Strawberry Fields for Peace

In an innovative effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, a group of international contributors and the Peres Center for Peace are supporting an effort to grow strawberries in the West Bank city of Qalqilyah. A group of Israeli farmers and agricultural experts are providing the expert knowledge and technology to teach Palestinians how to grow strawberries for export, thereby improving the Palestinian economy. In fact, some of the fields literally abut the wall Israel built to prevent suicide attacks from the West Bank. As the Huffington post reports, “The plan is to market the strawberries in Europe for Christmas and to sell them to Ben & Jerry's”. As Israeli liaison officer Lt. Gal Levant noted in the same Huffington post article, "Our hope here is that if this situation will continue, that Qalqilyah will stop being the capital of terrorism and bombing it was before and will become a capital of strawberries."