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ECONOMICS: WEF Wants Mideast to Overlook Politics, say Activists

Emad Mekay

SHUNEH, Jordan, Jun 21 2003 (IPS) - Jordanian activist Mowfaq Mahadeed is one among a few but growing number of Arabs who say they have found a new defect in corporate globalisation – it is being used to force business with Israel down Muslims’ throats despite the Jewish state’s occupation of Arab land and its crackdown on Palestinians.

"It’s just a soft approach to grease the U.S.-Israeli policies in the region," Mahadeed said as he ruffled his papers to prepare for a three-day workshop organised by opposition groups and socialists on alternatives to "capitalist globalisation" in this small Arab country.

The event is to counter the three-day meeting of the elitist World Economic Forum (WEF), best known for gathering corporate heavyweights and their political promoters in the Alpine resort of Davos in Switzerland.

Mahadeed, president of the Socialist Thought Forum, and other activists in the admittedly feeble but burgeoning movement here, say the WEF wants the region’s people to focus on the economic benefits of globalisation at the expense of their political demands.

"They want us to forget, start anew and act as if everything is OK," he said in an interview with IPS. "But how can you legitimise occupation? The wounds are still fresh."

The ”reconciliation” meetings, as the WEF dubs them, started Saturday on this remote and excluded place on the Dead Sea, some 400 meters below sea level. They bring together about 1,200 participants from 65 countries – more than one-half of them are business people.

Under the buzz of helicopters hovering above and the watchful eyes of hundreds of military and security personnel, men in designer suits are debating the future of the Middle East, post-war Iraq, Arab-Israeli business relations and the role of multinationals in the troubled region.

Officials of the WEF, which is backed by multinational companies and operates a budget of some 50 million dollars a year, are stressing reconciliation and peace and promoting business as the route to achieve them.

"We are providing a platform for dialogue," WEF President Klaus Schwab told reporters Saturday.

"Business can and must be a catalyst for healing, fostering understanding, bridge-building and improving peoples’ lives."

But as Amman brims with fully armed soldiers and wide-bodied armoured Humvees roam its narrow streets, and with meeting halls mostly off-limits to the public, Mahadeed and many others are not buying the WEF’s rhetoric.

"Bringing Davos to Jordan in an extraordinary meeting where any chance of protests is absent shows the political dimension of this gathering," said Ibrahim Alloush, a Jordanian researcher who will deliver a critique on the WEF for the socialists’ workshop..

"This political dimension relates to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the future of the Arab region. This is something that western anti-corporate globalisation activists rarely notice but we cannot afford to miss."

Some of the dozens of activists attending the workshop also point out that the WEF meeting is being used to gather Arab officials and intellectuals, whose countries are still technically at war with the Jewish state, with their Israeli counterparts.

But some Arab states and many of their independent institutions say they cannot normalise business relations with Israel as long as it continues occupying Arab land, Muslim holy sites and repressing the Palestinian people.

Lebanon and Syria, two countries that say Israel still occupies their land, said they turned down invitations to attend the meetings because Israeli officials were participating.

Many of the 70 sessions to be held here will include Arabs and Israelis on the same table.

Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, crown prince of the Kingdom of Bahrain, will sit next to Israel’s foreign minister Silvan Shalom to discuss how to "unleash the region’s potential". The panel will also include Carly Fiorina, chief executive officer of U.S. company Hewlett Packard.

Dov Lautman, chairman of Delta Galil Industries Ltd in Israel, will talk on trade among Middle Eastern countries, alongside Jaeib Fassi El Fihri, minister delegated of foreign affairs and cooperation in Morocco.

The activists also complain that the conference is not accessible and nobody really knows for sure what is going on behind closed doors. The road to Shuneh was sealed early Friday and will remain closed until the end of the conference Monday.

They also note that many of the companies advising the Forum are seen in this region as promoters of the Israeli occupation of Muslim land, and that many members of the WEF have won awards for helping Israel.

Robert van der Merwe, president of the Europe, Middle East and Africa section of giant tissue paper manufacturer Kimberley-Clark, in 1998 received Israel’s Jubilee Award to acknowledge his company’s efforts to strengthen the Israeli economy, the Arab activists say.

Coca Cola was also honoured last year by for its 30 years of support of the country and for its rejection of the Arab League economic boycott of Israel.