Palestine for a New Beginning by Zahi Khouri

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]  

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4170&ed=226&edid=226

 The unemployment and under-employment faced in our country does not bode well for our future. We are failing to prepare our youth to lead us into the next generation. This is not a problem that will be solved only by our government leaders, but it requires all aspects of our society to help, including and quite importantly, the private sector. Palestine for a New Beginning (PNB) brings together some of the largest private-sector entities in Palestine - Paltel Group, Bank of Palestine, PADICO HOLDING, Wataniya Mobile, Consolidated Contractors Company, the National Beverage Company - to form a dynamic network that supports and facilitates both innovation and entrepreneurship. We believe that the private sector needs to encourage the creativity of young innovators, and that by injecting new ideas into a stagnant economy, we can hopefully decrease the number of unemployed youth and contribute to healthy economic growth.

For this reason we have put our resources, both human and financial, to work. As members of PNB, we organise the annual Celebration of Innovation (COI), a national competition of ideas and entrepreneurs. Each year, approximately 300 guests, including leading local and regional private-sector leaders and angel investors, listen to young entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas. Even those who don’t win often gain access to mentors and investors who offer their support.

One of our first-year winners, Ahmad Ramahi, went on to participate in the Stars of Science show on MBC, taking his invention, iSurface, to a regional level. Ahmad has also represented Palestinian entrepreneurs at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Kuala Lumpur. Last year, we selected five more winners, including Independent Wind, a team that aims to bring the first large-scale wind farm to Palestine, which would help reduce our dependence on Israeli energy resources; and Al Okhwah Farm in Beit Furiq, outside of Nablus, which will hopefully soon be the first organic sheep farm in Palestine. 
 
Our support for the winners of the COI has not been without challenges...READ MORE

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This Week in Palestine January 2014

     Message From the Editor

I cannot help but think that publishing an entire issue on Innovative Palestine that clearly has an IT/technology flavour is, well, funny, infuriating, ironic, and ridiculous...READ MORE

• Entrepreneurship and Innovation Systems in Palestine National Strategies and Policies
  By Hasan Omar

 
• Palestine for a New Beginning
  By Zahi Khouri

 
• Environmental Innovation Reviving Environmental Consciousness in Palestine
  By Muna Dajani and Sami Backleh

 
• The Palestinian Interoperability Framework “Zinnar”
  By Safa Nasser Eldin

 
• iT is Hard to Memorize..easy to Innovate
  By Aref Husseini

 
• Tackling Youth Unemployment by Engaging Palestine’s Diaspora
  By Hashim Shawa

 
• Learning Innovation The Palestinian Learning Objects Bank The Result of Thinking Outside the Box
  By Marwan Tarazi

Book of the Month
Mediterranean Cultural Heritage, a Manual for Good Practice

Mediterranean Cultural Heritage, a Manual for Good Practice: A Euromed Heritage Experience

 

 

Zahi Khouri: The Palestine Romney doesn’t know

Israel's military occupation blocks the economic, political and social potential of Palestine.

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-palestine-romney-doesnt-know/2012/08/09/5de0bcdc-e235-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html

I am a proud American. I am a hardworking businessman and job creator. I am a faithful Christian. 

And I am Palestinian.

Much as my multiple identities might drive Mitt Romney to head scratching, it is he who needs a lesson in, to borrow his recent words, “culture and a few other things.”

Were he to spend a day with me in the Holy Land, I could take him to the Jerusalem neighborhood where my family home has stood for five centuries. I could show him the orange trees in Jaffa that my family helped introduce to the world in the 1930s.

That’s right: Jaffa oranges are a Palestinian, not Israeli, trademark. Yet like so many “cultural” markers claimed by the self-professed Jewish state, even the fruit trees my people have tended for centuries have been expropriated.

Romney might be duped into thinking that oranges, falafel and hummus — staples of Palestinian cuisine for generations — are Israeli products. But how dare he claim that a state built at the expense of another people’s history and accomplishments is guided by “the hand of providence”?

Israel did not make the desert bloom. Instead, thanks to a deal struck with the British viceroys of Mandate Palestine, it made away with a land, a set of institutions and, indeed, a culture that was not its own.

It did so at the expense of my people. Like more than three-quarters of Palestine’s population, my family was forced to leave this land after Israel’s creation in 1948. Even though we had to abandon our successful businesses and centuries-old homes, however, we did not become the “uncultured” victims that Romney’s caricature suggests.

Most of us went to other Arab countries, where Palestinians became known for our business acumen and management know-how, and helped to build nascent private and public sectors. Ask our fellow Arabs in Lebanon, Jordan or elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region and they will tell you: Palestinian culture, with its premium on education and hard work, has been a force for hope, development and prosperity.

Despite their circumstances, Palestinians living under Israel’s brutal occupation share the same culture and proudly claim the same remarkable achievements. I ...READ MORE