Trying to Put a Price on Middle East Peace

Eds Note: A previous version of this story had an incorrect title for Saed Bamya.

In July 2002 a small group of Israeli and Palestinian economists sat down for a rare meeting in the idyllic French village of Aix-en-Provence. It was the height of the violent Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada. A Hamas suicide bomber had recently blown himself up in a hotel where a Passover meal for 250 people was taking place, and Israel was engaged in a military campaign in the occupied territories that would ultimately result in thousands of Palestinian deaths. Official communication had been severed and political solutions were obviously coming up short.