Doing the right thing
Kudos to Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Frej for deciding that the first task of his ministry is to renew cooperation with Israel’s closest neighbors, the Palestinians. Frej has decided to renew the Israeli Palestinian Joint Economic Committee, one of 26 joint committees that was created through the Oslo agreements. The Joint Economic Committee has not met since 2009. In fact, today in 2021, not one of the 26 joint committees exists.
Frej’s ministry was first created by prime minister Ehud Barak in order to keep Shimon Peres far away from the Palestinian issue. It is great news that the ministry now sees its purpose to rebuild relations with the Palestinians. The recreation of the Joint Economic Committee by Frej falls into line with the proposal that I have been raising since 2005 – to civilize the peace process. For too long the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) have been in charge of Israel’s relations with the Palestinians. On the Palestinian side, the IDF and Shin Bet were partnered with the Palestinian security services. Relations between Israel and Palestine must be based on cross-border civilian cooperation that must be led by civilians and coordinated by civilian ministries of the two governments, and not by the military and security services.
I would like to make some additional suggestions to Frej and his ministry. At the outset of the Second Intifada, Dr. Ron Pundak and others, including myself, created the Israeli Peace NGO Forum. It was a kind of support network for Israeli organizations working with Palestinian peace organizations. In a short time, together with Dr. Riad Malki, now the Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister who in the past headed a Palestinian peace and democracy NGO created the Israeli-Palestinian Peace NGO Forum. The joint forum ceased to exist years ago, but the Israeli Peace NGO Forum continues to exist.
Alongside of the Forum is another network of peace organizations called ALLMEP – the Alliance for Middle East Peace. ALLMEP has been lobbying for years to create the International Fund for Israeli Palestinian Peace modeled on the International Fund for Ireland which was created by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. The International Fund for Ireland provided a huge influx of money for cross-community projects in Northern Ireland that many believe prepared the ground for the Good Friday Agreement. Recently the US Congress enacted the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act with $250 million prescribed over a five-year period for projects that support peace-building, reconciliation and greater cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians and to create Palestinian jobs and bolster the Palestinian economy.
The Israeli Regional Cooperation Ministry should act in coordination with ALLMEP to encourage the EU, UK, Japan, China, the Arab Gulf states and other allies to work with the US to create the International Fund. The $50 million a year allocated by the US should be met with $50 from the EU and the UK, $50 million from the Arab States, $50 million from China, Japan and others and easily another $50 from the international private sector. A fund with at least $250 million a year would have a massive impact on opportunities for peace-building and supporting the economy of reconciliation and hope. It is still a fraction of what is spent on the military, but the availability of that much money would have an enormous impact on the ability of the peace NGOs in Israel and Palestine, and the private sector to change the nature of relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
ISRAEL’S CLOSEST neighbors are those who live in the same home. Who better than Frej knows this. Frej is 100% Israeli and 100% Palestinian. Regional cooperation begins at home in the region of the Negev, the Little Triangle,
the Galilee and the mixed cities. In 1980 when I was 24 years old, I wrote a letter to prime minister Menachem Begin. I had just discovered that within the entire Israeli government there was not one civil servant whose job it was to work on improving the relations between Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens. Begin, who at least declaratively was a democrat and believed in equality, was moved by my letter. One year later I became the first civil servant in Israel responsible for improving Jewish-Arab relations.
Through my work and with other dedicated Israelis, the Department for Education for Democracy and Coexistence in the Education Ministry was created. I founded and directed the Institute for Education for Jewish Arab Coexistence, which I directed for seven years in cooperation with the Education Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office. That work led to the approval of new curricula in Israel’s school system on democracy and coexistence, and we trained thousands of teachers, Jews and Arabs, all around the country. I even helped to develop a mandatory course for the rank of major on democracy and coexistence in the IDF College for the Education of Officers, and for many years for my military reserve service I led courses and lectured to thousands of officers about Israel’s Palestinian citizens and about the Palestinian national movement.
In addition to assisting in the advancement of the International Fund for Israeli Palestinian peace, I propose that Frej establish an inter-ministerial committee on equality for all citizens of Israel. The first task of the committee should be to map out all of the laws in Israel that discriminate against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The Israeli NGO Adalah has done much of this work already, but when undertaken by the government, the document produced carries much more weight.
The work of the committee does not stop with the mapping of the discriminatory laws, but then a joint committee with the Legislation Committee of the Government should begin drafting amendments to the laws that will substantiate the Israeli slogan that under the law there is equality. This government of change has the real opportunity of making significant changes for equality. The government might not be capable of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but there is much to be done at home to create greater understanding and equality within the State of Israel. Improving Israel’s democracy and building a more peaceful home for Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians will be the foundations on which regional cooperation should be built.
The writer is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to the State of Israel and to peace between Israel and her neighbors. His latest book,