Can Mideast peace be treated like a business deal?

0:00Today on State of the World, can Mideast peace be treated like a business deal?

0:09You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories, up close where they're happening. I'm Greg Dixon. President Trump approaches Middle East peacemaking as a business deal. In today's episode, we'll look at the different ways that the economies in Israel and one Palestinian territory are being affected by war, and what that means for the peace process going forward. In Israel, entrepreneurs hope that creating businesses can lead to peace. Palestinians are deeply skeptical, with tens of thousands killed in Gaza and much of the infrastructure there in ruins.

0:45Even in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, the economy is struggling badly. We'll go there in a few minutes. We begin with NPR's Michelle Kellerman in Israel. There, businesses feel bullish about what they call their startup nation. and they like what they're hearing from Washington. Michelle takes us to the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa. Just off the beach in Jaffa, there's a sign that reads Dream Big. This is the Perez Center for Peace and Innovation, where Tamar Nitzan curates an expo on Israeli startups. She says the late Israeli leader Shimon Perez came up with the idea after President Obama asked to see the startup nation.

1:28That was that eureka moment for Perez. So he's like, I want to create this place that is a window to Israeli innovation, past, present, future, what makes it unique. And that's what this place is. She's highlighting startups in health care, food science and climate solutions. When an Israeli innovator wakes up in the morning, they don't want to change Israel. They want to change the world, right, because this is a very small market. But one health care company in her expo had its international funding put on hold because of the war in Gaza. Around the world, Israel faced charges of genocide, which it denies, and calls for boycotts.

2:02A major Israeli tech investor, Eyal Waldman, was worried that Israel would lose its cutting edge as young, educated Israelis left the country. But he believes that could change if voters choose a different government and hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to account for failing to prevent the October 7th attack. I think there's many more things that Netanyahu himself and the government are doing wrong. I see a lot of corruption. Waldman is one of the founders of the tech company Mellanox that was acquired by chip-making giant NVIDIA in 2020 for$6 billion. Like many Israelis, he suffered a personal loss in the October 7th attack led by Hamas.

2:42His daughter Danielle was killed along with her boyfriend. It's extremely painful. She was an amazing girl. She was an American. She was born in California. She did no harm to anyone. On the contrary, she helped a lot of people. They've murdered her. His company had 30 employees in Gaza, but he doesn't know what happened to them. Waldman says he made sure NVIDIA retained the 150 Palestinian staffers in the West Bank that he had hired, and he still believes in a two-state solution. But he's looking elsewhere in the region for business opportunities, in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as in Syria and Lebanon.

3:20I think business should precede the political engagements and we are looking for investments opportunity in some of those countries, the same things we've done employing Gaza employees and in the West Bank. Waldman remains bullish on the Israeli economy and thinks President Trump is right to talk about business as a path to peace. A former legal advisor to Palestinian negotiators, Diana Butu, says Trump can't look at the Palestinians like a business investment. How do you deal with all these people who've been made disabled? How do you deal with all these orphans? You can't economically revitalize that, right?

4:00That doesn't get addressed through being a CEO of a company, which is the way that Trump views the world. The Israeli government, though, is strangling the economy in the West Bank. Waldman blames Netanyahu's right-wing ministers for that, and at times he sounds like he wants to run for office himself. A lot of people want me to go to politics. And? I hope there's going to be better people. For now, he's looking for more business opportunities throughout the Middle East. He says he thinks in a couple of years, Israel will be at peace with more of its neighbors, and perhaps even Saudi Arabia, which he says can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

4:38Tamar Nitsan says in some ways, this is a vision that Shimon Peres would have shared. He always envisioned not a startup nation, but a startup region. And I think here we still believe that that's possible. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, Tel Aviv. As Michelle mentioned, the Israeli government has taken steps to strangle the economy in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. That has had a cascading impact on every level of the Palestinian economy. NPR's Emily Feng takes us to the West Bank. Khaled Hamad, the owner of this store just outside Ramallah in the West Bank, tallies up his daily sales and debts.

5:21It's bad. Very bad, he sighs. Six months ago, he had to put this sign up behind him. NPR producer Nuham Muslay translates. Please do not embarrass me. Credit is not allowed. Because Hamad himself has also run out of money. Just then, Ali Zeta, a regular customer here, comes in and buys a single cigarette. He can't afford a whole pack. He says he makes at most the equivalent of 50 U.S. dollars a day in the West Bank, a third of what he used to make in Israel. Most of the men in this village once worked in Israel. They were among more than 100 ,000 Palestinians in the West Bank who Israel gave permits to, to cross a long separation wall and work on the other side, in Israel, where the pay was higher.

6:17But since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, Israel has frozen most worker permits for Palestinians, and about a fifth of the West Bank's economy just vanished. But some Palestinian workers are still sneaking to that separation wall. And I'm walking along this concrete wall right now, and this is where the Palestinian workers have been trying to cross, risking arrest, even being shot. Because they want work in Israel. This past December, a man from the West Bank working without a permit in Israel killed two people there, stoking more public fear and anger among the Israeli public.

6:58It is ironic because this policy started because they believed that economic integration was seen as a tool to reduce tension and support stability. This is Avi Lieberman, an Israeli economic analyst who's written in support of reinstating worker permits. The army and the Ministry of Defense, in contrast to today, were actually supporting bringing Palestinian workers to Israel. Adding to the West Bank's economic woes, since 2019, Israel, which controls all border crossings into the territory, has also withheld more than$2.5 billion in customs duties and taxes, all owed to the Palestinian Authority, or PA, which governs much of the West Bank.

7:41We can't do trade because we don't control our borders and our labors all work for Israel. This is Zayn Aboudaka, who runs an economic consultancy in the West Bank. The investment, no one wants to invest in this war-torn economy. So now unemployment is high. The official estimate is 28 % now. And last year, its economy shrank by nearly a fourth. Abu Dhabi says the Palestinian economy desperately needs access to work inside Israel. But in the long term, that keeps Palestinians stuck doing low-paying work. Us being stuck in the middle is the name of the game. If we are much poorer, we would rebel.

8:19We will do something. If we were much richer, we would also have better dreams and we will aim for higher. The current economic devastation has cascaded down to every level of the Palestinian economy.

8:33Ibrahim al-Rajah builds apartments in the West Bank. But since workers stopped going to Israel, no one has money to buy them. And as kids, they go to school at most three times a week. The Palestinian Authority has run out of money and hasn't been able to pay public school teachers. And then there's the checkpoints. Farmers like Ittidal Rawakh have been stymied from selling their goods to Israel because of stricter checkpoints built since the war. She stands among verdant rows of green beans, the vines spiraling over our heads. Nearby are plots for cucumbers.

9:13During the last harvest, the Israeli army suddenly closed the main checkpoint into Jericho, where she is. Boxes of her ripe cucumbers sat rotting in the sun. She is now thousands of dollars in debt.

9:29God help me, she says. If these economic conditions continue, Rashad Yusuf, a deputy economic minister in the PA, warns. We might reach a situation where there is a complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority's institutions, he says. Emily Fang, NPR News, Jericho, The West Bank.

9:56That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.