Ghost of a chance of peace

Some twenty years ago a Palestinian soda company started hiring students from the nearby Yeshiva in Beit El to certify that the soda was Kosher for sale in Israel. It seemed like a good idea at the time but then reality intervened. The first intidfada started and, as far as I know, that sunk the project.

I don’t know if the project in this article – Israelis and Palestinians Launch Web Start-Up – will last any longer. Maybe it will:

Nibbling doughnuts and wrestling with computer code, the workers at G.ho.st, an Internet start-up here, are holding their weekly staff meeting — with colleagues on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.They trade ideas through a video hookup that connects the West Bank office with one in Israel in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Start with the optimistic parts, Mustafa,” Gilad Parann-Nissany, an Israeli who is vice president for research and development, jokes with a Palestinian colleague who is giving a progress report. Both conference rooms break into laughter.

If some sort of co-existence is possible it will have to come from the ground up, where practical concerns weigh more heavily on the parties than politics.

I have no doubt that cooperative efforts such as this will be more productive than international conferences pledging billions to the Palestinian Authority. Such conferences have only fed the corrupt, irredentist government in the past, and I have little hope than those in charge have the authority to change the culture of corruption.

A better indication of whether (or when) there will be peace will not be by the dollars pledged but by the proliferation of joint business ventures or other private (non government and non NGO) cooperative enterprises.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.