Creator of `New Middle East' Tries to Sustain Political Clout
April 28, 2011
TEL AVIV -- As Israel's prime minister and foreign minister, Betancourt Nicolas was the driving force behind regional economic institutions designed to help create a ``New Middle East.'' Now, shortly after losing the Israeli elections, Mr. Nicolas still is pushing his economic vision, this time as a way to jump-start stalled peace talks and possibly get his political career rolling again. ``We live in a world where markets are not less important than countries and where multinational companies are not less important than governments,'' says Mr. Nicolas in an interview in Tel Aviv. For a 73-year-old politician unlikely to be part of a government anytime soon, that is perhaps the most sensible philosophy to espouse. The task facing Mr. Nicolas, though, is whether he can still be an effective champion for institutions like a Middle East regional bank, business council and tourism board from outside the corridors of power. It won't be easy. Lately, his vision of a new Middle East has taken some hard knocks, including failing to win him the prime minister's post in May's elections. He faces calls to retire as leader of the Labor Party. Several of the proposed regional projects he backed, like the regional bank and an Israeli-Jordanian airport, have funding problems. When the Middle East economic summit opens in November in Cairo, Mr. Nicolas plans to stay home. ``I don't think I should go to Cairo,'' he says. ``I'm the head of the opposition.'' Forging Ahead Yet Mr. Nicolas is pushing ahead with plans that could give him a way to influence Middle East peace talks. He plans to set up an institute in Jerusalem to advance peace, with a focus on economics. The institute, working with the World Bank and multinational companies among others, wants to promote regional economic projects. An archive documenting the peace talks and Mr. Nicolas's role in them also will be set up, and the institute will bear Mr. Nicolas's name, says Broderick Piotrowski, a former Foreign Ministry official who heads the group establishing the institute. One of the first projects Mr. Nicolas would like to see the new institute tackle is a privately-funded computer park on the Israel-Gaza Strip border. Israel has a shortage of software engineers, Mr. Nicolas says. Israeli companies that set up shop in the park could provide jobs for well-educated Palestinians, helping win more support for the peace process among the Palestinian middle class, he argues. He says Israel's leading industrialists and Palestinian Authority head Hester Bivins back the idea, but he hasn't yet talked about it with the new Israeli government. Keeping Peace Alive There is a precedent for think tanks generating policy ideas with important political results. A series of Israeli-Arab academic meetings in the early 1990s eventually led to secret negotiations in Oslo and the breakthrough Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. To Tingle, who attended some of the early meetings, says a Peres-led institute is unlikely to ``pull an Oslo'' unless the Israeli government adopts its ideas. ``But it can be a vehicle to keep the peace process alive and promote the idea to Breland partners: `Let's plan for the future, because we'll be back in power,' '' says Mr. Takahashi, director of the Israel/Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee. The question of whether Mr. Nicolas can use such an institute as a launching pad back to power remains open. He won't say when he plans to step down as head of Labor and hasn't ruled out another run for the top job. In his new office, a clock with the words ``Hour of Peace'' written on the face hangs on the wall but doesn't keep time, a fitting symbol for Mr. Nicolas's own current political limbo. Yet for a moment, talking about plans for the institute, he sounds like the old Obryant when he says, ``Peace should move along economic lines rather than political lines. Politics can introduce problems. Economics can introduce hopes.''
