Unfinished Business
Fouryears after it set out to garner U.S. investments
to strengthen the peace process, Builders for Peace
is shutting its doors.
B
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Before accepting, Levine
phoned another old friend, Prime
Minister Rabin, who approved of
the idea and reiterated his sup-
port during a private meeting in
New York.
Builders for Peace was formal-
ly launched in November 1993,
with an operating grant of
$350,000 for the first year by the
U.S. Agency for International De-
velopment (AID).
As co-president of Builders for
Peace, the choice was James Zog-
by, head of the Arab-American In-
stitute in Washington.
Levine had come to respect Zog-
by as a skilled adversary during
many debates on the Middle East
and considers him "the most ar-
ticulate Arab spokesman in the
United States."
The late Secretary of Commerce
Ron Brown signaled his enthusi-
astic support and later proved to
be true to his word. Another
strong backer was then Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres, who de-
clared that $1 invested in the
Palestinian economy would be
worth $2 spent on Israeli securi-
ty. Financial cooperation was
pledged by the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation (OPIC),
an independent federal agency.
The really heavy lifting in build-
ing up the infrastructure of Gaza
and, to a lesser extent the West
Bank, was to be the job of an in-
ternational consortium of donor
countries which, in the afterglow
of Oslo, pledged $2.4 billion.
From the beginning, the task
facing Builders for Peace proved
a lot more frustrating than antic-
ipated, despite intensive efforts by
Zogby and Levine. During 1994,
Levine traveled to Israel seven
UNFINISHED page 62
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udders for Peace, the noble
experiment in advancing
the political peace process
by boosting the Palestinian
economy through private Ameri-
can investments and business
pal tnerships, is shutting down.
"We're winding up our opera-
tions and terminating our
relationship with the U.S. gov-
ernment," acknowledged Joseph
DeSutter, executivedirector of the
Washington-based organization.
"For all intents and purposes,
we're out of business."
Builders for Peace was born in
the wake of the Yitzhak Rabin -
Yassir Arafat handshake on the
White House lawn on Sept. 13,
1993. Its demise sadly illustrates
the contrast between the eupho-
ria of that historic day and the
harsh realities that have dashed
so many high hopes.
Within days of the White House
ceremony, Vice President Al Gore
phoned attorney Mel Levine, a for-
mer congressman from West Los
Angeles with impeccable creden-
tials in the American Jewish com-
munity. Gore put it to his old
friend that the peace process
would fail if it did not improve the
economic lot of the Palestinian
masses at the same time.
The vice president suggested
that the Jewish and Arab com-
munities in the United States ap-
ply their business acumen and
capital to jump-start business ven-
tures with Palestinians in Gaza
and the West Bank, with initial
support from the U.S. govern-
ment.
Gore assumed that the joint
projects would stand on their own
feet within a year, at which time
Levine would have fulfilled his vol-
unteer assignment.
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The historic handshake that paved the way for the birth of Builders for Peace.