How does a Mexican of Jewish heritage with a background in business and law launch PeaceWorks, an innovative food company, and the ambitious foundation OneVoice, both of which work towards towards peace in the Middle East? Daniel Lubetzky, born and raised in Mexico City, studied in the US, France and Israel, before attending Stanford Law School in California. He then had short stints at a law firm and an investment company before launching PeaceWorks in 1994 and OneVoice in 2002. We spoke last year when the Arab League had just taken a leadership role in the peace process between Israel and Palestine after the Second Intifada.
Janera: What do you think when you hear the term “Global Nomads?”
Daniel: Humanity transcending barriers and borders. All of us are, in essence at least, global nomads.
J: PeaceWorks is a company but you don’t really produce anything. Can you explain how that works?
D: Most big companies don’t own the factories; they contract out to other companies. As does PeaceWorks. We manage the relationships, start the ventures, own the brands and the formulas and work with local partners to produce a product—that is our model. We have joint ventures in Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and Indonesia. In each of these places, we partner with local manufacturers that trade with each other. For example, the Israeli company buys glass from an Egyptian company, sun dried tomatoes from a Turkish company, olives and olive oil from Palestinian growers.
J: Does the Israeli partner employ Palestinians?
D: No, because it’s against the law. Maybe a handful of Palestinians can come into Israel, but they are not allowed to work in these factories. So the trade in the Middle East is through partnerships. Israelis, Egyptians, Turks, Palestinians each work on their own and then trade with each other. The PeaceWorks model is symmetrical: the ventures can either be trading partners of equal relationships or they can be companies that manufacture side by side.
J: Is it impossible for actual enemies to work together?
D: Starting ventures in conflict areas is very hard. We work with people who believe in what we do. We want to cement and strengthen and expand on good will and go to Israelis and Palestinians who are willing to begin exploring how they can collaborate. We don’t try to convince people who don’t want to work together to collaborate, like a Hamas terrorist and an Israeli militant. It won’t happen—they hate each other.
J: Do you think the process needs somebody from the outside, like you, to come in and create something that will benefit the local population?
D: There are definitely serious barriers for people who are living with daily tragedies. But it’s also a question of leadership. There are many examples of people, locally based, who do very good work breaking stereotypes and fostering cooperation. But I would encourage outsiders to be engaged because I’ve noticed that there are also practical ways, not just mental barriers and psychological barriers, but also legal ways an external person can help.
For OneVoice, our Palestinian staff in Ramallah couldn’t go into Gaza; our Palestinian staff in Gaza couldn’t go into Ramallah. Our Israeli staff cannot go into Gaza. I had to open the office in Gaza because I, as a Mexican, had the ability to go in there. Similarly there are a lot of permit challenges when the Palestinians want to meet with Israelis and they are not given permission, and the Israelis want to meet the Palestinians and they aren’t allowed in to the West Bank. Sometimes you have to be a catalyst who tries to build these bridges.
J: Do you think the Internet can be a catalyst for connecting people who can’t physically meet?
D: The Internet can be an enormous bridge but it can also be an enormous burned bridge. Today it is totally unregulated. What tends to happen is that very aggressive people use this online space to speak unrestrainedly. If you visit these Israeli websites where people from different places speak in English—it’s horrible and scary how negative patriotism can be. I think the same people who write this horrible stuff on the Internet would have a harder time saying it in person.
On the other hand, the Internet has phenomenal power. I’m working on a lot of initiatives to use the Internet as a way to bridge different groups of people—showing them the usefulness of one another and helping them to connect with each other.
J: Do you think that business can improve the social aspect of people’s lives, specifically in Israel, but maybe also in Indonesia and Sri Lanka?
D: I think business plays a very important role and has a big responsibility. If it plays an amoral role or an uninvolved role then we’re missing out on a lot of the potential market. Market forces are so powerful; why not engineer them in a way that they play a positive role?
J: How do you make the PeaceWorks model attractive? How do you get partners engaged?
D: At the venture level, the key to making peace attractive is to make it the partner companies’ business interests. For example the Israeli company was buying glass jars from Portugal. It was costing them a lot more than it was to buy them from Egypt. So it was in their economic interest to switch to Egyptian jars. It’s a business decision. You’re saving money. Better business gets them to the table and the byproduct is peace.
J: And this happens because you’ve decided it at the corporate level?
D: Yes, that’s the beauty of the model. It’s not artificially imposed. It works because there’s openness towards it. The social mission can be advanced as well as the business mission. It’s not sacrificing one for the other. The more people work together, the more they’re cementing relationships and the more they’re saving. This is what I call complementary, comparative advantages—each group of people has advantages that complement the other.
J: Why did you need to start OneVoice, the non-profit foundation?
D: I realized I wasn’t going to achieve peace in the Middle East through the business model alone. While the business model has a positive role to play, I couldn’t scale it up fast enough and the nature of the conflict requires civic engagement.
There are ten million people in Palestine-Israel, and with PeaceWorks we’re affecting 10,000 lives at most. You realize there is no way you can resolve this conflict purely through business.
Also, citizens need to take responsibility for ending the conflict. Politicians alone can’t resolve it. And this is not a conflict of the left versus the right, or the Palestinians versus the Israelis, or the Jews against the Muslims. It is moderates versus extremists. Everyone joining us at OneVoice is against extremism. So you have to frame the conflict properly. OneVoice is trying to help people realize this.
J: How did you get to speak at the World Economic Forum?
D: I received a letter that I had been named a young, global leader at the World Economic Forum in 1997. And I thought: this is a scam. So I threw it away. Then they called me and asked “Didn’t you get our invitation? We want to interview you, it’s for the award.” I went and was blessed to meet a lot of great people who have become very very important figures in my life. OneVoice would literally not exist today without the support of the World Economic Forum. Professor [Klaus] Schwab [founder and president of the WEF] was very supportive and believed in us very early on, when it was a difficult journey. It is a great platform to meet impressive people who want to do something positive.

J: What difficulties did you encounter at the beginning with OneVoice?
D: Trying to get foundations to believe that OneVoice was worth pursuing. I didn’t have any nonprofit experience and they probably thought, “Here comes this Mexican guy telling us that there needs to be a grassroots movement of Palestinians and Israelis.” So nobody gave me money and I gave up—in the beginning. This was 2001. Then in 2002, I remember, there was bombing after bombing and I couldn’t sleep at night — I felt so guilty I wasn’t doing something. I watched the news and it was so clear they were getting it all wrong: they were showing the extremists from both sides. I realized we weren’t seeing the moderate voices. Back then you didn’t hear the word “moderate.”
If you follow speeches in 2001 and 2002, the only people who were speaking like that were King Abdullah and Queen Rania [of Jordan]. Everybody else was in an “us” vs. “them” mentality: it was all about extremism. I called up my friends and said we are going to do this, even if it means we each put down a hundred dollars. That’s how it started.
It’s great going to Israel-Palestine wearing the OneVoice symbol and having people come up to you who know what it is, and they talk to you and see that you are building a mindset and a movement. We have 300,000 members and 2,000 young leaders who have impacted each other and the world. What I’m proud of are our partners on the ground. They are very courageous and are doing important work every day.
J: What is your measure of success?
D: Ending the conflict. Our goal is not for people to get along, for understanding. Our goal is to end the conflict and to achieve a two-state solution.
J: Do you have a time frame for it, more or less?
D: Today. Yesterday. It is such a hard thing to do that people basically write it off and stop believing that peace can come, and they’re going to stop working because they believe it won’t happen. So our goal is to solve it, to do this already.
J: Do you think the recent involvement of Saudi Arabia as a leader in the Arab League helps the process?
D: Yes, I think it has historic potential. I think it can play a very positive role. It’s not a perfect answer, but it’s a much better start than in the year 2000 when the Saudis and the Egyptians told Arafat not to negotiate with Jerusalem. Now they’re saying let’s get this thing done.
J: Do you try to influence policy?
D: Yes, we meet every two or three months with the dignitaries and tell them what we do. Our Citizen’s Negotiation is a process in which citizens themselves are crafting a possible resolution for the conflict. It is something we collect and take to the politicians. It has a lot of moral authority because it is coming from the grassroots level. We regularly brief the politicians and tell them what the people want.
J: So it is like market research in a sense?
D: Yeah, but market research just gives you poll results. Our process actually helps people think as negotiators. It teaches you to be conciliatory. It teaches you the art of compromise.