Khaled Al Sabawi, right, accepts the Energy Globe Award on behalf of MENAGeothermal (Source: www.energyglobe.info)

A few weeks ago U.S. presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, stood front and center on the international stage and declared that differences in culture accounted for Israel’s relative economic and technical advancement over Palestinian society.

Glossing over Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, Romney’s comments even stunned members of the Western press, themselves no strangers to issuing ridiculous and uninformed observations on Palestine. Since then, a number of articles have been published in mainstream U.S. newspapers canvassing the achievements made by Palestinian businessmen and entrepreneurs living in the Occupied Territories.

Our podcast guest this week is perhaps one of the youngest and most accomplished Palestinian entrepreneurs in the West Bank today. Khaled Al Sabawi grew up in Canada’s diasporic Palestinian community, graduating with an engineering degree from the University of Waterloo before moving to the West Bank where he has spearheaded a number of socially conscious, business endeavors.

Perhaps Khaled’s most ambitious project to date is MENAGeothermal, a company he established in 2008 to offer energy efficient, environmentally friendly, and cost effective heating and cooling systems to citizens of the Middle East and North Africa. Khaled is also General Manager of UCI, one of the largest construction and real estate development companies in Palestine, where he heads TABO Palestine, a project that has made land in the West Bank easier and more affordable to purchase and register for Palestinians around the world.

In this podcast, we speak to Khaled about his work with MENA Geothermal and TABO Palestine, the challenges he faced in pursuing his entrepreneurial vision in the Occupied Territories, and the principles and goals that drive his work.

Listen here: