual matters can be addressed.
Writing in the Times this morning Israeli Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres lays down the line that this is the right thing for Israel to do as a gesture of goodwill and intent. But he makes one salient point in this paragraph about the need for economic development in the Palestinian lands:
"...Privatisation and globalisation are moving in lock step. A global world needs to be a peaceful world. So corporations should mobilise to help to build and secure the peace. Governments have budgets, but corporations have money. Governments are unwieldy and corporations are nimble. Corporations can become an agent of peaceful relations between nations. As we make peace with each other, we should also make peace with the age. In an age of open borders, global communications, human mobility, and wealth that is extracted from the mind rather than the land, economics is the new politics. Private corporations can help to bring this age to the Middle East. Every company that opens a branch, a factory, an office in Gaza and the West Bank is making future conflicts and wars a little less likely."
Whether any company is going to invest in an area that is divided in its hatred of Israel, the west and anyone connected with "modern" thinking is doubtful right now. But Peres is correct. A solution to hate is to stop working within a paradigm that cannot accept the modern world. Sending your youth on suicide missions is not the way forward with the rest of the world. As last month's London bombings showed even those youth who live in the west have difficulty adjusting to the freedoms which form a modern global world.
It will take more than economic development to change the heart of those bent on the destruction of Israel as a state in the Middle East. But it is a goal to strive for until other spiritual matters can be addressed.
