Beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

I'm in Israel this week for a Project Interchange media seminar. It's my first time in the Middle East, I've only been here for a day, and my brain is already bursting with what I've had to absorb today. Everyone here is talking about the recent elections and security issues, of course, and Iran is ...

I'm in Israel this week for a Project Interchange media seminar. It's my first time in the Middle East, I've only been here for a day, and my brain is already bursting with what I've had to absorb today. Everyone here is talking about the recent elections and security issues, of course, and Iran is also foremost on everyone's minds. But there are a couple of interesting topics I heard about today that haven't made a lot of headlines outside Israel.

I'm in Israel this week for a Project Interchange media seminar. It's my first time in the Middle East, I've only been here for a day, and my brain is already bursting with what I've had to absorb today. Everyone here is talking about the recent elections and security issues, of course, and Iran is also foremost on everyone's minds. But there are a couple of interesting topics I heard about today that haven't made a lot of headlines outside Israel.

Until this most recent election, voting has always been juxtaposed against security, but now, for the first time, parties with a domestic agenda have gained power. The first is that the Pensioners Party won 7 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. A lot of the support for the Pensioners Party came from young voters who have expressed disillusionment with discussions about security, and voted for the pensioners almost as an anti-political protest vote. Now that any prospect of peace talks have been stalled, it will be interesting to see what kind of internal Israeli and internal Palestinian concerns will come to the forefront.

The second topic that was particularly interesting to me is the positive sentiment about QIZ (pronounced "quiz), the Qualified Industrial Zones of trade that encompass the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Jordan. Under these QIZ agreements, industries in Egypt and Jordan that work with Israeli companies can benefit from the free trade agreement between Israel and the U.S.  It's something that encourages greater economic integration in the region, and seems to be a development that hurts no one and benefits everyone. I wonder if this can be replicated elsewhere in the region, or the world, for that matter.

Christine Y. Chen is a senior editor at Foreign Policy.

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