Palestinians Balk at "Peace Through Profits"

Jonathan Tobin shines a light on the naivete/ignorance of a business-minded bien pensant:

Journalist Richard Behar thought he had discovered the real road map to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In the August 12 cover story of Forbes magazine, Behar wrote about the way Israeli high-tech businesses were striving to work with Palestinian counterparts. The result of this cooperation was not only helping to create much-needed development in the West Bank. It was also creating a larger potential constituency for peace. The relationships as well as the business ties that this movement was driving could help transform Palestinian politics, moving it away from confrontation and violence and giving rise to a middle class with an interest in peace. In particular, the efforts of companies like CISCO to bridge the gap between the two peoples in pursuit of a common business goal seemed to be a model that could be expanded upon that gives genuine hope for an end to the conflict.

But in the aftermath of the publication of his article, Behar has learned an interesting lesson. As he writes in a follow-up article in Forbes, Palestinian businessmen named in the piece as working with Israelis were horrified about what he had written. They were happy about their businesses being highlighted in a prestigious business magazine, but any mention of working with Israel or, even worse, promoting peace, was regarded as treason to the Palestinian cause. They were soon demanding that the piece be retracted or taken down from the Forbes website. The very idea of “Peace Through Profits,” as the original Forbes headline read, exposed these businesspeople to being ostracized as “collaborators” or even exposing them to violence. Ironically, rather than discovering the path to peace, Behar has illustrated why the chances for an agreement to end the conflict are virtually nonexistent right now...

"The Palestinian cause": turning the "start-up nation" into a wound-down hole in the ground.