I wrote in the previous blog post (Q20- Israel versus Hamas and Hezbollah: Lessons in Relationship Capital) the tragedies happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis. However, there are brave souls who are exerting efforts to build Israeli-Palestinian relationship capital. Let me mention three that was pointed out to me by Mr. Gener Luis Morada (thank you, Gener!)
1
WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration (IPCOLL) seeks “to create a more hospitable editing environment for Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict related topics, including through (a) actively seeking the cooperation of people who are uninvolved or hold differing points of views… and (b) preventing and resolving disputes about the application of Wikipedia policies to these articles. We provide various tools… to facilitate the project.” Some 40 volunteers are collaborating in this project.
2
American, Israeli and Palestinian scientists are collaborating in Alzheimer’s Disease research — thanks to the efforts of Prof. Mark Gluck of Rutgers University. He is raising funds to support a “Middle East Collaborative Research Consortium on Brain Disorders.”
3
A start-up company was set up by Palestinians and Israelis, namely, G.ho.st or Global Hosted Operating SysTem. G.ho.st. offers a free virtual personal computing environment that anyone can access from anywhere through the Internet. They provide free use of web-based software applications to provide an online desktop working environment for people on the go. Their founder and CEO is Zvi Schreiber. Among its investors is Benchmark Capital, which had provided venture capital for successful start-ups such as eBay and MySQL.
These efforts are examples of bridging social capital which I wrote about in two earlier blogs (D13- Bridging Social Capital versus Bonding Social Capital and Q2- KM is for Creating Value; Whose Value?).
A hopeful sign: new Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel had announced a new initiative on “economic peace” with Palestinians (thanks to Michael Horesh for alerting me)
To the 40 volunteers, to Prof. Gluck and to Mr. Schreiber: May your tribe increase! And best wishes to Bibi Netanyahu’s new peace initiative!
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