Conclusions on the Oasis Plan for Peace in the Mideast

In 1994, economist Lyndon LaRouche recognized the Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestine as a unique opportunity to heal the region after decades of bitter conflict. During a lifetime of studying humanity through the lenses of culture, history and science, he proposed the Oasis Plan as an integral component to peace by intertwining the regional players in economic development which would incentivize cooperation and make future conflict undesirable.

In what must have been purposeful symmetry with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points for resolution of World War One, LaRouche (1922 – 2019) outlined fourteen points to be fulfilled in the Oasis Plan. (p. 6) The main point addressed the construction of two conduits for irrigation, one connecting the Red Sea to the Dead Sea (“Red to Dead” extending 170 kilometers or 105.6 miles), and the other connecting the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean (“Dead to Med” extending 100 km or 62 miles). Alongside these canals and in the Mediterranean, there would be construction of desalination plants driven by nuclear power of the safe and clean fourth generation type, such as pebble-bed and those which achieve fission through molten-salt liquid thorium, and hydroelectricity derived from the shaft-encased cascade of the Red Sea’s water into the Dead Sea, which is a drop of 430 meters. (¶ 5)

A network of fast railroads for freight and passengers would be routed next to the canals. The Gaza Strip would be redeveloped to include an updated seaport and the Yasser Arafat International Airport (Gaza’s airport was destroyed in 2002).

Though unstated in Plan’s fourteen points, the creation of a free and independent State of Palestine is presumed in the Plan, as this is the surest way to achieve a durable peace in the region. This State of Palestine would conform to the distension recognized in the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which recognizes Palestine to encompass the Jordan River’s West Bank (Samaria and Judea) and the exclave of the Gaza Strip. Accordant with UN Resolution 181 of 1947, Jerusalem would be held in trust by a UN garrison (undoubtedly assigned from countries other than Israel and Palestine to ensure no local grudges). Consistent with U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan in twenty points for Palestine following the two-year war in Gaza (infra), Hamas will have no role in Palestine, which means that Palestine should have a UN police force until a competent local force can supplant it.

As it sounds, the ambitious Oasis Plan will require major expenditures. This article – last in a septempartite series which presents the Plan and the pertinent regional history in five installments – will explore who incurs what expenses, when, and in general how this could come together so that the Middle East has its best chance at peace by allowing ancestral enemies to find common cause in their mutual survival and betterment.

Pennies from Heaven

Anyone who has followed the conflicts underway in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the last fifteen years – the hostilities in Syria, Libya, Yemen, and between Israel and Palestine – realizes that hundreds of thousands of human lives have been snuffed out in the fighting. Others have been wounded in ways from which they will never fully recover to enjoy life and be productive as had been their forbears’ hope. Furthermore, millions of people have been scattered to the wind, emigrated to all corners of the earth, such that there are families which may never reunite. Though it is too late to undo what befell the deceased, wounded and displaced, what price would be too high if it could prevent the suffering of untold millions of human beings?

Shifting from the philosophical to the practical, multiple billions of dollars are currently invested into maintaining MENA at its current volatility, which is rapidly degenerating. As you read this, the U.S. military has all sorts of expensive hardware and manpower deployed to patrol MENA and prop up an unstable geopolitical situation. If some of those expenditures could be redirected towards implementing a stable peace in the region, would there by any downside for American taxpayers and humanity as a whole?

LaRouche’s Oasis Plan will be costly, but as the foregoing considerations make clear, the cost of doing nothing will be much higher.

How much and who pays?

The Oasis Plan will cost at least $300 billion. A multinational corporation will have to be established for this project. It will receive capitalization, make the necessary outlays when and where needed, and ultimately it will generate revenue when the infrastructure is up and running. LaRouche’s Schiller Institute proposes that the initial capitalization come from loans by banks based in the BRICS+ countries (Brasil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran). It also suggests the Gulf Cooperation Council’s six member states’ sovereign wealth funds be tapped for this project, which would avail some $4 trillion in funding.

Israel – as the country most directly benefitting from these projects – would be responsible for the loans’ debt service, with the USA and maybe European Union serving as guarantors of this repayment. The capitalization loans would be for periods of twenty years, with a grace period of up to five years, and an interest rate of around 2%.

The Plan would come under the authority of the UN Peacekeeping Missions’ Military Logistics unit for the actual organization and implementation. The UN Relief and Work Agency could assist with hiring labor amongst MENA’s refugees, with more specialized labor brought in from Israel and elsewhere as needed.

Though unspecified in explanations of the Plan, what I imagine will happen is that every country of MENA (or at least the most directly impacted countries of Israel, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and neighbors) will be invited into the multinational corporation (“OasisBlue, Inc.”), with each country’s initial capitalization as its buy-in. When revenue is generated, it will be paid out in dividends to OasisBlue’s shareholder countries in proportion to their buy-in. Revenue will be generated from multiple points, such as residential and industrial consumption of nuclear power, hydroelectricity and desalinated water. Travel and freight on the parallel railways and through the seaport and airport will also generate revenue for OasisBlue. In the end, every shareholder country will have billions paid out in dividends going directly to their sovereign wealth funds, thereby binding their interest to peace in MENA.

Critique in the blanks

The Oasis Plan stands alone in its potential for re-conceiving MENA from a region prone to conflict to one rooted in cooperation. President Trump’s plan for Gaza is not bad in its stated intentions, but it lacks any basis for implementation and maintenance other than good faith, which is in chronic short supply between Israel and Palestine. In contrast, the Oasis Plan grounds itself on inexhaustible self-interest, recognizing that MENA’s countries will best keep the peace if they have vested stakes in so doing.

That said, the Plan and its literature give rise to some critiques. For example, Point Fourteen (like a high-rise which refuses to enumerate the floor above its twelfth as thirteen out of superstition, the Oasis Plan lists this as Fifteen since Point Fourteen immediately follows Twelve) recommends taxation to funnel settlement to the Negev Desert (which accounts for 62% of Israel’s territory) when the Plan’s massive desalination projects are underway. The type of taxation is unspecified, so it could mean that producers not in the Negev (such as citizens and businesses in Israel proper) are taxed more than those in the Negev, thereby inducing settlement thereto.

One problem with induced settlement is the element of social engineering over spontaneous order. If government artificially induces settlement in the Negev, it will wind up with large amounts of people in advance of the infrastructure to support them. This will overburden the desert’s ecology and present as malaise in overcrowded settlements. What tends to work better is for people freely to respond to market conditions, moving when and whither they see opportunity.

Another criticism which surfaces is the Schiller Institute’s aversion to Israel’s parallel plan of the David Ben-Gurion Canal. Ben-Gurion was Israel’s first premier (1948 – 1953) and was involved in the early Zionist settlements in the area. In 1956 he had proposed directing water to the Negev so as to green the desert. In 2021, Israel announced that it would begin construction of this canal, which would be ten meters deeper than the Suez Canal, a third longer, and feature two conduits side by side so that ships could navigate in opposite directions from Eilat, Israel’s southern port on the Red Sea, towards the Mediterranean. The Schiller Institute denounces the proposal as “megalomaniac,” yet somehow Gaza’s airport christened the Yasser Arafat International Airport is not.

Though the Ben-Gurion Canal would not irrigate farmsteads along its route, evaporation from the canal and later precipitation would reverse the desert’s aridity. If the Oasis Plan’s honest objectives are the reversal of aridity and the regional infrastructure’s interconnectivity, then a second canal which does both could only be advantageous. Nor does it necessarily compete with the Oasis Plan’s canals in terms of funding and labor since the requisite resources can always be drawn from other sources.

Conclusion

This series began with a reminder that when the world was at its least populated, Cain bashed Abel outside Eden, as the Bible in Genesis recounts. If people in the Middle East fight over the same acre of land (e.g., the Temple Mount), then there is no hope for humanity. Conflicts will become more frequent, and the desensitized world will stop caring. Time is running out on the world’s collective desire to make a permanent improvement in the Middle East and forevermore to end the conflict which has defined the area.

There is, therefore, no better time than the present to deliberate the Oasis Plan and to start dialogue between the regional stakeholders.