Buying peace in the Middle East

WHEN RICHARD Goodwin mentions his goal of a long-lasting peace in the Middle East, he's not talking in hypotheticals.

The peace that Goodwin envisions between Israel and the Palestinians is more like a blueprint for a house simply waiting to be built - and the former South Jersey developer believes, even now, at age 80, that he'll be pouring the foundation.

"I believe I'm going to make a big difference," he said during a recent telephone interview from his home in Snowmass Village, Colo. "There is a way out of this maze."

Goodwin, a Drexel University grad whose family business built more than 5,000 homes in South Jersey and Pennsylvania, is founder of the Middle East Peace Dialogue Network, a nonprofit organization that supports 65 Israeli and Palestinian groups in promoting peace by raising funds and awareness.

Goodwin believes that a Palestinian state must exist someday and that the key to making it a reality is to funnel billions of dollars into the region, in his version of a Marshall Plan for the Middle East.

If it's funneled to the Palestinians to create jobs, housing and a thriving economy, he says, the money would undermine popular support for violent organizations like Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza.

Lifting the "crippling" economic sanctions against the Palestinians would also help dissuade further animosity toward Israel, Goodwin said.

"All this is manageable, if both sides want it to be," he said. "Money will buy peace."

Goodwin says he has donated $1 million to jump-start the stalled Geneva Initiative, or Geneva Accord, a regional peace plan hammered out by both Israelis and Palestinians in October 2003.

"Peace is too important to be left to the politicians," he said.

Daniel Kutner, Israel's new consul general to the mid-Atlantic region, declined to comment on Goodwin's stimulus plan for the Middle East, but said the economic sanctions against Palestinian territories are an unfortunate necessity.

"Israel is interested in making life better for Palestinians," said Kutner, who is based in Philadelphia. "If Palestinians have a better life, the more radical element will have a smaller following."

Mohammad Darawshe, co-executive director of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a nonprofit organization that works to promote coexistence between Arabs and Jews, said he respects Goodwin for "putting his money where his mouth is."

"He walks the talk, he inspires others around him, and generates action. Since I met him, he has always pushed the limits of what can and should be done in the Middle East," Darawshe said in an e-mail from Jerusalem. "If I were in charge of the Nobel Peace Prize, I would award it to Richard Goodwin."

Goodwin, with help from Darawshe, also organized an annual Children's March and Festival for Peace in Israel, which he says brings thousands of Jewish and Arab children together for a day of volunteering.

Scars of bigotry

Born in Philadelphia, Goodwin grew up in Baltimore's then-predominantly Catholic neighborhood of Walbrook, where he felt no particular connection to his Jewish heritage.

His father, originally named Harry Goodstein, was a native of Wilkes-Barre and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, for whom he scored a touchdown in the 1916 Army-Navy game in New York.

Harry had a mortgage business, but the family was too poor to belong to a synagogue after the Great Depression, Goodwin said.

"When I was 13, I didn't even know what a bar mitzvah was," he said.

"I remember my dad saying to me, 'You know you're Jewish, right?' "

One day, in ninth grade, Goodwin became intimately aware of his identity: A group of "farm boys" worked him over for one reason - he was Jewish.

"Those experiences left me with an indelible mark," Goodwin said.

The anti-Semitism, he said, fired a drive to succeed in business. Goodwin Enterprises became one of South Jersey's largest developers, building Ramblewood in Mount Laurel and Kingston Estates in Cherry Hill, as well as shopping centers.

As the money came in, Goodwin continuously sent it back out, donating to the United Way and the Jewish Federation of Southern New Jersey and contributing $1 million toward prostate-cancer research. He was the prime benefactor of Drexel's Richard C. Goodwin College of Professional Studies.

Impelled to help Israel

Although his experiences as a youth in Maryland didn't fire any religious fervor, Goodwin says, he felt obligated to help the Jewish state survive and prosper.

"In 1948, I was thrilled the state of Israel got started, and began contributing money" to Israel, he said. "But there's been four wars and no peace, and I thought there must be some better answer."

Searching for a better answer often prompts Goodwin to cast a critical eye toward Israel, something he says angers his Jewish friends.

"I started to wonder whether we can save Israel from itself," said Goodwin, who has three children.

Through his work with Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, a community of Israeli and Palestinian families who live together in Israel, Goodwin said, he has found an example of peaceful coexistence that he thinks has been largely ignored by the Israeli government.

"It's one of Israel's best-kept secrets, but they [Israeli government] don't focus on it because they think it's a minor reconciliation," he said.

In his travels to Israel, Goodwin says, he often has been disappointed at the treatment of Arabs who live there.

"They are treated as second-class citizens," he said.

He approves of hits on Hamas

Goodwin supports Israel's military action in Gaza.

"It's a war that had to take place sooner or later, as long as Hamas felt it could gain something by firing rockets into Israel," he said. "The peace process should not be driven or impeded by it. This issue is going to pass."

Goodwin's son John, with whom he co-owns Ramblewood Country Club in Mount Laurel, says his father has been an inspiration to him and to thousands of others who believe that peace is a possibility.

"He's just a civilian," John Goodwin said of his father, "but the ability to inspire is one of the greatest things."

Famous quotes, scribbled on sticky notes, line Goodwin's pockets wherever he goes these days. His favorite, he says, is this one from Philadelphia-born anthropologist Margaret Mead:

A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.