Q:You recently traveled to the Palestinian territories to help draft business-related laws. How did that opportunity arise?
A: Back in the 1990s, I assisted in the drafting of a lot of corporate and securities laws for countries in the former Soviet Union. Some people who knew me for that called me and told me that they were assigned by the U.S. government the task of assisting the Palestinian Authority with writing laws designed to facilitate the formation of business entities, partnerships and corporations.
Q: When were you there?
A: I spent three weeks in Israel and the West Bank in November and December, and then I spent another three-week period (there) in January.
Q: What did you do?
A: Whenever we think of the West Bank and Israel, we think of the political dimension, and with the election of Hamas that’s something we’re thinking of even more. But the reality is that economic development in the West Bank is also critical. For the standard of living and for peace and stability in that region, you need a vibrant economy. You need people who are forming businesses. You need laws that clearly delineate the responsibilities of directors, how to form a business (and what shareholders have).
The Palestinian Authority wanted a unified law for the West Bank and Gaza, and they wanted it updated to reflect modern trends and the way companies are regulated.
Q: What were the challenges?
A: There were a lot of people who didn’t understand the newer concepts. So there was an educational component. The other interesting thing was that the officials I dealt with knew the laws of the neighboring countries. Some of these laws were also out of date. I sometimes found myself explaining why they needed to do it differently than every other country in the region, except Israel, which has a pretty up-to-date corporate law.
Q: Did they accept that?
A: They were very open to it. It’s typical in Arab countries to make it very expensive to form a corporation – you have to have a certain amount of money in the bank. The system in the United States is that anyone can form a corporation. We encourage business formation by making it cheap. I would explain that if they were the only Arab country in the region that made it easy, other people would come from other countries and form businesses in the West Bank, and that would help their economy.
Q: Where is the economy now, and where it can go?
A: That’s as much political as anything else. Since 2000, they’ve been experiencing negative economic growth. That has a lot to do with the second intifada and the violence.
To travel from one city to another in the West Bank, you have to go through checkpoints run by the Israeli military. It’s very hard for goods to move around. Right now, there’s not enough contiguous territory without these checkpoints to real ly have a vibrant economy.
Q: How close are these new laws to being ready?
A: I was there when Hamas was elected. After the election, the project was put on hold. We probably had half of it written.
Q: Did your views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict change?
A: Nothing in my views changed about Israel’s right to be free of terrorist activities and the right to have a peaceful existence.
But I learned how important economic conditions on the West Bank are to the long-term stability and peace in the region. It’s in Israel’s interest to have an economically viable West Bank, where people are more interested in jobs and work and buying televisions than in doing anything violent.
Q: Can you foresee a time when U.S. companies would be interested in the West Bank?
A: There’s almost no Western presence in the West Bank. For example, there are no McDonald’s. That really does reflect the risks and the potential for violence. If there can be a sustained period of peace, Western businesses will be interested in the area. Both to sell their products but also to take advantage of the workforce.
Q: I understand you did a bit of research for your novel.
A: I’m working on a novel in a way reminiscent of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.” I’m going to use some information about early Christianity in the novel. I had an opportunity to walk through parts of Jerusalem where I’m going to place some scenes. Also, there is a monastery in the West Bank near Bethlehem called Mar Saba that was built around 500 A.D. It’s a beautiful, austere, isolated monastery that probably has room for 500 monks and now has 15 Greek Orthodox monks. It’s the kind of thing that, if peace ever comes, tourists routinely would want to go see.
Edited for space and clarity from an interview by Denver Post staff writer Greg Griffin.
