Will Arab uprisings bring a lasting peace to Middle East?

by Steven Strauss, Huffington Post

The Arab Spring presents a unique opportunity to envision a better Middle East, joining the global community with dignity and prosperity. If the people of the Middle East embrace this vision, America should provide significant support in achieving it, because a successful Middle East is our best defense against terrorism and our best guarantee of stable oil supplies.

The post-World War II Middle East has experienced: decolonization, autocratic governments, the 1948 War, the 1956 Suez Crisis, the June 1967 War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq Wars, the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Oslo Process, America's invasion of Iraq, and many other dramatic events.

The current period, however, presents the most significant changes in regional alliances since WWII. To name a few: Hamas' partnership with Syria has ended, Hezbollah is less able to rely on Syria's support, Syria's ability to intervene in Lebanon's affairs has been reduced, and Egypt's cooperation with the U.S. will likely decrease. Perhaps most disturbingly, Iran may (subject to many caveats) become a de-facto nuclear power within several years, challenging Israel with a threat to its existence.

American goals have not changed. The U.S. wants: a stable Middle East that provides secure oil sources; non-discriminatory democratic governments, subject to the rule of law; a two-state Israel-Palestine solution, just and equitable for both parties; and the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

The Arab Spring presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape events to achieve these goals. Unfortunately, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton's policies (while well-intentioned) have been merely reactive, day-to-day, and ad hoc. And some approaches outlined by Republican presidential candidates would be disastrous (e.g., Newt Gingrich referring to the Palestinians as an 'invented people').

The time has come to shape the future. Consider America's greatest foreign policy successes: Japan's post-WWII rebirth, Europe's post-WWII revival through the Marshall Plan, China's reintegration into the world system post-1979, and integration of former communist bloc countries after the Warsaw Pact collapse. They occurred because these countries shared a vision, and were willing to work to achieve it. The U.S. offered that vision, together with support to make it a reality.

Translating this to the Middle East, U.S. policy could look like the following:

Israel/Palestine: Offer incentives to both sides (paid for by the U.S. and other interested parties) that provide real reasons to make painful compromises. For both Israel and Palestine (conditioned on their achieving a real peace treaty) -- Entry into NAFTA (or analogous trade concessions) on favorable terms to promote economic growth. For Israel -- Entry into NATO, with a significant number of NATO troops stationed in front-line positions (so an attack on Israel becomes an attack on NATO), and reimbursement of costs for settlers evacuated from the West Bank. For the Palestinians -- Payment of all claims for people displaced during the various wars (by payment directly to the refugees), and citizenship in Western countries for any Palestinian refugees who cannot be resettled in the Middle East.

Egypt: The U.S. currently provides ~1.5 billion/year to Egypt of which 80 percent is military aid. Many Egyptians don't want this money, so the current aid package should end. In its place, we should offer (conditioned on Egyptians requesting the aid), a much larger package of incentives directed to the economic development of the Egyptian people. The new aid package should be conditioned on the Egyptian government achieving human rights, democratic and other soft goals, and its support for whatever peace agreement the Israelis and Palestinians reach.

For the broader Middle East: A similar package of incentives that encourages people to focus on improving their societies.

Will this be expensive? Yes. The 1947 Marshall Plan for Europe cost 5 percent ($12 billion) of America's 1947 GDP ($254 billion), equivalent to ~$750 billion in today's terms. However, the combined Afghanistan and Iraq wars cost ~$3 trillion, our 2011 defense budget was $700 billion, and we currently spend ~$350 billion/year importing petroleum products. Real peace in the Middle East will repay our investment with substantial dividends in increased trade, reduced military spending, stable oil supplies and (most importantly) lives saved.

In 1947, America was recovering from a war that killed 400,000 Americans, and staggering under a federal debt that exceeded GDP. The challenges of ending segregation were just ahead, and everyone feared a return to the Great Depression. Congress was controlled by Republicans and the Presidency by Democrats. However, that generation of Americans understood the world needed its leadership, and rose to the challenge. It's time for us to live up to their example.


Steven Strauss was founding Managing Director of the Center for Economic Transformation at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). He is an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University for 2012. He has a Ph.D. in Management from Yale University and over 20 years' private sector work experience. Steven has advised a number of Middle Eastern governments on various strategy projects. You can follow him on twitter at: @Steven_Strauss

3-Step Process to Palestinian - Israeli Peace

Step 1

One million Palestinian women, children and men walk into Jerusalem with not a weapon among them, and stay in the City for two days, offering peace and a ten year truce to the Israeli people. November 24th would be a date to consider.

Israeli and Palestinian religous and civic leaders meet to agree on and verify a renewable ten year truce, setting the table for border discussions.

Circa 2011




Step 2

Israeli and Palestine leaders finalize border and sign a permanent peace, security and development agreement. Nation of Palestine is launched August 24th with either the "Arafat" as the national currency, or at minimum having Yasser Arafat on some significant bills and coinage.

Development of solar city Khanara (Khan Arafat) begins in southern Gaza, between Rafah and Younis.

Circa 2013





Step 3

Israeli and Palestinian people vote in separate referendums to forge an economic and politic union, with the Federation of Israel and Palestine being created seven months after the second referendum. The new nation becomes a regional and global engine of economic growth, particularly benefiting Africa and the Middle East.

Circa June 2018

Music Promotes Peace in Palestine

Overture to peace in the West Bank
Article from TheStar.com -

Visiting musicians help give Arab youth the power of music at `Violinist' camp

July 05, 2008
Oakland Ross, Middle East Bureau
The Toronto Star

AL-FARA, West Bank–Take a limestone prison that once held Palestinian political detainees, add about 100 Arab children, furnish them all with musical instruments, sprinkle in 23 music teachers, most of them Europeans.

Let these ingredients simmer for five sunny summer days in the West Bank – and what do you get?

A somewhat wobbly performance of a Mozart Divertimento, followed by a properly wistful rendition of Pachelbel's Canon, all accompanied by a passel of earnest but happy young Palestinian faces, not to mention a proud parent or two.

In other words, you get just what Ramzi Aburedwan was hoping for.

"To bring them all together – this is really something," said Aburedwan, 29, prime mover behind a five-year-old Palestinian artistic endeavour called Al-Kamandjati, Arabic for The Violinist. "This year, the evolution has been tremendous."

This year, Aburedwan brought his summer music camp for impoverished Palestinian kids to this former political prison in Al-Fara, a small town outside Nablus in the northern West Bank.

An accomplished violist, Aburedwan recruited nearly two dozen musicians from various countries – including the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Italy – who are donating time and talent to help raise the level of music in a part of the world more closely associated with bombs and political bluster.

The instructors included an oboist and a flautist from L'Ensemble Orchestrale de Paris, a violinist formerly of the London Symphony Orchestra, an Australian conductor who now teaches music in Italy, and a German musicologist currently resident in Marseille.

You could call them Musicians Without Borders.

"These kids in five days of lessons are going to get farther than they would in 12 weeks of one-lesson-a-week," said Peter Sulski, a Boston-born violinist who divides his time between Massachusetts and London – and now the West Bank.

"I'm a community activist when it comes to music. I've long believed in music as a force for good."

In fact, all the children – who range in age from 7 to 16 – study music year-round, enrolled in programs Al-Kamandjati offers at a newly renovated building in Ramallah, de facto capital of the West Bank. The organization also offers music training in the Gaza Strip and in Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon.

In the West Bank alone, about 300 youth study music in ongoing programs offered by Al-Kamandjati, which also distributes musical instruments without charge, thanks to funding from a variety of donors, both Palestinian and foreign.

Only the most highly motivated of those students were invited to the camp at Al-Fara, which unfolded within the low-rise, stonewalled chambers and courtyards of what used to be an Israeli jail and is now a recreational facility operated by the Palestinian Ministry of Sports and Youth.

Aburedwan said his father once was incarcerated here, and he remembers coming to visit, accompanied by his grandmother. But that was then, and this is music.

"It has been great, beautiful," said Rasha Dolani, 14, from the West Bank city of Jenin. "I want to be a great pianist."

Maybe she will be, although few, if any, of the children who study at Al-Kamandjati are likely ever to earn a living from their instruments.

That is not the point.

"Mostly, it's something else," said Sulski. "The idea is to strengthen their minds, their sense of cultural history, so that they can become a force for the future."

Still, it may seem odd that Arab children – heirs to a rich musical legacy of their own – should be schooled on Western instruments in a Western musical tradition.

Franz Dartmann, a German musicologist who is working on a new curriculum for Al-Kamandjati, said the distinctions between different musical styles are less important than the power of music itself.

"It's a bridge," he said. "It's another kind of music they can learn, and they learn it with pleasure."

That they do, as was apparent during an open-air concert the students performed on the final afternoon of their five-day summertime adventure.

Gusts of wind played havoc with the sheet music, but the players soldiered on, performing in ensembles, duets or individually for an audience of family, teachers and friends.

For a time, it was almost possible to forget the concert was taking place in the Middle East, home to what might well be the world's most stubborn conflict.

"If we all have something in common, it is music," said Aburedwan. "I just want to bring some hope and share something that I believe in so much."

Full article at Palestine Music program Promoting Peace


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New Indie Canadian Singer-Songwriter Yuya

Alternative Energy Investing, Solar Power Company Websites

Renewable Power Investing, Wind Energy Stocks

Geothermal Power Links, Geothermal Energy Company Investing

The Toronto Sound - New Canadian Modern Rock Music

A Green Realtor Blog - Eco Realty Links

BeesTreesFrogsElephants.com - Nature and Ecology Blog

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak enthused by Syrian attendance at Peace Summit

artisle from JPost.com

Barak: 'High chance' summit will succeed

yaakov katz and gil hoffman , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 23, 2007

Syrian participation at the Annapolis peace summit next week would be a positive step that could "open the door" for full-fledged peace negotiations between Syria and Israel, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

"I hope that Syria and Saudi Arabia come to the summit," Barak said in an interview with the Post ahead of his trip to the US Saturday night to attend next week's Middle East summit at the Annapolis Naval Academy.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the "key issue" on the summit's agenda, Barak said "it will be good for Israel" if Syria participates.

Barak is scheduled to meet with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Tuesday to discuss regional security issues. Barak was in Washington in October for talks with Gates and US defense chiefs.

"In principle it is important to keep the door open for the Syrians so that when the time comes we will be able to negotiate with them," he said.

Barak said he planned to do everything in his power to ensure that the summit would be successful. He has met in recent months several times with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad and was a proponent of the decision to allow 500 armed Palestinian policemen to deploy in Nablus.

While Barak said there was a "high chance" that the summit would be successful, defense officials have warned that it is possible Palestinian terror groups will escalate their terror activity before, during and after the summit.

"There is a high chance that it [the summit] will succeed," he said. "It will begin the process. The real test will be when we discuss the core issues when the talks begin after the summit."

Barak said he did not believe a "wave of terror" would erupt in Israel if the summit failed. But he warned "inaction" could prove more dangerous than action. "All dialogue is important and we have a moral responsibility - from a security and diplomatic point of view - to find a peaceful way," he said.

Barak added that Israel did not plan on skipping over the first stage of the US-backed road map peace plan, which calls on the Palestinians to dismantle terror infrastructure in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"We are keeping for ourselves the right to operate and to fight terror," he said in reference to the Gaza Strip. "The first stage of the road map needs to be implemented. This is what is holding Gaza back."

Meanwhile Thursday, a group of hundreds of Jewish university students began what they billed as a "three-day march" around and through Jerusalem to encourage Olmert to make an agreement to divide the city in Annapolis.

They marched Thursday to the Western Wall and they will hold a rally in front of the Prime Minister's Office on Saturday night. The students said they would continue marching despite the rain and even if it would snow.

"If the summit addresses the need for compromises in Jerusalem, we will have succeeded, but if it ends in mere slogans, then we have failed and the extremists will only become stronger," said Nir Yanovsky, one of the leaders of the march.

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