Political Discussion

Gaining Momentum? The Israel Regional Initiative

Members of our ME 2.0 Palestinian-Israeli Young Business Leaders Forum gathered for its 61st session this week, explored and discussed regional developments and prospects for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the elections ahead in Israel on April 9th.The session took place in the Mindspace - Coworking space in Tel Aviv and was hosted by ME member Samson Wollenberger-Shevitz who gave a short intro into his Strategic and political Consulting Firm, based at Mindspace and focusing on connecting big European Corporates with actors of the vibrant Israeli Startup actors.

The keynote speaker of the session was Koby Huberman, Israeli high-tech veteran, business strategist and social entrepreneur, who talked about the ‘Israeli Regional Initiative', of which he is one of the founders. In 2006 he decided to get involved in diplomacy and promote Jewish-Arab peace. His idea was to use the Israeli high-tech innovation approach in diplomacy, as he called it “imperfect diplomacy”. One of his first realizations was that there will be no progress on peace without the involvement of the business community. Following his early discoveries, he decided to create the Israeli Peace Initiative, which later became the Israeli Regional Initative https://www.yozmim.org/en. The initiative aims at promoting a regional diplomatic process to replace the futile bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. This regional process entails a regional “deal” between Israel, the Palestinians and key Arab states and will include direct regional benefits for all involved, leveraging regional economic and security cooperation and full normal relations between Israel and the Arab world.