When it comes to improving the lot of Palestinians, it’s clear from following the money that politicians and do-gooders alike believe that the future rests on the education of Palestinian youth.

In March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced the Middle East Partnership Initiative, a million-dollar scholarship program to help Palestinian students enroll at Palestinian and American universities.

A related initiative, The U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, began in 2007 with the goal of preparing Palestinian youth for the responsibilities of citizenship.

The Ramallah-based PalTel Group Foundation, however, is unique in that it is the first self-financed and indigenous charitable organization seeking to transform daily life for Palestinian youth living in the West Bank and Gaza.

The PalTel Group is a telecommunications giant providing Internet and landline phone service within the Palestinian territories, as well as 1.5 million cell phone subscriptions. The company employs 3,500 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and makes up 50 percent of the worth of the Palestinian stock exchange.

In May, Kuwait’s largest mobile operator bought a majority stake in PalTel in a share swap, a partnership that is expected to generate $1 billion in annual revenues.

The foundation grew out of the PalTel Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility fund, which invested $6 million in Palestinian community development programs during the past four years, as well as another $2.5 million in a food stamps campaign when civil employees’ salaries stopped being paid in 2006.

Last month, PalTel Group Vice-Chair Abdul Malik Al-Jaber visited New York, where he met with Jewish business leaders and philanthropists, policy makers, community leaders and journalists, with the goal of enlisting the support of American Jews.

“There are Palestinians who are more than ready and willing to partner with Jewish philanthropists in the States,” said the 44-year-old, who also serves as chairman of the PalTel Group Foundation. “I’m calling for Jewish business leaders to accept the hand that’s coming to them to partner for building a better future for Israel and Palestine.”

Last year, PalTel established The PalTel Group Foundation with a $50 million endowment and a mission of empowering Palestinian youth, primarily through education. PalTel promises to contribute 2 percent of pre-tax profit (approximately $4 million) on an annual basis to the foundation.

Unlike America with its aging baby boomers, the Palestinian population is predominantly youthful. In fact, more than 50 percent of those Palestinians are between the ages of 15 and 29. And while illiteracy rates among Palestinians 65 and older is 58 percent, the rate plummets to less than 1 percent for those 15 to 24.

While 43 percent of Palestinian adolescents and young adults have cell phones and 67 percent use the computer, they are growing up in an environment devoid of hope, Al-Jaber says.

Al-Jaber blames soaring unemployment (approaching 20 percent in the West Bank and significantly worse in Gaza) as well as restrictions on mobility and movement often caused by Israeli checkpoints. “Job creation is the name of the game; otherwise, they lose hope,” he says.

A graduate of Jordan University of Science and Technology, Al-Jaber holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Business Administration, as well as a doctorate in engineering from McGill University. In 1993, at 28, Al-Jaber returned to the West Bank.

“When you live in the West and come back to a troubled area like Palestine, you look at the situation from a different angle,” he says.  The culture of win-win is a commodity, he says. “Palestinians don’t think that way. A victory is only if my opponent loses.”

One of Al-Jaber’s goals now is to stop the brain drain in Palestinian society. Palestinian youth “look for the first opportunity to leave,” he says. The Student Loan Program — a partnership between the PalTel Group Foundation’s Palestine Education Fund and the Bank of Palestine and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group — aims to provide $10 million in loans with low interest rates to about 8,000 Palestinian undergraduates each year for nine years.

PalTel has committed $4 million over the next four years to this program. Students in four-year programs will receive loans of up to $565 per semester (approximately the cost of tuition).

PalTel’s Scholarship Program encourages graduate students to study in the Palestinian territories by providing two-year grants of up to $2,500 to between 40 and 100 students.

Al-Jaber strongly believes that an economically vibrant Palestinian society is crucial to achieving a lasting peace. “You can’t build a state totally dependent on donations,” he says. He’d like to see wealthy Palestinians and Jews in the diaspora contribute toward major infrastructure construction in the Palestinian territories.

“I’m not asking supporters of Israel to stop supporting Israel,” he told The Jewish Week. “Having a prosperous state of Palestine is in the best interest of the state of Israel. And American Jews are the most relevant stakeholders in this whole process.”

Bobby Sager, founder of the Sager Family Traveling Foundation and Roadshow, met Al-Jaber several years ago as members of the Young Presidents’ Organization, a group of 20,000 business leaders from more than 100 countries. “We don’t agree about everything,” Sager says of his relationship with Al-Jaber, “but I know that he listens and that he will approach something in a practical way not burdened by dogma.

He’s asking the same question that so many of my forward-thinking Israeli friends are asking: ‘How am I going to have a better life for my kids?’”

Sager’s foundation recently built and rehabilitated four soccer fields in Palestinian areas. “The real deliverable is to teach coaches to act as mentors, kind of big brother-ish. The idea is to have facilities that people can escape to, feel good about, and be valued as human beings. “I believe that the stronger the Palestinians are, the more likely they are to make peace.”

During Al-Jaber’s visit to New York, Gally Meyer hosted a reception in Al-Jaber’s honor at her Lower Manhattan apartment. “I was very impressed,” says the Israeli who was a longtime investor on Wall Street and is now involved in a number of philanthropic causes. I asked him very difficult questions. He wasn’t defensive, but replied, ‘I need your help; let’s figure it out together.’”

Email: tamar@jewishweek.org