Cocker To Play New Peace Fest

Joe Cocker is to headline a new festival celebrating the peaceful coexistence among Jews and Arabs in the Gilboa region.

The lineup for the August 26-28 Gilboa Co-existence Festival will also include Austrian singer/songwriter Timna Brauer, and Arab-Jewish ensembles will play together to illustrate the point of the event.

The Gilboa region, which is in the north, is the most successfully integrated in Israel, and festival booker Hillel Wachs says the music of the festival will reflect this.

Wachs, who also books Jerusalem Rocks and the biannual One Shekel Festival, says the 6,000-capacity event at Charod Springs Amphitheatre will be a "well funded, well attended and musically significant festival for many years."

The festival is produced by 2BVibes, which also put together Jerusalem Rocks 2007. The headliners on that bill were Black Eyed Peas and Arrested Development.