G.ho.st between Ramallah and Modiin

The Israeli-Gaza truce is a sort of ‘cooperation’ between enemies. But here, for a change, is a story of a cooperation between friends. Palestinians from Ramallah and Israelis from the town of Modiin works as partners in a start up company named  G.ho.st. ,(Global Hosted Operating System).

The interesting points in this story is, that when Israelis and Palestinian put away the fumes of mistrust and fear, and create a reasonable environment of normality and flowing reciprocal good feelings, then the sky is the limit. Many will objects that the  West  Bank is not the best place to travel and to hold meetings between the 40 members of the Israeli-Arabic team ..But  Zvi Schreiber , G.ho.st.’s British-born Israeli chief executive , who initially joined with Tareq Maayah, a Palestinian businessman, to start the Ramallah office in parallel to the Modiin office in Israel, found together the solutions to ‘abolish’ the wall by a virtual connection between their respective offices.

• I quote,…”[Instead,] they trade ideas across flat screen monitors, their images broadcast through a video conference hook-up that connects their two offices, one in the West Bank, the other in Israel, in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.”..
• …”No walls,” said Rami Abdulhadi, the company’s marketing director, a Palestinian, cheerfully quoting the company’s motto, noting their product “goes through the walls of the separation wall and the desktop that is on-line.”…
• ….”The Palestinian office, located here and staffed by about 35 software developers, is responsible for most of the research and development. A smaller Israeli team works about 21 kilometers, or 13 miles, away in the central Israeli town of Modiin. The stretch of road between the offices is separated by checkpoints, watch towers and a barrier made mostly of chain link fence and in some areas soaring concrete walls, built by Israel with the stated goal of preventing the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers.”…
• ….”It’s the first time I met Palestinians of my generation face-to-face,” Rothman said of her work with G.ho.st. “It shows how on the people-to-people level you can really get things done.” The company’s budget is a relatively paltry $2.5 million. Employing Palestinians means money goes farther; salaries for Palestinian programmers are about a third of what they are in Israel.”…
• …” ‘We are one team, employed by the same company and everyone has shares in the company’ he said.”…
• ” ‘We are doing something across cultures and across two sides of a tough conflict. I was prepared for the possibility that it might be difficult, but it hasn’t been,’ Schreiber said.”…. see here for the full article.

Zvi Schreiber.

Tareq Maayah.

Purposely I didn’t mention the details of G.ho.st, a web-based virtual computer so that users can access their desktop, files and documents from any computer with an Internet connection…. etcetera. The details are on their site here. The rarity of their achievement is that, in a time of dangerous cultural and political unrest, Israelis and Palestinians can work together on topnotch hi-tec projects.

.