t

ner with a group of Kuwaiti elite: government

r. Perlmutter, who has the polished looks
of a successful mercantilist (gray/white
hair, brown eyes and preternatural
smooth, tanned skin) had come to
Kuwait as part of a goodwill/information-gathering
mission sponsored by a New York-based think tank,
the Council on Foreign Relations.
He and his four council colleagues already had been
to Saudi Arabia, and were scheduled to go on to Qatar.
Except that, just as certain Kuwaitis were airing their
not unpopular view that Saddam Hussein had actu-
ally been encouraged (through covert signals, coded
messages) by the United States to invade Kuwait,
thus enabling the United States to rush in as the sav-
ior of the Middle Eastern kingdom and put Kuwait
permanently in its debt, and just as the discussion
was getting really open and criticism of both coun-
tries was flying freely, a "Kuwaiti aide came in and
whispered something in the minister of information's
ear," says Mr. Perlmutter.
"People reacted in a very personal way," Mr. Perl-
mutter says. "The Kuwaitis related it to the emotion
they felt when (Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat was
killed, but it was momentary, because the Kuwaitis
are not really involved in Israeli/Palestinian affairs
— they're not that interested.
"On the other hand, we were pretty much in a
state of shock, and our first inclination was: 'Let's cut
this off and find out what's going on.' But then we rea-
lized we couldn't do that, because we were guests of
these people, and they had gone through enormous
trouble to put this meeting together for us. Later,
when I went upstairs to my room, I turned on CNN
and found out that Rabin had died. And I just sat
there and thought: What is going to happen to the
peace process now?"
As it happens, what is going to happen to the peace
process now is an imperative question for Mr. Perl-
mutter, and not just because he is an American Jew
with an international consciousness. It is an imper-
ative question because in 1994, Mr. Perlmutter be-
came chairman of a little known subgroup of the
council's U.S./Middle East Project called the Council
of Economic Advisors. Formed at the request of Pales-
tinian Authority President Yassir Arafat, the sub-
group's purpose is, according to its official description,
"to advise the Palestinian National Authority on ques-
tions of basic economic policy and management ... to
help create conditions that will unblock the flow of
international assistance and encourage private sec-
tor investment." In other words, to liaison between
Mr. Arafat, the World Bank, donor countries, and Is-
rael, to get infrastructure like roads, sewage treat-
ment plants, housing projects, and tax systems
working in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. And
with the violent death of one of the key architects of
the peace process, the Council of Economic Advisors'
work was suddenly in jeopardy.
However, says Mr. Periniutter, "The thing that
came out of the assassination, perversely, is that the
Arab world finally saw that there was this real split
in Israeli society. That a group that had always been
very critical of statements by Israeli leaders about
the fact that they could only go so far with conces-
sions, suddenly saw the country as a Middle Eastern
society — one just like themselves. In a sense it's

ministers, businesspeople, academics.

Vanessa Friedman is a writer for Elle magazine.

Louis Perlmutter works

60.k\

s;

closely with

Ax\

Palesthtians

to build their future.

VANESSA FRIEDMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

New York

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZION OZERI

hen Louis Perlmutter — 61-year-old

New York investment banker, ex-chair-

man of Brandeis University, ex-chair-

man of the American Jewish Congress,

father of two — found out that Israeli Prime Minis-

ter Yitzhak Rabin had been shot last November, he

was in Kuwait City. Specifically, Mr. Perlmutter was

in the cavernous grand ballroom of a downtown ho-

tel in Kuwait City, chewing on the remains of a din-