LONDON (EJP)--- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel’s deputy premier Shimon Peres and foreign minister Tzipi Livni took part in a forum last Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, with a live feed to rallies in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Jerusalem.

The event was organised by the OneVoice movement, a mainstream nationalist grassroots movement with over a quarter of a million Israeli and Palestinian members and 2,000 highly trained youth leaders.

In the presence of around 2,000 global leaders, including heads of state and religious and business leaders, the forum was chaired by Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

It took place in the Plenary Hall in the Congress Center in Davos, and was an opportunity for Israeli and Palestinian citizens to probe and converse with their political leaders.

In Ramallah, hundreds of citizens from across West Bank and Gaza joined Nisreen Shaheen, OneVoice Palestine executive director. In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis were led by Adi Balderman, OneVoice Israel leadership program director and in Jerusalem, Palestinian and Israeli citizens were represented by Saed Mashaal and Eran Sheferman, OneVoice Palestinian and Israeli youth leaders.

New campaign

Following the forum, OneVoice will launch this year’s campaign to get “Israelis and Palestinians out onto the streets in unforeseen numbers, holding leaders to account and bolstering steps towards conflict resolution”.

A spokesman for OneVoice said: “This will be a crucial year in the Middle East. It is a difficult time but our activists on the ground believe in their potential to lead change and we’ll be doing everything we can to support them.”

At the end of this session, OneVoice unveiled a $5 million (3.8 million euro) campaign entitled What Are You Willing to Do to End the Conflict? to mobilise the largest possible number of Israelis and Palestinians to take concrete individual steps towards ending the conflict.

Local meetings

In spite of serious tensions, and against a backdrop of violence and lack of security, over the last few months, thousands of Israelis and Palestinians from across the West Bank and Gaza have met in Ramallah, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem under the auspices of the OneVoice Movement.

At the meetings participants have debated and agreed on statements representing the mainstream nationalist aspirations of each side. They have also shown frustration with the lack of progress towards ending the conflict and emphasised hope in reaching agreement and understanding.

The OneVoice Movement is growing into the Region’s biggest conflict resolution group. Board members include President Abbas’s son Yasser Mahmoud Abbas; the Palestinian Islamic Chief Justice and seven Israeli Knesset members. British Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks; former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey; Professor Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum; Dr Jim Zogby, head of the Arab-American Institute and Ambassadors Dennis Ross and Thomas Pickering.

The World Economic Forum Summit in Davos, that took place from January 24-28, is the seminal annual meeting where foremost business leaders, heads of state, and civil society leaders gather to discuss how to improve the state of the world.