Background
Like a prodigal son, I am returning 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 many decades 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 destructive chaos.
Building and developing a community is about connections between people and about cooperation to create new reality in the location of living.
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 Information-Communication-Technology (ICT).
The production-cells 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.
- 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, Ecotourism and wellness (local and foreign), Indigenous handicraft, Green industry (evolving): Raw material, Animal Food, Composting, Recycling, Regenerative Energy Systems, Indigenous Architecture, Water Conservation and Management, housing and construction, Consulting and Solutions
The result is postmodern, open, green, free participatory economics!
Technically all is quite do-able. The approch 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.
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? Back-immigration to Build
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 tolled me to pay attention on 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 it 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
• 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.
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.
If any one willing to support this initiative, please write me an email: globalpalestine [@] gmail[dot]com
For now, any one can follow the development of the idea on twitter by following
http://twitter.com/Wael_ #hgbgp
Wael Al Saad
SKYPE: wael.alsaad
Twitter: Wael_
