Annapolis and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[SN100682136]

Pittsburgh and Tel Aviv, November 21, 2007 — With the Mideast Peace Summit in Annapolis, Maryland just days away, 100,000 Israelis and Palestinians living in the actual conflict zone are about to try their hands at solving the peace puzzle—one game at a time. In an unprecedented giveaway, the Peres Center for Peace is distributing 100,000 free copies of the interactive game PeaceMaker to people in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

PeaceMaker is an award-winning interactive game that allows players to get inside the unpredictable politics of peace, discovering firsthand the huge challenges of leading a country, a people, and an international process. PeaceMaker players must choose to play either as the Israeli Prime Minister or Palestinian President. In the course of a typical game, players encounter real-life incidents affecting the Mideast, from protests and political pressures to violent acts, and the player must decide what to do next in order to achieve a virtual peace.

Approximately 75,000 copies will be sent to subscribers of the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz on November 27, with 10,000 copies of the game distributed through the Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds. An additional 15,000 copies of PeaceMaker will be distributed to Palestinian and Israeli high school classrooms and taught by specially trained teachers in the coming months.

Read Full txt at : http://www.peacemakergame.com/blog/
More at : http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927824.html

Demo at : http://www.peacemakergame.com/demo.php

[goesh]

I probably should apologize for being just that but if I do, I would have to probably start helping my wife with the dishes. That said, I fail to see how these gaming devices are going to cut the mustard - sort of reminds me of the time the Hippies were going to levitate the Pentagon to end the Viet Nam war. These pieces of metal, plastic, glass, rubber and electricity are not going to bring person-to-person contact. Let me see the warts on a man's face and we can talk turkey, otherwise we both sit alone with our thoughts and emotions and either get mad or give up. It's a good idea, don't get me wrong, but perhaps some chess boards and a free candy bar for each player might be in order here to bring people togather, not some sterile electronic device where everybody sits safely at home pecking away in cyberspace.

[Rex Brynen]

I'm not a huge fan of the game (I've got too many quibbles with its realism), and I doubt that its distribution will change many attitudes. However, it must be said that the Peres Center does outstanding work promoting so-called P2P ("people-to-people") activities. The Director, Ron Pundak, has done outstanding work for Palestinian-Israeli peace--indeed, he was among the original negotiators of the Oslo Accords.

Coincidentally, Ron sent this email around a few days ago.. its a long post, but worth reproducing for the many varied activities it recounts:

Just Another Day at the Peres Center for Peace

Wednesday --just another day at the Peres Center for Peace.

In the morning, the inaugural meeting of the initiative "Wo.Me.N. the Women's Media Network" was held in the offices of one of our Palestinian partner organization. The meeting was attended by leading Israeli and Palestinian female journalists from the top-ranked broadcast and written media sources in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel. The women discussed their objectives for the professional network. A second meeting is set to be held in November, comprising the project's 16 Palestinian and Israeli participants.

In the afternoon, at Shenkar College of Engineering & Design in Tel Aviv, we held a professional training seminar for Palestinian businesspeople from the field of textile manufacturing, in cooperation with our partner PalTrade (Palestine Trade Center). Sixteen manufacturers from across the West Bank (Hebron, Bethlehem area, Tulkarem, Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah) took part in this 2-day seminar comprised of professional sessions that focused on use of cutting-edge computer programs for pattern design and other elements in the production process. During the afternoon of the first day, the participants received warm greetings from Mr. Dov Lautman, President and former Director-General of Delta Textiles.

Also on Wednesday morning, the Peres Center held the first meeting in a series of five encounters for a group of Israeli and Palestinian experts in agriculture, post-harvest care, marketing, and agricultural policies. The project is jointly undertaken with a Palestinian partner, and the initiative's research study has been submitted to "Action Against Hunger —Spain" (ACF-E). Within the framework of this project, joint research has been undertaken regarding the marketing of agricultural products from the Palestinian region of Tubas to Israel and abroad, and the meeting therefore focused on how to advance such business relations. At the end of the meeting, the participants proposed an initial business model, whose main goal is to support and expand the existing joint work of Palestinian and Israeli agriculturalists. The next meeting will be held in November.

Throughout that same day, as has been the case with nearly every day over the past four years, 12 Palestinian children were referred by their doctors to the Peres Center's "Saving Children" program, an initiative that allows Palestinian children to benefit from consultations and surgical procedures in Israeli hospitals when such treatment is unavailable in the Palestinian Authority. Five Palestinian children visited and/or were admitted to Israeli hospitals for diagnoses, treatment, and/or surgery.

In parallel, 40 Palestinian doctors who are undertaking fellowships in a variety of specialties and sub-specialties, continue to be trained and worked in multiple Israeli hospitals. Additionally, on Wednesday, a working session was held at Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem with representatives from the Peres Center in order to discuss the progress of the development of the first Palestinian center for cochlear implants =96 microchips surgically embedded in a hearing-impaired patient's skull, saving the patient from permanent disability. Until the Palestinian center is established, these hearing-impaired children and youth are brought to Israeli hospitals for this complex surgery, via the "Saving Children" program.

Also during the visit to Augusta Victoria Hospital, Peres Center representatives were given a tour of the hospital's renovated wing, which is being built with funds recruited by the Peres Center. This wing is the first specifically dedicated to Palestinian children suffering from cancer. According to the plan, Palestinian doctors, nurses, and technicians who work in this wing will be trained in Israeli hospitals, through the facilitation of the Peres Center.

Then, during the afternoon hours, two meetings were held at the offices of the Peres Center for Palestinian and Israeli coaches' coordinators from the "Twinned Peace Sport Schools" program. The first meeting was held for coordinators from the "Twinned Peace Basketball Schools" program, and following their meeting, some 20 Palestinian and Israeli coordinators from the "Twinned Peace Football Schools" program met (the coaches came from Kiriyat Gat, Nehora, Kiriyat Ekron, Beit Shemesh, Shapir, Jericho, Sderot, Ein Rafa, Beit Safafa, Bethlehem, Tulkarem, Abu Tur, and Aqbat Jaber Refugee Camp). The Peres Center's "Twinned Peace Sport Schools" program includes 55 dedicated coaches from both sides, who jointly participated in a two-day seminar held a month and a half ago in preparation of the new academic year. The 2007-08 program includes some 2,500 Palestinian and Israeli boys and girls who benefit from sport training (football or basketball), Peace Education activities, auxiliary educational support and joint Palestinian-Israeli sporting and social activities.

And really, it was just an average Wednesday at the Peres Center for Peace

Dr. Ron Pundak
Director General
The Peres Center for Peace

[Firestaller]

I think the conference in Annapolis is more about strengthening the US-Isreali-Arab alliance against Iran and trying to bring Syria into the fold.


I think the only issue that may be resolved is the Golan Heights.

[Jedburgh]

ISN Security Watch, 26 Nov 07: Annapolis Misses The Point

....While well-intentioned, the US has missed an opportunity to establish the basis for genuine progress toward a grounded and resilient post-summit Palestinian-Israeli negotiations process through failing to focus the attentions of the parties in the lead-up on the mechanisms required for successful bilateral negotiations.

The conference has wasted considerable time, delaying the start of actual negotiations by several months as the two parties fenced, completely unnecessarily, over how to present key issues in the conflict in the final summit declaration.

With the sporadic involvement of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other US officials contributing to the failure of both parties to find common ground, those issues, which should have been left to full negotiations - Jerusalem, borders and refugees - have been unnecessarily thrust to the forefront of the pre-summit debate.....

[Ron Humphrey]

While well-intentioned, the US has missed an opportunity to establish the basis for genuine progress toward a grounded and resilient post-summit Palestinian-Israeli negotiations process through failing to focus the attentions of the parties in the lead-up on the mechanisms required for successful bilateral negotiations.

This is probably an indicator of my academic youth but why does it always seem that academia in an of itself never fails to place success or failure of any venture mainly based on ( Structured, definitive, unfailingly directed) leadership without which there is no hope of said success.

I have seen a lot of conflict both on high levels and small levels and for the life of me it seems like those resolutions which actually stick more often than not were more hip-pocket, human error prone good ol flea market bargained ones.

Besides it's been tried just about every other way, what the hay
Let them try it on their own with us facilitating.

I think the conference in Annapolis is more about strengthening the US-Isreali-Arab alliance against Iran and trying to bring Syria into the fold.

Makes sense, why not

[JJackson]

I may be a bit cynical but why should anyone expect any progress at a dispute between two parties when the host/mediator is the closest ally of one party and viewed by the other as an enemy? Isn’t it more usual to employ an honest broker who is not in either camp?

I had assumed this conference was to try and reward/elevate Abbas, at the expensive of Hamas, and try and persuade anyone - not paying too much attention - that we are being even handed.

I would love to be proved wrong and that Israel/US are trying to do something real to reduce the suffering of the Palestinians.

[Jedburgh]

I think the conference in Annapolis is more about strengthening the US-Isreali-Arab alliance against Iran and trying to bring Syria into the fold.

Brookings Institution, 14 Jan 08: Its Not About Iran

As President Bush travels through the Middle East, the prevailing assumption is that Arab states are primarily focused on the rising Iranian threat and that their attendance at the Annapolis conference with Israel in November was motivated by this threat. This assumption, reflected in the president's speech in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, could be a costly mistake.....

......Arab governments are less worried about the military power of Hamas and Hezbollah than they are about support for them among their publics. They are less worried about a military confrontation with Iran than about Iran's growing influence in the Arab world. In other words, what Arab governments truly fear is militancy and the public support for it that undermines their own popularity and stability.

In all this, they see Iran as a detrimental force but not as the primary cause of militant sentiment. Most Arab governments believe instead that the militancy is driven primarily by the absence of Arab-Israeli peace.....