# Script — January 9, 2024 #### Part One The whole world is witness to the horrors being inflicted upon the Palestinian people, shared every day in video form. But the destruction continues, actively supported by the United States and a diminishing number of other countries. Humanity’s moral fitness to survive is being tested. This horror show must end, starting with an immediate unconditional ceasefire. At the time we are recording, South Africa’s action against Israel for genocide will be heard at the International Court of Justice in just a few days. Peace is possible, but it is not the peace of a return to October 6! Before the Hamas invasion of October 7, the Palestinian people and the whole region popularly known as the Middle East were living in a terrible reality, as a cauldron of conflict deliberately maintained for geopolitical aims, an unsustainable and unjust tension. The solution requires the recognition of a Palestinian state, in accordance with UNSC Resolution 242, which was unanimously adopted by the Security Council in 1967. This is the first step towards a long-term solution, such as the two-state solution supported by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche. The solution is not local, not regional, but international. China has proposed an international peace conference to develop a lasting vision for realizing Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli peace. The mistakes that led to the lost chance of the 1993 Oslo agreement must not be repeated. Security guarantees for all parties in the region must be agreed upon. This includes finding solutions for the potentially explosive situations in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan, all products of decades of dangerous geopolitics. #### Part Two But without economic development, without a viable and meaningful path of progress into the future, political agreements are unsustainable. The people of the region must know that their children will enjoy a better future, a better life. Peace through economic development is the only successful basis for a lasting, just peace in the region. This is what Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came to realize — there is no purely military basis for peace; development is essential. A template for peace through economic development already exists, in the form of the LaRouche program of building a World Land-Bridge, today exemplified by China’s Belt and Road Initiative joined by more than 150 nations, including all the neighbors of Palestine and Israel. This is not only a specific plan for growth; it is a rejection of anti-growth hegemonism in the form of neo-colonialism and green Malthusianism. A strong economic reconstruction and development plan is needed for a viable Palestinian state. Lyndon LaRouche laid it out 30 years ago. It is called the Oasis Plan. Immediately after the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accord in the White House by Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Lyndon LaRouche and his associates urged those parties and the international community to implement economic development projects to sustain the peace process. LaRouche and his associates developed the Oasis Plan which included both certain economic aspects of Annex IV of the 1993 Oslo Accord — called the “Protocol on Israeli–Palestinian Cooperation Concerning Regional Development Programs” — plus additional crucial water and power projects that LaRouche had called for since the mid-1970s. The Oasis Plan focused primarily on addressing the greatest barrier to development in the region — the shortage of fresh water — through the construction of a network of desalination plants that could turn the plentiful seawater into freshwater. These plants would not only be on the Mediterranean coast; they would be built along two new canals: one connecting the Red Sea with the Dead Sea and another connecting the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. To be clear, these new canals or aqueducts are not for cargo shipping or as an alternative to the Suez Canal — their purpose is to transport water. Because of the low elevation of the Dead Sea basin (more than 400 meters below sea level), the flowing water could also provide hydropower along the way, which could help to power the desalination plants and development more generally. The plants could also be powered via the large quantities of natural gas discovered off the shores of Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. But most importantly, the Oasis Plan calls for going beyond hydropower and chemical fuels altogether, through the construction of nuclear power complexes along these canals and on the shores of the Mediterranean and Red Sea, to produce plentiful electricity and to desalinate seawater to green the vast deserts of the region and to power an industrialization process in Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. The use of nuclear power for energy would liberate the region’s hydrocarbon resources to be used chemically, to produce industrial materials through intermediate petrochemical products. The nuclear powered complexes could use inherently safe pebble-bed high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, of the type just brought into operation in Shidao Bay, China. The new man-made rivers created by desalination will tremendously expand the potential for agro-industrial development across the region, making the deserts — and economies — bloom! LaRouche explained the necessity of developing new sources of water in a 1994 speech. LaRouche: >“One cannot meet the indices of water consumption for a modern population, for both the Palestinian and Israeli populations, under present conditions. There is a conflict over water because the Israelis have, frankly, been using their conquests to take water from everybody. It's one of the conflicts with Syria on the Golan Heights issue. It involves, in Lebanon, the Litani River, and things of that sort.” Power and water must be accompanied by a network of transportation infrastructure upgrading the physical connectivity between all the nations of the region, turning a region of conflict, a barrier to connectivity, into a hub of interaction, a crossroads. A highway connecting the West Bank with the Gaza Strip, linking the Palestinian state, is an essential feature of this network. Regional highways and rail networks will allow the entire area to operate from a higher economic platform. LaRouche also proposed an expansion of the Suez Canal, with industrial zones on both sides to be built. This task has been accomplished by Egypt in recent years. LaRouche argued since 1975 that this region, which is the crossroads of civilization and geographically located between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean and between Europe, Asia, and Africa, has a unique position as an industrial and logistics hub. Oil and gas will be feedstocks for industrial production of plastics, paints, and many other useful materials, rather than being exported as a raw material, to be used primarily for simple combustion. The upgrading of connectivity to enable higher levels of development has been a key feature of the 2013 China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. Using this region as a land-bridge between continents, with the major powers like the U.S., China, Russia, and the EU contributing to its development, will stabilize the area and, along the way, help cement the better relations among the superpowers necessary to bring it into being. Scientific, technological, and cultural cooperation and exchanges were key elements in the transformative process the Oasis Plan represented. By cooperating to fight the desert, rather than each other, the people of the region will better be able to recognize the humanity in each other, the common human capability to discover principles of nature and apply them to improve our power over nature — which categorically separates all human beings from the animals. There are no human animals. So, how will we pay for all this, and who’s paying? #### Part Three Part of the funding will come from financial aid, made more possible by beating swords into plowshares and converting the industrial and research capabilities of the military-financial complex into productive uses, as detailed in a study by EIR. Apart from international aid, $100 billion in credit can be realized, over a decade, for the reconstruction of Palestinian areas and the building out of the Oasis Plan’s vital infrastructure. This can be organized through development banks associated with BRICS-plus nations in the region, including the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia; the New Development Bank headquartered in China; and other national development banks of the Southwest Asia region. The sovereign wealth funds of the major regional BRICS-plus nations can help capitalize these development banks for this purpose. The Gulf Cooperation Council nations’ sovereign wealth funds hold some $4 trillion worth of capital. These have been traditionally placed in financial, banking or real estate assets of the bankrupt trans-Atlantic system. Now, they are looking for more productive investments instead in Eurasia and Africa. This investment can be concessionary development loans from these banks–for example of 20 years duration with interest rates of 2% and an initial grace period of 5 years if necessary. The debt service payments on these development loans, at least in the immediate future, should be made by the State of Israel, as the state currently occupying and taxing the entire area of Israel and Palestine. The United States, and perhaps other nations, as determined at an international peace and development conference, should be the guarantor for these debt service payments. The organization of the reconstruction work and building of the Oasis Plan infrastructures can be organized under authority of the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions Military Logistics Unit, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees in Palestine, and any other authorities that are required. These arrangements should be formally agreed upon by the nations involved in the framework of an international peace conference on Israel and Palestine, which must urgently be organized now. International commitments to development, both through particular projects and as a paradigm, must be made. #### Part Four Achieving peace in Southwest Asia, not only between Israelis and Palestinians, but among the countries of the entire region, will mark a new epoch in human history, as a region known for conflict transforms into one of connectivity, standing at the crossroads of three continents. The Oasis Plan is not some distant aspiration of what can be achieved years in the future after the peace. It is only through a paradigm of international relations supporting this approach, that peace is even possible! An end to the killing, a ceasefire is urgently needed now. But just as urgently is needed a vision for durable peace that will, at long last, shape a peaceful and prosperous destiny for the region. Every minute the war continues brings more death, more bitterness, and more difficulty in achieving shared prosperity. It must end now! Justice for those who have died, been injured, and who have suffered, demands that the awful violence awaken the conscience and intellect of the international community, not simply to say “never again” but to end, forever, the geopolitical paradigm that is the origin of most conflict in the world today. Today, the Oasis Plan cannot be implemented as a purely regional plan — a new security and development architecture is required globally. The voices of the Global South are becoming stronger and more confident. Moral authority, now and in the future, depends on how we act today. LaRouche wrote in 1978: >"The only human thing is to give the lives and suffering of the dead meaning, not merely by establishing peace in the Middle East, but by establishing the basis for peace which gives fulfillment to the lives of the present and future generations of the Palestinians and other Arabs, and thus purpose and fulfillment to the sacred lives of the dead." This applies to Israelis as well. Will you act to give meaning to the lives of those who have perished? Will you be a voice for peace and development? #### Thanks I’d like to thank you for watching. To learn more about the Oasis Plan and for ways to support The LaRouche Organization’s efforts to make it a reality, follow the link here and in the video description. 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