Experts Hopeful Peace is Possible in Middle East

The key to peace in the Middle East lies in examination of past-failed diplomatic negotiations, a panel discussion at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) found last night.

“Conflict is not inevitable, and people change their minds,” Khalil Shikaki, director of the Center for Palestine and Research Studies in the West Bank town of Ramallah, told the audience of 300 that attended the forum.

The panel also included Yair Hirschfeld, one of the two Israeli originators of the Oslo Peace Process, and Ambassador Dennis Ross, who served as special Middle East coordinator under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton and is now a lecturer at the KSG.

The discussion focused on the lessons to be learned from the Oslo Peace Accords, negotiated in secret by Yassir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in 1993.

The accords granted a five-year interim period of Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and in exchange the Palestinian Liberation Organization was to renounce violence against Israel.

Despite their promising nature, the accords were followed by eruptions of violence in both areas that culminated in the collapse of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the outbreak of the Intifada shortly thereafter.

The panelists said yesterday that peace accords alone cannot ensure the cultural change necessary to bring about peace in the Middle East.

“Oslo promised the transformation of attitudes but didn’t produce [these] transformations,” Ross said. “Though the [Palestinians] agreed to renounce violence....there was never an effort to delegitimize violence.”

The Israelis were responsible as well, Ross said, arguing that they were never ready to give up control of Palestinian land as they had pledged to do.

“There was no accountability in this process,” says Ross.

Shikaki remarked similarly that the Oslo Accords were “too open-ended” and did not demand enough commitment on both the Israeli and Palestinian fronts.

“I don’t believe for a second that the failure after Camp David exposed a fundamental clash [between the Israelis and Palestinians],” says Shikaki, “as I don’t accept the idea that the Palestinian national movement cannot reach peace agreements with Israel.”

While the three panelists had different viewpoints at times, they shared an optimism for a peaceful future, and wanted to bring political realities closer to intellectual understandings.

“I think it’s possible, but it’s not easy,” Hirschfeld said.

Ross stressed the need for U.S. involvement in the peace process.

According to Ross, the U.S. should “shepherd” the Israeli-Palestinian conversations so that “understandings are reached and [things are] understood in the same way.”

Ross added that in the past as now, the U.S. should be more assertive as a third-party observer to ensure that each side commit to the terms it agreed to in the agreement.

At the same time, Ross warned of the dangers of quick solutions and activation of international deployment forces.

“I don’t believe that regime change will have anything [to do] with the peace process,” says Shikaki about recent events in Palestine.

Although Palestinians desire political reform and the gradual removal of Arafat, Shikaki said, they would look favorably upon a U.S,-implemented regime change.

Ross said that he doesn’t see any immediate impacts of recent events in Iraq for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict besides the Israelis not having to face an Eastern front.

Recent changes in Palestine, along with the possibility of changing leadership make this a good time to “push reform movements.”

Those in the crowd said they found the panel’s analysis helpful.

“It was very insightful to have these three individuals come together,” says first-year Ph.D. candidate in the Committee for the Study of Religion Atalia Omer.

“It’s encouraging that there is such a systemic examination of the Oslo Negotiations,” Omer said.

Yesterday’s discussion was moderated by Harvard professor and director of the KSG Middle East Peace Project Brian Mandell.