(Times of Israel) Eylon Aslan-Levy - For the last year, I have served with IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. A military unit within the Ministry of Defense, COGAT is responsible for helping the Palestinians improve the quality of civilian life as much as possible to create a positive dynamic of hope and progress. That meant aggressively promoting the reconstruction of Gaza, advancing new infrastructure projects and exploring innovative solutions to bottlenecks that prevented progress on issues of common interest to Israelis and Palestinians. We worked with international partners to promote four new industrial parks in Judea and Samaria (West Bank). We connected the new Palestinian city of Rawabi to water. We enabled the transfer of more than 2.5 million tons of construction materials to Gaza, virtually tripling the number of trucks entering the Strip. Sometimes I felt like I was working for the Israeli branch of an international aid organization. The writer is a graduate of Oxford and Cambridge.
2015-11-27 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive