While most international focus has been placed recently on the cease-fire and hostage-release agreement in Gaza, over the past week, philanthropist and World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder has been looking more broadly, at the wider Middle East, speaking on the subject at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference and meeting with Arab leaders.

On the sidelines of the conference, Lauder “had the opportunity to meet with leaders from numerous countries” who were present at the gathering, according to a World Jewish Congress spokesperson. 

After speaking in Germany on Saturday, Lauder, a former diplomat who has acted as an unofficial emissary of the United States, traveled to Cairo where he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the following day. From there, he traveled to Amman, meeting with both Jordanian King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. 

According to the WJC spokesperson, the meetings focused on “[bringing] about a resolution to the ongoing conflict.” His office would not comment on the specific topics of discussion beyond that and declined to say if he’d coordinated his meetings with the Israeli government.

In his address at the conference on Saturday, Lauder called for a “Marshall Plan” for the region, led by the United States, as a bulwark against further extremism and a driver of economic growth, as well as the creation of a NATO of the Middle East that would combat Iran and its allies. 

Onstage and in his meetings, Lauder also stressed the need for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, which he said was a sine qua non for Middle East peace — a break from not only right-wing voices in Israel (Lauder long aligned himself with Israel’s conservative Likud party) but even from more center and center-left politicians, who following the Oct. 7 attacks and past 16 months of war describe a two-state solution as at most an increasingly distant goal.

“Not only do I believe in a two-state solution, I believe more than I’ve ever believed in a two-state solution because I believe there can be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution. And I believe it can happen,” he said. 

According to a readout from his meeting with Abbas, Lauder also affirmed his support for a Palestinian state in that meeting as well. 

Lauder, a former American defense official and diplomat with ties to the Republican Party, has made all of these recommendations before, even before the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Yet his calls for a new Marshall Plan-style initiative focused not only on the benefits of an economic and social reconstruction campaign in the Middle East but also on the steps that would have to be taken to prevent it from being taken advantage of by terrorist groups like Hamas.

“Over the past two decades, I’ve made more trips in the Middle East than I can count. I’ve met with heads of states and politicians. I’ve also met with ordinary people — shopkeepers, students, people from all parts of society. In some countries, I see hope for a better future. But in other parts of the region, many young people have little hope for jobs and a better future,” Lauder said in his speech. “These are exactly the young people that terrorist organizations like Hamas, Islamist Jihad, Hezbollah are recruiting.”

Lauder, who served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO affairs in the 1980s, said that the Marshall Plan — the American post-World War II reconstruction plan — ”reset Western Europe on its course to economic success and freedom” at a time when few people believed that a continent that had primarily known war for several decades could get back on track. 

“A new Marshall Plan for the Middle East would be directed towards young people who make up the vast majority of the populations of these countries,” he said in the speech. “With this plan, youngsters would bring this new vision of the Middle East home to their parents. The parents would learn it from their children. I saw this in the schools that I started in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it worked.”

Lauder said the initiative should be started by the United States but that others in the region should fund it and that it must be closely monitored to ensure that budgets are not syphoned off for personal enrichment or terrorism, as currently happens with much international aid.

“The U.S. could once again start this process and put in the seed money. But larger investments could come from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries in the region,” he said. “It would be monitored closely to see which parts work and which did not. All funds would have to be completely transparent, so money would not go to building more tunnels or wind up in Swiss accounts.”

Lauder also called for the creation of a Middle East military alliance, similar to NATO, which he prospectively dubbed the Middle East Treaty Organization, or METO, as a counterbalance to Iran’s “resistance axis” — Hezbollah, Hamas and allied Iraqi militias — and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“METO would take the Abraham Accords to an entirely new level — the level of mutual cooperation, mutual economic ties and mutual defence. Israel should not be the only army fighting these radical forces since everyone in the region — Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States — are threatened in the same way. METO would stand up to any threats from the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran or anyone else,” he said. “The idea of an Israeli army working alongside Arab armies seems far-fetched. But remember, in 1945, whoever could have foreseen German soldiers standing with British and American soldiers, but it happened and NATO has been a success for 75 years and counting.”

In an onstage interview after his remarks with Washington Post security correspondent Souad Mekhennet, Lauder said he had discussed these plans with leaders in the region. “Surprisingly enough, they all like the idea. There were questions just how it would work and who should start it,” he said.

Asked why the nearly 81-year-old former business executive was focused so heavily and personally on Middle East peace, Lauder joked: “I guess I’m crazy.”

But then added: “No, I believe very, very much in the Middle East. I believe what can be done there. And I look at the people in the Middle East. We’re all sons of Abraham. We all have something very much in common together… I’ve seen what can happen with the schools I [built] in Eastern Europe and what effect they had in the countries, and I believe that if we have the right schools, the right universities, textbooks that don’t teach hate, we have major possibilities of having a great Middle East together as one.”