Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent

WASHINGTON, 24 February 2004 — The idea comes not from politicians but from ordinary Arabs and Israelis. The goal? For hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Arabs to participate in designing a “people’s road map” for peace in the Middle East.

“If everyone joins, we can have a historic impact. By taking only small actions, every one can become part of the solution,” said OneVoice President Daniel Lubetzky.

The OneVoice initiative (http://www. silentnolonger.com) is based on the premise that the “silent majority” of Israelis and Palestinians want peace and believe extremists on both sides have hijacked the peace process. OneVoice’s electronic referendum will be inaugurated on Feb. 24 in Israel, and in Ramallah and at Bir Zeit University the following day.

Mohammad Darawshe, a prominent Palestinian expert in Arab-Israeli relations and a leading proponent for conflict resolution, helped found the initiative. “This is not just an intellectual exercise, it’s a grassroots effort,” he told journalists. Other Palestinian supporters of OneVoice include Hanna Seniora, Dr. Fathi Arafat, Zahira Kamal, Minister for Women’s Affairs in the Palestinian Authority, and Yasser Abbas, the son of Abu Mazen.

OneVoice’s first step is to build consensus about the right of the other side to exist. To do this, it has created a “proclamation of principles for reconciliation” that recognizes “in general terms’ the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis to human dignity, security, self-determination and freedom.”

To establish credibility, OneVoice has assembled a team of Israeli and Palestinian academic and political experts who were involved in past Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts from the 1991 Madrid summit to the 2000 Camp David talks, who have drafted a one-page, 10-point plan that will go before Israelis and Palestinians in a referendum known as the “People’s Mandate.”

“OneVoice is trying to challenge false polarization,” Lubetzky said. “What happens is that people watch their own news sources — Americans watch Fox News, Arabs watch Al-Jazeera — and this creates a false perception that everyone on the other side is an enemy.”

Lubetzky said the “silent majority” of people in the Middle East are moderates.

Significantly, OneVoice has received the endorsement of the Israeli National Union of Students and Palestinian Friends Without Borders.

Representatives of both organizations have met in Jerusalem to endorse the work and launch membership campaigns.

An American entrepreneur born in Mexico, Lubetzky launched an Israeli-Palestinian food distribution company in the mid-1990s known as PeaceWorks.

Lubetzky’s father, who escaped to Mexico during World War II, has had a profound effect on his son: “My father taught me that I have a responsibility in my life to prevent these tragedies from happening to anyone else in the world. I think this is my duty.”