The Qualifying Industrial Zone Initiative - A New Tool to Provide Economic Assistance to Middle Eastern Countries Engaged in the Peace Process

This Article first examines the role of economic and developmental assistance in the context of peacemaking and then focuses on one specific innovative economic assistance measure: the Qualifying Industrial Zone (“QIZ”) initiative. Part I of this Article describes how addressing the economic requirements of the negotiating parties has interplayed with their other requirements within the overall framework of peacemaking. Specifically, based on the experience gained over the last thirty years of the Middle East peace process, this Part describes the overarching requirements that the parties have pursued through peace negotiations. As explained below, former Middle East warriors have always attempted to ensure that they attain certain minimum political, security, and economic threshold objectives in negotiating peace agreements. This Part of the Article, then, articulates four “laws” of reconciling these three requirements among competing interests, emphasizing the role of economic assistance. Part II of this Article examines a novel U.S. government initiative that has recently surfaced and gained more significance among other economic assistance measures that have been offered to proponents of peace in the Middle East. The QIZ initiative by the U.S. government extends free access to the U.S. market for goods comprised of components originating in the territories of former adversaries and manufactured inside a jointly-administered QIZ, established along the borders of the former enemies who are now engaged in peacemaking. The success of the QIZ initiative, as well as the limitations on additional U.S. government spending to support future Middle East peace agreements, may result in the extension of the QIZ initiative to additional borders separating former enemies throughout the Middle East