David Simha

President

David is a self-starting and dynamic business man with almost 40 years of experience in import-export. He has also been heavily involved in international chambers of commerce for over 25 years.
 
In 1985, he founded the Dutch-Israeli Chamber of Commerce and Industry and served as its president until 1990. From 2004-2008 he served as President of Federation of Bi-National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, supervising 52 bi-national chambers of commerce and their numerous members of staff, as well as setting strategic direction for the Federation. Similarly, in 2009 he was one of the founders of the Israeli-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce and in January 2012 was voted by all the Israeli-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's assembly as the president of IPCC.

 Eival Gilady

Honorary President

Brigadier General (Res.) Eival Gilady is the Chairman and the co-founder of the Israeli-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce (IPCC). The IPCC was established to promote trade and commerce between Israelis and Palestinians, to create business opportunities and to improve the economic relations between the two peoples.

Gilady is also the CEO of the Portland Trust in Israel, a British foundation established to foster peace and stability in the Middle East through the use of bespoke economic tools and mobilization of international resources.
He is also the Chairman of the Koret Israel Economic Development Fund (KIEDF) , which uses philanthropy to stimulate private sector economic expansion, and he is also the Chairman of the Western Galilee College , providing higher academic education in Israel's periphery.

Gilady is the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Slovenia in Tel Aviv.

Gilady earned his Bachelor’s and three Master’s degrees from Haifa University, National Defense University and George Washington University, in the areas of Resources Management, Policy Analysis, National Security Strategy, and Public Finance. From 1999 to 2001 he was assigned as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Dr. Ron Pundak

Deputy Chairman of the board

Dr. Ron Pundak is Director General of the Peres Center for Peace, a non-profit non-government organization, established in 1996, dedicated to the promotion of peaceful relations between Arabs and Israelis. The Peres Center’s mission is to build an infrastructure for peace, by and for the people of the Middle East, which promotes cooperation and mutual understanding.

In his current position, Dr. Pundak leads cooperation and coordination activities between Israel and its neighbors – mainly the Palestinians – through civil society dialogue, and people to people endeavors, in a wide range of fields such as economics, agriculture, health, sports, peace education, culture, youth, and city to city relations.

Dr. Pundak played a decisive role in creating the secret track of unofficial negotiations in Oslo in 1993, alongside Dr. Yair Hirschfeld and Palestinian counterparts. He served as a member of the official Israeli negotiating team - guided by Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin, and later by Yitzhak Rabin - until the historic signing of the Declaration of Principles in Washington on September 13, 1993. Dr. Pundak has continued to be involved in various policy planning frameworks of ongoing and future negotiations on bi and multilateral levels.

During 1994 and 1995, Dr. Pundak and Dr. Hirschfeld prepared with a Palestinian team the so-called 'Beilin-Abu Mazen Understanding', which provided a blue-print for negotiations and a detailed framework agreement for all Israeli-Palestinian Final Status issues. This document became the main point of reference during the Permanent Status negotiations in the Camp David Two and Taba negotiations. In recent times, Dr. Pundak has participated as a member of the core team of the Geneva Initiative.

Dr. Pundak formerly held the position of Executive Director of the Economic Cooperation Foundation (a non-profit organization established in 1991 to break the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian relations.)

Dr. Pundak holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, in the field of Middle Eastern political history. His book, “The Struggle for Sovereignty”, which deals with King Abdullah I and the history of Jordan during the years 1946-1951, was published in Britain in 1994. Dr. Pundak regularly contributes articles to the Israeli and international press. His publication “From Oslo to Taba: What Went Wrong?” features in Survival, The International Institute for Strategic Studies.

His latest publication, "The Territorial Aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian Final Status Negotiation" , written together with Col (res.) Shaul Arieli, was published in Israel and drew the attention of many decision-makers and researchers.

Dan Catarivas

Director, Division of Foreign Trade & International Relations

Manufacturers' Association of Israel

Dan Catarivas presently holds the position of Director of the Division of Foreign Trade and International Relations at the Manufacturers' Association of Israel; in his capacity he coordinates various activities between the Israel and the Palestinian private sector.

Prior to this position he served for twenty five years with the Israel Government, his last position was Deputy Director General for International Affairs at the Ministry of Finance.

Mr. Catarivas graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Political Science. He holds MSc degree in Economics from London School of Economics in the field of European Economic Integration and Diploma from College D'Europe in Bruges, Belgium, in the field of Advanced European Studies. 

Dov Sedaka

 Board member

Brigadier General (Res.) in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – career officer and commander of Elite Commando and Intelligence Units.
Dov is a manager of wide-scale military and civil authorities of various natures.

He headed the Civil Administration for the West Bank and has extensive hands-on managerial and command experience of over 35 years, spanning a wide range of disciplines and systems. Dov is of a well-developed sociable nature, with extraordinary communication skills and a unique ability to reach the hearts of people.

Dov is fluent in the Arabic language and culture, as well as English and French (partial).

He received his MA from the Manchester University Extension at Kiryat Ono in 2002. He has BA in Arabic Language and Literature and the Islamic Religion from Tel Aviv University, a Diploma of Economics and Management from The Rupin College and a Diploma of Practical Engineering in Industry and Management from Technion Institute for Technology and Science in Haifa.

Dov is married with five children ages 15-42

Dalia Rabin

 Board member

Dalia Rabin currently serves as the Chairperson of the Yitzhak Rabin Center, a thriving national institute dedicated to ensuring that the legacy of former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin continues to impact Israeli society through experiential educational programming, a national archive and a museum.

Before leading the Rabin Center, Dalia was a member of the Israeli Government from 1999-2002. She was elected to the Knesset on the Center Party Ticket in 1999 and acted as Chairperson of the Ethics Committee. She also served on the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee; the Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women; the State Control Committee; and the Committee for the Advancement of the Status of the Child. In March 2001, Dalia was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense. She resigned in July 2002 to head the Rabin Center.  

Prior to her election to the Knesset, Dalia, an attorney by profession, served as the legal advisor of the professional associations of the General Federation of Labor (the "Histadrut").  She also served for fourteen years in the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office in the Civil Division, specializing in Labor Law.

Dalia holds an LLB from Tel Aviv University and has two children, Yonatan and Noa.

 Naava Mashiah

 Board member

Naava Mashiah - Board Member, CEO of New Health Era; Founder and CEO of M.E. Links

Naava Mashiah is the CEO of New Health Era (2012) based in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is a private company focused on improving the quality of health in the hospital arena by providing integrated communication between the patient, patient's family and the doctor.

Naava Mashiah is also a Founder and CEO of M.E.Links (2003), a private company focused on nurturing business relations in industries between Israel and her neighboring countries and enabling unique initiatives and business opportunities in the MENA region; Member of the World Economic Forum and Member of the International Women's Forum; Activist with The Israel Peace Initiative and Informal Diplomacy, and Executive Board Member of the Israeli-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce.

Naava is very successful in networking and negotiating in the MENA region business arena. She has managed to build trusted and sustained business and government relationships with a wide spectrum of leading figures in the Arab World, Gulf emirates and North Africa. She has significant experience and familiarity with the Middle Eastern History and current affairs, and the geopolitical and economic trends of the MENA region as well, as a deep knowledge of the Israeli and the Arab narratives and insights.

Naava has practiced Track II informal sustained diplomacy for over a decade with all countries of MENA without exception. She has excellent social and interpersonal skills, locally, nationally and internationally.

Naava acquired her university education in California majoring in Psychology at CSUN and studied International Relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She speaks Hebrew, English, fluently and Spanish and Arabic moderately. She was born in Israel in 1968 and was raised in the USA.