I am at the World Economic Forum in Jordan on the east side of the Dead sea. We are hosted b his majesty king Abdullah II, and the meetings are going increadiby great from my perspective.
I am collecting a long list of comments, all of them are on my berrry which had lost signal today (I can get SMS but no email - I wish I could selectively do that at home on weekends). Yet before I share the content piece I wanted to share an experience with you that is a bit surreal for me. Looking west to the dead sea.
You see, as Israelis who grew through the years where we could not travel outside the country to any neighbor sitting on the other side of the dead sea and watching a sunset into the mountains behind the dead sea is very surreal(you can actually see the Jerusalem skyline at sunset and Jericho is right there on the road). It is as surreal as the famous shot where we for the first time took a picture of the earth from the moon (I think it is called Earthset). I guess we found a way to get to the moon before we found a way to bridge the Jordan river, but at least we have done it and I was able to cross-over.
BTW, What is more real are the great discussions we are having here about how to deploy the windfall profits coming from the oil boom into building a great economic and social development in the middle east, and in particular the gulf countries. Over the next 24 hours I will try to post a few of the learnings I will pick in the sessions here - 2,200 of the best leaders from the region, great atmosphere of growth and opportunity. Tremendously different than what you'd expect reading American media about the region. Iraq is not front and center on everyone's mind - it is all about the 200M under 25 kids in the region who are coming into the market and how can we build a future for them.
This week the news started with reports on brothers’ war in Gaza strip and continued with rockets on southern Israel. It is very stimulating to hear some optimistic news, but is this information known to the Palestinian and Israeli streets? Is this crack of hope penetrating the Gaza wall? Or this news happens on different planet.
Posted by: Oded Roth | May 18, 2007 at 11:50 PM