It was very timely that the annual Danish parliament open house occurred last night, Oct. 10, and Schiller Institute organizers were able to speak to several government ministers, including the foreign minister, and many other members of parliament about the Oasis Plan and the new security and development architecture. The most important was that we had a five-minute serious discussion with Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who agreed that the rebuilding has to start immediately. He had just been on the phone with the foreign ministers of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and said that a rebuilding conference will be held in Egypt in about three weeks. He promised to study our leaflet and he put it in his pocket.
We had prepared a leaflet entitled, “For Peace in Gaza: Rebuild Gaza and the Region with the Oasis Plan,” which included Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s comments about the Oasis Plan to Pakistan TV, with an introduction and link to the video, and another headline, “A New Security and Development Architecture To Achieve Peace,” with the Ten Principles and an introduction.
The evening started by our distributing the leaflet to the many citizens lined up to enter the parliament, with almost everyone accepting it.
Then the four Schiller Institute organizers (in shifts of two at a time) went from one political party reception room to the next, to at least ten political parties in all. It was an electric historical moment to engage the members in discussion. The main message was that everyone is hoping that the war is over, though it is a very fragile situation, but we have to act immediately to implement the Oasis Plan as a pathway toward peace. And that we have to work with the Global South to form a new security and development architecture, to also stop the war in Ukraine.
We had many discussions. Every member except one was very open. One member, who had criticized the government for not acting forcefully to stop the genocide in Gaza, agreed that the government has to act decisively now to aid the rebuilding. Two ministers brought up that the government had just allocated 100 million Danish crowns ($14.3 million) to the rebuilding effort. One member said, “You always have ideas about great projects,” and she told us that she had been involved in a project to use mushrooms to green the desert. We discussed the question of releasing Marwan Barghouti with a left-wing member. And there was more. We also made four youth contacts during the course of the evening.
Another highlight was that three organizers broke out singing Dona Nobis Pacem in the parliamentary chamber itself, to the applause of the many citizen onlookers, after our explanation that it is an appeal for peace in the world.
