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WALTER
ISAACSON is the President
and CEO of the Aspen Institute and
has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of Time Magazine.
He also chairs the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership
and is a Contributor to MaximsNews Network.
He
is the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American
Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992) and is the coauthor of The Wise
Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).
Isaacson
was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Harvard College
and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes
Scholar.
He
began his career at the Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans
Times-Picayune/States-Item. He joined Time Magazine in 1978 and served as a
political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media before becoming
the magazine's 14th managing editor in 1996.
He
became Chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen
Institute in 2003.
After
Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he was appointed by Governor Kathleen Blanco to be
the vice-chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. In December 2007, he was
appointed by President George W. Bush to be the chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian
Partnership, a government and private sector effort to provide economic and
educational opportunities for the Palestinian people.
He
is the Chairman of the Board of Teach for America, and he is on the boards of
United Airlines, Tulane University, and Science Service. He is also on the
advisory councils of the National Institutes of Health, the National
Constitution Center, and the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. He lives
with his wife and daughter in Washington, DC.
~~~~~
WALTER ISAACSON: HELP IN
THE WEST BANK:
06/03/2008
(MaximsNews Network)
UNITED
NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 06
March 2008 --
The rocket attacks on Israel launched by Hamas militants in
Gaza, coupled with Israel's retaliation, have disrupted peace talks between
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas.
This
is a great victory for the radicals in Hamas, who never wanted such talks.
While visiting the region this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is
trying to remind everyone that the real goal is to weaken Hamas.
One way to do that is to strengthen
its moderate Palestinian opponents. Fortunately, there is a smart and honest
leader of these forces: Salam Fayyad, an apolitical economist (with a
doctorate from the University of Texas) who is prime minister of the
Palestinian Authority.
Abbas appointed him to replace a
Hamas-led government after Hamas forces seized control of Gaza last June. We
have a perfect opportunity -- which will probably last no more than a year if
it's not energetically nurtured -- to show Palestinians that supporting
moderates such as Fayyad, rather than the radicals of Hamas, can pay off by
producing prosperity and peace.
Helping Fayyad should be easy: It
requires creating business and educational opportunities in the West Bank,
where there has been increasing stability and security cooperation with Israel
since Fayyad has been in charge. Such efforts are already underway.
Tony Blair, as a special envoy to
the region, has been working to enlist donor nations to keep the Palestinian
Authority afloat and to create industrial zones in the West Bank where foreign
businesses can safely set up shop.
And the State Department has set up
a U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, which I chair, designed to coordinate
government and private-sector efforts to provide job opportunities, youth
training centers and business investment.
The youth centers are being built by
the U.S. Agency for International Development and will be run by Fayyad's
impressive minister of youth, Tahini Abu Daqqa. She took members of our
partnership to Hebron last month to inspect the site of one of these centers,
and the young people there spoke of their eagerness for technology training
and Internet access.
Jean Case, a former America Online
executive who is a co-chair of the partnership, has been enlisting American
companies and nonprofit groups to supply and staff the centers.
Working with the Overseas Private
Investment Corp. (OPIC), an independent government agency, the Aspen Institute
launched a Middle East Investment Initiative last summer that helps provide
loans of up to $500,000 to businesses in the West Bank.
With $228 million in loan guarantee
authority, it works with local banks to help what is, despite all odds, a
resilient private sector run by entrepreneurial Palestinians -- who form the
most powerful constituency for peace, stability and normalized relations with
Israel.
When President Bush met with the
U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, he mentioned that former president Bill Clinton
had called him to push for a companion program to help business in the
Palestinian territories: risk insurance that would protect against disruptions
caused by political upheavals.
OPIC is working with the Clinton
Global Initiative to put together such a facility. Also being planned are a
mortgage guarantee program, which would spur housing construction, and an
Israeli-Palestinian venture fund that could invest in technology companies.
To attract foreign investment, Prime
Minister Fayyad has announced a May 21-23 business development conference in
Bethlehem. He hopes that American, European, Arab and Israeli business leaders
will examine the opportunities to locate facilities in the West Bank or enter
into joint ventures with Palestinian industries, such as pharmaceutical
factories and stone quarries, that are thriving in Ramallah and Hebron.
Just showing up at Bethlehem's
InterContinental Hotel, a short walk from the Church of the Nativity, will be
eye-opening for many international business leaders, who probably picture the
West Bank as a land of rock-throwing rather than of business opportunity.
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and
Defense Minister Ehud Barak believe fervently that economic development in the
West Bank is in Israel's interest. It will promote stability, create a
constituency opposed to militancy and show that following leaders like Fayyad
and Abbas is more rewarding than following Hamas's path of Islamist
extremism.
Olmert, Barak and their Israeli
colleagues will have to take risks to make this work. The business conference,
and economic investments generally, will succeed only if goods and people can
move more freely. That will require lifting some of the checkpoints in areas
where there has been security cooperation and streamlining some border
crossings.
This could create a virtuous cycle.
Freer movement and access could lead to more investment and economic
opportunities, which would help shore up the forces of moderation and peace
that now prevail in the West Bank. That would stand as a stark and instructive
contrast to the vicious cycle playing out in Gaza.
WalterIsaacson@MaximsNews.com
This article
appeared earlier in The Washington
Post.
Labels:
Walter
Isaacson BIO, Aspen
Institute, U.S.-Palestinian
Partnership, Hamas, Gaza,
West Bank, Israel,
Israeli
Prime Minister Olmert, Ehud
Barak, Mahmoud
Abbas, Salam
Fayyad, Prime
Minister Fayyad, Tahini
Abu Daqqa, Overseas
Private Investment Corp. (OPIC), MaximsNews
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