Israeli and Palestinian business chiefs make joint call for peace

On Sunday morning, the start of the Israeli working week, about 80 leading chief executives, entrepreneurs and business owners boarded two buses in Tel Aviv, then crossed the Jordanian border to the opposite shore of the Dead Sea. A bus carrying 20 Palestinian business people was also en route from Ramallah.

At the World Economic Forum's Middle East meeting, these two delegations took the stage with a rare joint message to their leaders, saying, in the words of Munib al-Masri, the Nablus-based billionaire heading the Palestinians: "Enough is enough."

The group, calling itself Breaking the Impasse, said: "The current situation endangers the economy and the social fabric of both nations, and may render the two-state solution unattainable", and urged their politicians to show "boldness" and make peace.

The move was perhaps the firmest such joint and public intervention yet by big business in the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The group said they had met Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, on Thursday. Members have also briefed Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, several times on the initiative. On Sunday he welcomed it, as did Israel's President Shimon Peres.

Speaking at the meeting on Sunday, John Kerry, US secretary of state, said those behind the plan "represent a courageous and visionary group of people".

The group said they represented a "silent majority" in business and among ordinary Israelis and Palestinians and that they felt compelled to speak out because they feared that time was running out to reach a two-state solution.

"In difficult times you hear the voices of the extremists, but the majority is silent," said Yossi Vardi, the high-tech entrepreneur who founded Israel's first software company in 1969 and who is leading the Israeli side. "We believe most Israelis and Palestinians would like to see an end to the conflict, and are willing to pay the price it would take."

The group said that while they favoured a two-state solution, they would not prescribe how their leaders got there. "We don't agree on a common narrative," Mr Vardi said. "We agree on a future."

On the Israeli side, the group included businessmen known for their dovish views, as well as more nationalist and rightwing ones. Among them were Shmuel (Mooly) Eden, president of Intel Israel, Yadin Kaufman, a leading venture capitalist, and Avigdor Willenz, the founder of Galileo Technology, another high-tech group.

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In South Africa, whose past racial conflict many analysts have compared with the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, similar interventions by business in the 1980s are widely credited with having prepared the path for the transition to non-racial democracy.

However, doubts about the Israeli-Palestinian initiative were voiced immediately. "Is this a trick to perpetuate the occupation?" a Jordanian journalist asked Mr Al-Masri.

It is unclear whether even a bold declaration will have any impact on the scepticism within both side's elites about the two-state solution. The goals of the group, which spoke of having 300 members, have been thinly articulated.

The WEF, the business world's best-known elite talking shop, has given birth to some projects that have failed or vanished without trace. On Sunday, Better Place, an electric car company set up after a WEF brainstorming session, filed for bankruptcy protection in Israel.

Distrust between Israeli and Palestinian business people remains high.

Sunday's declaration came only after about 20 meetings, held over a year in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nablus, Jericho, Geneva, Davos and Washington, and was kept out of the media for fear that sensitivities surrounding such meetings could have torpedoed the effort on either side.

In Israel, most company CEOs, even those with leftwing views, have steered clear of politics through decades of conflict with the Palestinians because of their reliance on legislators' goodwill in a small and highly regulated economy.

For some participants, the process was a way of helping them get to know one another in a region whose business communities are divided by virtual and metaphorical walls. "I've never met a Palestinian before," one of the Israeli businessmen was overheard telling his Palestinian counterpart at an early meeting near Tel Aviv.

The Palestinian companies said they were taking a big risk because a consumer backlash could lead to a boycott. "It takes a lot of guts and balls to do what we are doing in the Palestinian community," Zahi Khouri, chairman of the National Beverage Company, Palestine's Coca-Cola bottler, told the Financial Times.

However, representatives on both sides said they thought the mood in business was shifting.

Mr Kaufman said: "What's different is that for the first time we found a group of like-minded and very senior businesspeople on the Palestinian side who were interested in engaging in a dialogue and [forming] a group that would work together and work with the leaderships on both sides."

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