On December 16 – 2015, Prof. Elie Podeh of the Hebrew University launched his new book, “Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict” at the JPC. Prof. Podeh uses extensive sources in English, Hebrew and Arabic to systematically measure the potentiality level of opportunity across nine decades of attempted negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
About the speaker:
Prof. Elie Podeh is a Bamberger and Fuld Chair at the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a senior research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. He is a board member of Mitvim – the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. He has published and edited ten books and more than sixty academic articles in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Among his publications: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Israeli History Textbooks, 1948-2000 (2002); Rethinking Nasserism: Revolution and Historical Memory in Modern Egypt (2004); The Politics of National Celebrations in the Arab World (2011); Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (forthcoming). Prof. Podeh is a frequent commentator on Middle Eastern affairs in the Israeli and foreign media, publishing periodic articles in Haaretz and Jerusalem Post.
About the book:
“Chances for Peace”: From Arab-Zionist negotiations at the end of World War I to the subsequent partition, the aftermath of the 1967 War and the Sadat Initiative, and numerous agreements throughout the 1980s and 1990s, concluding with the Annapolis Conference in 2007 and the Abu Mazen-Olmert talks in 2008, pioneering scholar Elie Podeh uses empirical criteria and diverse secondary sources to assess the protagonists’ roles at more than two dozen key junctures.
A resource that brings together historiography, political science, and the practice of peace negotiation, Podeh’s insightful exploration also showcases opportunities that were not missed. Three agreements in particular (Israeli-Egyptian, 1979; Israeli-Lebanese, 1983; and Israeli-Jordanian, 1994) illuminate important variables for forging new paths to successful negotiation. By applying his framework to a broad range of power brokers and time periods, Podeh also sheds light on numerous incidents that contradict official narratives. This unique approach is poised to reshape the realm of conflict resolution.
