A Concrete Example of the Perspective for Cooperation and Real Development

“We are organizing this Oasis Conference to inject a perspective of hope and show a way out of an otherwise desperate, extremely dangerous, and indeed, catastrophic situation in Southwest Asia.” With this forward-looking challenge, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Chairwoman of the international Schiller Institute, began her keynote speech to the Institute’s April 13 online conference devoted to the Oasis Plan, “The LaRouche Solution for Peace through Development between Israel and Palestine, and All of Southwest Asia”.

“If we don’t replace the present escalation, which could rapidly turn into a full-fledged regional war, turning into a global nuclear war, it could mean the end of the human species on this planet. In order to avoid that short-term danger, what is needed is a cognitive jump, to conceptualize an entirely different approach”, Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche continued. Such an approach requires defining and fulfilling the economic and security self-interest of the Palestinians and the Israelis, as well as of the neighboring countries in the larger region.

For South-West Asia, the crucial issue is, and has been, not oil, but the lack of water, which the projects in the Oasis Plan would create in abundance. The basics of that plan, the principles of which were first laid out by Lyndon LaRouche as far back as 1975, are well-known to our readers. They were supported by the other speakers in Panel I (cf. below), including ambassadors of Palestine and South Africa and high-level diplomats of Russia and Belarus. However, a debate arose as to whether such an economic development project could actually be agreed upon before hostilities have been resolved, as LaRouche insisted, or if a political solution first has to be negotiated and implemented.

In the context of the Oslo negotiations in 1993-94, LaRouche had urged that “the shovels should be in the ground immediately”, so that people can see the benefits that flow from cooperation. He proposed that one must start from the standpoint of what the region could look like in 10 or 20 years, and longer, of how much economic and cultural development all the populations could enjoy, if plentiful water and other resources were available to all, and then work back from that perspective, to define what must be done today to make it a reality.

In that way, so many obstacles that seem insurmountable today, can in fact be overcome, because it corresponds to the interest of all well-meaning people. An historic example of that approach, raised by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, is the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that put an end to the horrendous Thirty Years war in Europe, by having the warring parties commit to ensuring the “advantage of the other”. Today, that means implementing a new development and security architecture.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is convinced that if the BRICS and other countries of the Global South commit to “the development perspective of the Oasis Plan and convene a comprehensive Southwest Asia conference on an emergency basis in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia, the present looming catastrophe can be avoided, and the crisis turned into the beginning of a new era of peace and development”.