First Version in: Palestine-Think-Thank

Enhanced second version on my blog: What Does a New Start Look Like in Palestine? Returning Home to Create Holistic Green Economy
In German as well: Wie wir ein Palästina des 21. Jahrhunderts aufbauen können! Ein neuer Anfang in Palästina: Ganzheitliche „grüne“ Wirtschaft im weltweiten Palästina

Abstract

The Palestinian collective nation-building and national-independence process faces huge challenges, due to immense political and geographical fragmentation. In spite of the lack of a common collective democratic basis, diverse cultural development took  place the last 6 decades (since the NAKBA, a force generated outside of ourselves) in the lives of Palestinians around the world makes this process very strained. This fragmentation has resulted in differing political stances that have prevented us from forming a unified front on which we can insure the individual and collective welfare of the Palestinian people.

The concept I have started to develop is proposing alternative holistic model of social, economic and environmental
reconstruction based on a “healing economy”, which insure positive change that recognizes and honors our indigenous roots and culture as Palestinians.
The vision of using the model of “holistic green healing economy” is self-empowering toward individual integrated comprehension of life and awaking the collective Palestinian consciousness . It is a model for the establishment of new foundations that will radically initiate a positive global attitude toward peace and social justice by embedding the change we want to see in economical design using Economy as vehicle.

The project proposal is to co-create a broad holistic cooperative network that encourages social cooperative green production. The network consist of modular green production low-tech cell-sites owned by worker and business participants with intent to building synergy and integrate all resources in a way that operates    in harmony with  nature and comprehensive human needs.

Background

Like a prodigal son, I have returned mid of August 2009 to my Palestinian homeland after 17 years of secure living, studying, and working in Germany. I am now a citizen of Germany, so I will be returning to Palestine as a dual national. I am returning to my homeland, but I will maintain my connection to the global human family I built strong relation to the last year's as a universal human.

I return because of a sense of responsibility. Social responsibility, because my homeland is suffering from a social, economic, and political collapse, as a result of too many factors to list here. I return to a homeland that does not have a state. I return to a homeland that is suffering from over 60 years of Israeli occupation, and from its own internal political disorder. I return to a homeland that has long played a blame game, which complicates the Palestinian situation and makes it frustrating and overwhelming for the masses.

Time is now!

Yes, it's true, Palestinians do not have a real state, but we do have communities. We can build from within, climbing in an upward spiral of development, instead collapsing in a downward spiral of destructvie chaos.

Building and developing a community is about connections between people and about cooperation to create new reality in the location of living. So what type of community can be created for Palestine? We have enough land, and the land is capable of high capacity through dryland permaculture. We can invest in innovative means of production, and we can learn to be more productive. Any step towards the development of our indigenous communities, our living environment, and especially oureconomical productivity, will have a positive effect on our political structure and other different life domains.

In a nutshell, that is how a sustainable approach to agriculture and to community building can transform Palestine. Hopefully, this approach can at attract broad non-partisan political and civic support.

The Idea

The basic idea is to build a network of modular green business production-parks/cells spread in rural areas with centralized administrative hubs that provide Research-Innovation-Development (RID) services, along with Communication-Infrastructure (IC).

The green-production-cells (GPC) produce high quality food products for own consumption, for local market and for export, in addition to other appropriate industries and services, so that each cell functions as an "Integrated Ecosystem of Production", which means mainly:

• Equity and direct ownership of complete system of production: The parks are cooperatively owned by the community owned. The community is the farmer, the worker, the engineers, and all are participating in the sustainable economic growth and involved community development.

• Re-invest in community: In addition to business beside, the social gravity of our indigenous rural communities will carry and develop all the domains (see graphic) incorporated/integrated with community economical development. Through revenue - and therefore success- a diverse community will grow, and innovation will expand to include new products/industries/community and business need infrastructure.

• Ecological stewardship: Sustainable preservation and reservation of Ecosystem (e.g. permaculture, xeriscaping, recycling, environmentally-sensitive architecture.. ) will be an integral part of the formula in order for its success.

• Social, economic and political reconstruction through unified nexus proposed trademark "THE EARTH" of production to be explained bellow. (this trademark is already reserved. Any proposals?)

• Green-Business-Products: Contribute on economic growth and exchange with all possible markets and balanced practices through meaningful work and propitiate technologies. Here are some production and industry examples:
  Agriculture, Farming: Food, beauty and care. Botanicals, herbal medicine, social cultural Ecotourism and wellness (local and foreign), Indigenous handicraft, Green industry and technology (evolving): Raw material, Animal Food, Composting, Recycling, Regenerative Energy Systems, Indigenous Architecture, Water Conservation and Management, Sewage and gray water treatment, housing and construction, IT, Software, Multimedia, Media, Consulting and Solutions.

The result is postmodern, open, green, free participatory economics!
Technically all is quite do-able since the approach is soft-industry and not a heavy one. The national and political resources are available. Funding is not a critical issue, because what is needed is sweat equity in the form of minds, of hands, of will power, along with the earth and a shared purpose.

Indigenous roots as basic for innovation

The idea is basically based on our indigenous culture/structure/identity in our Palestinian rural areas. Over 5000 years of community survival and tradition Palestine was not ever broken by the mightiest of empires, even against mighty ancient empires, hence, a strong social gravity and rural cooperation is a significant base to build upon. The proper strategic nourishment can have very positive economic and social impact on Palestinian local communities, and even abroad.

"THE EARTH" as nexus trademark for global stretched-community

The Palestinians living abroad are a very integral part of this model through what could be called stretched-community franchising!" They would be part of an international marketing network, which should include the construction of "THE EARTH" stores in many cities where Palestinians live. These franchises would provide a global marketplace managed by the Palestinians, providing a ready outlet for the work products of the local community. The larger community would become more productive and developed as a result.

This global franchise model will contribute to social change within the extended Palestinian community because of its open learning and development nature and will contribute as well to the global social change movements!
If we can develop the first network of "Integrated Ecosystem of Production" as solution, it could be benchmarked in different areas with similar conditions.

How to Achieve an Integrated Ecosystem of Production?

A prerequisite of an integrated ecosystem of production is a cadre of professionals with various areas of expertise. Therefore, one of the first steps to achieving success is to stimulate a migration back to Palestine by many of the professionals and experts who now live abroad. These people can help to develop community associations, especially since many have a strong drive and a passionate commitment to building a stronger Palestinian society

From the Idea to a Scenario to a broad comprehensive Plan

In our open world, in which the social-media gain increasing dynamic and performance, it is wrong to hold any constructive idea back. To keep it buried till I have returned to Palestine would mean losing time for its growth, spreading it and wealth from getting feedback and related proposal, ideas from our open sphere, where the ideas actually originated.

From current point of view I am looking forward to:

I. Creating a diverse Scenario-Building Palestinian Team

A friend of mine told me to pay attention to the current nation-building development in South-Africa, exactly to check the DINOKENG scenarios which includes the concept of "diverse scenario-building team", which I will make use of here.

The team is diverse, meaning:

• It represents a broad spectrum of Palestinian society.
• The members have different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.
•  They did NOT agree on everything!

What team members have in common:

• A deep concern that things are not what they should/could be in Palestine.
• A desire to contribute to the construction of a sustainable future.
• Together, their diversity and shared intent is a core strength of process

II. Creating a supportive community around the idea.

Any contribution in form of critique, feedback, thought, idea, comment, link, .. etc. is very welcome. Especially help the web2.0-collaboration beginner. How to feature this post? How to build an intelligent collaborative environment in order to manage information-flow and contributions?

With off/online Discussions, Conversations, Workshops, analysis, research and writing work we will develop a comprehensive concept which will allow broad public facile engagement with the political leaders, citizen and affected community. All open questions to the scenario should be answered in this concept. How, When with whom ..? The answer on these and other questions will emerge later I think.

As mentioned above, I believe time is NOW and now lot of things can happen, while I am packing my laggings in Germany. Now a virtual supportive team  can help doing lot of things for the idea for example by:

• Finding existing models for integrated ecosystems of production
• Present possible lay-out of the production units and infrastructure
• Share manufacturing plans fits the concepts
• Start working for an animation film about the idea and how the future in our locality can look like.
• Together we can answer key questions like those at the end of the presentation attached.
  
  

  1. How can this idea be supported politically?
  
  2. Which national / international organizations come into question?
  
  3. How do I find  fellow entrepreneur?
  
  4. What are the relevant or related projects in the Palestinian territories?

  
  

Global Palestine as pioneer for Healing Humanity with Global Holistic Healing Green Economy

Technology is the most easy to change, followed by individuals. Change get more difficult when it comes to "partner" and more difficult when Community is concerned.  Social change is the highest complex mission. 

Economy is a technical set-up of human activities and value-flow. This is the clue of the idea: Instead of to focus on theoretical academic efforts to change the world we go over new praxis and learning process. We build smart economy, which should help us to set-up a positive-change-process.

The cell I have in my design draft can be a key element in re-mapping the world into global holistic-green-productive communities, which suppose to be a biotopical economic healing cell for human, community, society and ecology.
Local/Regional/National/International Networking of modular cells with central infrastructures (R&D, CI, Exchange (sales) ) is a concept for healing the world (Earth and humanity). Global Biotope-Economy based on Permaculture Design Principles should create a global nexus hybrid trademark we identify our self with.

Where else the idea is being developed? How to interact?

NED

Debategraph (Thanks David Price, Co-founder)

Mind-Map

Networking-Palestine

Face-Book

Local-Meetings

Planed:

Held:
Düsseldorf-Germany 31.05.2009, Karlstr. 20,
Munich-Germany 23.7.2009, 19.00 Uhr      EineWeltHaus        Schwanthalerstr. 80

29.07-06.08 Tamera, Portugal: http://www.tamera.org/index.php?id=164

Presentation (Version 2)

It will be great to have your comments, feedback .. any contribution is a real support.I see critisim as a true gift from your co-selves mirrors

It would be great to make the adaptation of the idea unstoppable. For now on, it is your idea if you like it. I would be thankful if you keep me along your way for it.

Thanks!

Wael Al Saad

Email: globalpalestine -at- gmail.com

SKYPE: wael.alsaad

Twitter: Wael_