Builders for Peace: A Dream That Went Nowhere

by Andrew I. Killgore

Euphoria was the mood as 200 invited Arab-American and Jewish-American businessmen were thrown together at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993. Political differences went out the window and good fellowship took over as the language of business deals and profits filled the air.

The dramatic handshake an hour earlier between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the south lawn of the White House had set the mood. Reconciliation between the Arabs and Israelis at last seemed possible.

No one fretted that Vice President Al Gore, who was to address the group, was an hour late. His apology, when he finally did arrive, for being “chronologically disadvantaged” brought amiable laughter.

Gore’s theme was helping the “peace process” along. Peace could not be achieved with 50 percent unemployment among the Palestinians. It was up to the Jewish- and Arab-American businessmen present at the White House to work together to stimulate business and employment in Gaza and the West Bank.

From the vice president’s urgings sprang the Washington-based Builders For Peace, headed by retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Joe De Sutter as executive director, and former Congressman Mel Levine and Arab American Institute president James Zogby as co-presidents. Help for the Palestinians over five years would come from $350 million to be provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and $150 million from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).

Massive Disillusionment

What are the actual results nearly five years after the enthusiastic White House launching of Builders For Peace? Informed Washington sources report a massive disillusionment. Out of the $500 million supposedly destined for the Palestinians, only one million dollars, fully collateralized, went to help a plant in Gaza to make concrete construction forms. Another $1.2 million ($350,000 in 1994, $500,000 in 1995 and, reportedly, $350,000 in 1996) has gone to support Builders For Peace in the United States.

The executive director is salaried. Co-president Mel Levine, partner in a Los Angeles law firm, works pro bono, and co-president James Zogby receives remuneration based on the percentage of his time devoted to BFP affairs. Other expenses are office rent, supplies, publicity and secretaries.

Reasons for the failure of the dream are many. Israel opened its Erez checkpoint into Gaza for only 90 full days last year. This stymied movement of goods and services. At the same time the “Likud lobby” inside the U.S. government and Congress equated helping Palestinians with “helping terrorism.” It did its successful best to make BFP fail.

Questionable Seriousness

Even the Palestinian Authority seemed unable to get its bureaucratic act together. Perhaps most important, the seriousness of purpose on the part of Uncle Sam had to be questioned. For example, no new money was appropriated for OPIC, which was to provide $150 million.

Further illustrating the lack of purposeful U.S. government effort, one hotel that might have been constructed in Gaza couldn’t go ahead because there was no “sovereign” government there to stand behind OPIC’s financing. Israel wasn’t sovereign in Gaza, and the Palestinian National Authority wasn’t deemed sovereign by U.S. authorities.

If AID and OPIC assistance to the Palestinians came to naught under the Rabin-Peres Labor government, prospects for cooperation from the Likud government of Binyamin Netanyahu are bleak indeed. Said one outspoken U.S. official in a position to assess the future of Builders For Peace, “It is finished.”